When you take a cruise, in most cases your room key serves as your only method of paying for things on board. Cash is generally accepted only for tips.
The system makes sense because everyone needs to have their room key with them to, well, get back into their room. People usually connect their room keys to credit cards for onboard spending.
Related: Carnival Cruise Line shares controversial onboard dining policy
Parents can put spending limits on their kids' accounts or even bar them from making any added purchases. At least having a daily limit for children makes sense because kids may not realize how quickly arcade, candy store and ice cream charges add up.
On Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) and Royal Caribbean, as well as most other cruise lines, you can track your on-board spending in the app. Doing that is a good idea because mistakes happen and it's much easier to get those errors fixed while you're on board than it is after your trip ends.
Some passengers either don't have credit cards or don't want to share their cards with the cruise line. If you are one of them, you can put cash in your account at Guest Services. You can also use cash to pay down your bill before your credit card gets charged.
On a Carnival ship you can also use the cruise line's gift cards in lieu of cash to pay down your account or to cover future on-board spending. Or at least you are supposed to be able to.
Image source: Carnival Cruise Line.
Carnival fixes an onboard payment problem
Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald spends much of his week answering questions on his Facebook page.
Many of the problems he solves are specific to the persons asking the questions, but when enough people experience the same problem, he realizes that the issue may extend to multiple ships or even the entire fleet.
And when that happens, he can bring the problem to the attention of company leadership, whom he collectively refers to as "The Beards."
"I had been hearing from many of you that you had not been able to use your Carnival Gift Cards at the kiosks which I know had been a convenient way to add them to your Sail and Sign account. I expressed these comments to my colleagues who have confirmed that you can now do so on all the ships," he said on his Facebook page.
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Having Heald as a conduit to leadership benefits both the cruise line and its passengers. The brand ambassador works to keep both constituencies happy.
"I thank them for listening and please do let me know if any of you have any concerns with this in the future," he added.
Heald shares details on his FFS cruise
In addition to answering questions on his Facebook page, Heald also regularly hosts what the cruise line calls its "FFS," or "For Fun's Sake," cruise. There, Heald hosts multiple events for a subset of people on the ship who specifically book the FFS cruise.
Heald recently disclosed when and on what ship his next cruise would be.
"Hello, again and I am proud to announce the details of our cruise for FFS #7 in 2025. Before I do I have to explain a few things. I wanted to do a cruise from Texas or New Orleans or the West Coast. However, with bookings so strong on so many cruises, the problem was that I could not find a cruise with so many open cabins to allow a large amount (700 people) to book," he wrote.
The brand ambassador said that Carnival's revenue-management group gave him two choices for the FFS cruise.
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"One was a cruise to Alaska in April and the other, well, was this one and as much as I would have loved Alaska, I know that it would have meant many would not want to join me. And so, here we go: Ship, sail date and itinerary: 6-day cruise on the Carnival Magic, departing Miami, Florida on February 16, 2025," he added.
