Thought you might like to here about the gambling boat cruise I took last week out of Port Canaveral Florida. My first and last experience with this kind of cruise. I understand there are two operations at this port. I went on the bigger, better known one. All blackjack games used csm's (yukk!). At my table the machine broke down twice with delays of nearly and hour. But, even so, the PC would not let the dealer shuffle and twice I had good hands which were not played out because of the equipment breakdown (very frustrating). Since you are 3 miles out in the ocean you can't leave. After searching 7 decks of the ship I did find at the very bottom of the ship some video poker machines with playable payoff tables. All the others were sucker machines. The crew is helpful and polite and on a wednesday night the boat was busy but enjoyable. They offer a free "deli" buffet, and free drinks while gambling. The waitresses are only wearing pantyhose and blouses and were attractive and friendly. The bj rules are s17, das, doa, 3:2 bj however anytime the dealer picks up a card it goes back into the csm. One interesting twist - the dealer has to peak at his hole card and doesn't check when a 10 is showing until after the hand. I asked what happens if a player doubles or splits and the dealer is found to have a bj after the hand is played. He replied that 1/2 of the bet would be returned. This didn't happen at my table while I was playing, so You may want to confirm this in the unlikely event you should choose to play bj there. At the end of the cruise, we were told we would be allowed to play three more hands and then we would be finished. This created a tournament atmosphere where some players were betting small to maintain their winnings and others were betting large to try to salvage the night. I pushed on my last bet and left a 35$ loser. I considered this a victory with the csm's in use which I would never otherwise play except for being trapped for 5 hours with no real options. There were plenty of game tables with varying limits down to $5. It was educational and I liked the mandatory limit on time played via the international water requirement. The boat was clean, attractive, the food was good and drinks were fine, live entertainment in the bars - but I can only go back if they toss the csm's. I believe 6 decks were in the csm but I never saw more than about 1/2 deck on the table at any time. Obviously, penetration is a non-issue. It was nice to relax and not keep count - but this meant basically flat betting with minimum bets. Some people had players cards - I didn't bother after seeing the csm's as I knew I would't be back. I have no idea what the card will do for you. If anyone hears that the csm's are gone I would be interested in going again. Does anyone know if the cruises elsewhere in Florida are the same?
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