When it came time to plan out vacation for this year I had what I thought would be a wonderful idea. My wife and I are both avid poker enthusiasts and I heard about something new the WPT was doing. The WPT was offering poker cruises and that sounded like a great vacation to me. Back in April we booked tickets through WPT cruises to go on a 7 day poker Cruise of New England and Canada from Sept. 14 thru Sept. 21.

The 4 page flyer I received from WPT Cruises sounded fantastic. The second page of the flyer listed the benefits of a WPT Cruise. I would scan the flyer and include actual images but I do not want to violate copyrights. The following are the bullet points...

- Complimentary welcome-aboard & farewell cocktail parties

- A professionally staffed poker room

- A full spread of live games and limits

- A cash prize buy-in Hold 'em tournament

- The eat "where and when you want" dining experience of NCL's Freestyle Cruising

AND (in big letter)

- Compete in a no-limit Texas Hold 'em tournament to win a $10,000 seat into a WPT main event tournament.

Well the reason I am taking the time to write this is because after experiencing the cruise I am compelled to let others know that the majority of those statements are NOT true. I had a welcome aboard cocktail party but the farewell party was two trays of hourdovers (SP?), a hot plate of mini pizza bagels and a hot plate of cut up franks in blankets on the side of the poker room and an hour of free drinks. The professionally staffed poker room turned out to be retiree's and people who have never dealt in a casino before. The full spread of live games turned out to be nothing but Hold em' and one game of Omaha all week. The full spread of limits turned out to be nothing but the lowest of stakes. The $10,000 seat tournament turned out to be a tournament for a seat to the celebrity invitational and not a $10,000 main event.

Pretty much everything about this cruise was misrepresented and fell well short of even the most modest expectations of the above claims. I was actually so displeased with the experience that I took notes on my laptop and the end of each day so I would be able to accurately relate the experience to others after the fact. There were other things that bothered me and I will relate them in this thread but I must warn you this is going to be a long thread. If you have a WPT Cruise booked or are seriously considering booking one then I strongly suggest you take the time to read this entire tome. If you are just curious, then read the next 3 paragraphs and end it there.

Before I go in to the day by day tale of the cruise let me just briefly touch on some other things I found disappointing. My wife and I are both 38 years old. We are not exactly 'old people' but by the same token we are not exactly 'young people'. Well on this cruise we were 'the kids' because with the exception of one woman who was 34, we were the youngest ones booked through WPT Cruises. The median participant age was somewhere around 50ish. Pat and Mel, you guys were delightful and we look forward to meeting up with you in AC some day but also hoped to meet some younger folks too, I'm sure you understand.

I also expected to be playing on high quality WPT tables with nice chips and the same rake I pay in every poker room I have ever been in to. What I found was worn out old tables with the rails being held together with black duct tape, chips that stuck together so much you would suspect they had magnets in them and a rake that does not cap till $5 instead of the usual $4. This was especially annoying considering the limits available were so low. an extra 25% on the rake at a $1/$2 table really adds up.

Then there was the tournament structure. Not even the profiteering casino's in Atlantic City use this kind of structure anymore. Pretty standard structure on the blind amount, 25/25 then 25/50 then 50/100 and 100/200, 300/600, 500/1000 and so on in the usual fashion. The round duration was also pretty standard for the daily tournaments in AC with rounds lasting 20 minutes. Unfortunately things went way south with the starting chip stacks. 2000 starting chips is just not enough for this structure. Look at the Casino’s in AC that used to start with 2000 starting chips and look how many are now starting with 6,000 to 10,000 chips. This is not a poker game, it is a bingo game. By the end of the first hour of play 80% of the players are virtually forced in to push and pray mode due to lacking enough chips to properly play a hand. I expected more from the WPT.

The last disappointment worth mentioning is really on me and not the WPT I suppose. There was nothing in the literature or advertising from the WPT indicating there would be but I did kind of hope that with the WPT name on it there might be a professional on the ship that I could rub elbows with and maybe pick up some pointers from. No such luck. Just as well I guess because any professional poker player that found themselves in the middle of this mess would have surely gotten off the ship at the first port and gone directly to an airport. I almost did that myself in Boston but my wife helped me decide to stick it out.

SUNDAY, Sept. 14
Before the cruise we got the 'invite' for the welcome aboard cocktail party. It said WPT Cruises at the top and indicated to us to go to the Dazzle Lounge on deck 7. When we got on the ship and got to our cabin we found another invitation but this one said Classic Gaming Cruises Group at the top and indicated to go to the Spinnaker Lounge on deck 12. Not that big a deal I suppose as it was easy enough to figure out but struck me as unprofessional and confusing. In fact they even had a staff member go to the Dazzle Lounge on deck 7 just to make sure nobody was down there. Despite that the cocktail party was nice and enjoyable.

My wife and I played some of the $1/$2 NL that night. It was a generally uneventful night except for one minor incident. There was a hand that involved my wife and another woman at the table. My wife had this woman all in on the turn and dead to only two outs. Well she hit one of those outs and when she did she jumped up with such excitement it sent her chair back about five feet. She hooted and hollered and then broke into a victory dance that lasted long enough to feel uncomfortable. She made such a spectacle of herself that every single individual in the poker room was looking at her and not a single staff member, not even the dealer at the table, asker her to please calm down. I can understand the jump and even the holler but the victory dance was a little over the top and the dealer should have said something.


MONDAY, Sept 15
The cash prize tournament is today. The buy in is $120+$30 and once again the juice is just a little higher than usual. Because the short starting stacks in relation to the blinds it was a very agressive game and I busted out somewhere after the one hour mark.

I move to the cash game which is only one choice. There is only a game of $4/$8 fixed limit going on. It was a decent game with a full table but once they opened a $1/$2 NL table most of the players moved to that table. As a result some of the staff members sat into the $4/$8 game. I have no problem with that and even appreciate that they were willing to sit in and essentially be prop players.

But here is the thing, there was this one dealer playing in the game and I got involved in a hand with her and the excessive celebrator from the previous night. I flopped the second nuts with Q9 on a TJK board so when the dealer bet it I had to reraise and see where I am at. The celebrator calls and the dealer reraises. Now I know I should have folded here but I wanted to be sure and the bets are still small so I cap it. Both other players call and the turn comes Q to make an OESD on the board. The dealer bets it and I make a crying fold. The hand went on and the dealer did have the AQ but in the end the celebrator sucked out a flush. When the hand was over I whined about how 'every time i flop the second nuts someone else has the nuts'. Well the dealer comments that it was an "idiot play" for me to reraise the flop. Celebration woman on my left looks at me and comments that it is not very smart to call the customers idiots. I offered my agreement as I stood up and collected my chips from the table to cash out for the night.


TUESDAY, Sept. 16
There was finally a game other than Hold 'Em available. Enough players had expressed interest in playing Omaha that they opened a $4/$8 fixed limit Omaha Hi/Lo with a Kill. Now the dealing up till this point could be best described as marginal. There were 5 dealers and only one was a truly competent dealer. I don't exactly know why I did not realize that dealers that were just barely capable of dealing Hold 'Em were probably going to have a hard time with Omaha but I sat into the game none the less. What a debacle that turned into. The limits were so low that many hands were going to showdown with multiple players and it would take forever to read hands and divide pots.

Then there was a matter I would consider to be a very basic and essential skill for a dealer to possess. That is the skill of remembering what players are involved in a hand. One of the jobs of the dealer is to see to it that players act in turn. This was a concept that became completely lost in this game. The first time a player to my left ran me over and acted out of turn I said something. The second time a players on my left ran me over and acted out of turn I said something. Even on the third time that it happened I still said something. The fourth and fifth times it happened I did not say anything. I also did not fold my cards. On the fourth occasion I actually saw all the way from flop to river without calling bets just because the other players were over anxious. The fifth time I only went to the turn before mucking my cards. This is not something that would ever happen with skilled dealers at the table. It is just a testimonial to the lacking skills of some of the people employed as dealers on this cruise.


WEDENSDAY, Sept. 17
I did not play any poker today. I convinced myself that not folding those hands in a timely fashion was exploiting the situation and cheating so I had to beat myself up for a day. I tossed and turned in bed all night thinking about it and spent half the morning discussing it with my wife. I finally came to the conclusion that I was not calling any bets in either of those situations so it did not really matter and I was not cheating the pot at all. It essentially was just a timing of when I folded thing because the fold was inevitable in both situations.


THURSDAY, Sept. 18
This was a big day. The tournament for the seat was tonight. Now lets just back up for one second. On the first night they did say the tournament would be for a seat in the Celebrity Invitational. They also did say that this was a $25,000 value. I was psyched. See for some reason I was under the impression that the Celebrity Invitational paid $1,000,000 to the winner and all the players at the final table shared another million dollars as a prize pool. Boy was I deflated when I went online that day and discovered the Celebrity Invitational only pays $100,000 plus a free entry to the WPT final worth $25,000 to the winner and the rest of the final table shares another hundred grand. So with $225,000 in the prize pool divided by the 420 players that played in 2007 that comes to about $536 per player. WTF!!! Where is my $10,000 buy in? How is this a $25,000 value?

These are the exact questions I plan to ask before registering for this thing. While I am at it I plan to ask why the buy in is once again $150 when my brochure said the buy ins would be $150 and $125. I already paid $150 on Monday so this one is supposed to be $125.

So I head to the poker room about 20 minutes before the game is supposed to start. I approach Gene. If you visit the website he is the gentleman in every single photo. I explain I am confused about the prize and need some clarification. I tell him I do not find this to be anywhere near what the advertising says. I was expecting to play for a seat in a game that has multi millions in the prize pool and pays dozens of places deep, the celebrity invitational only calculates to a $500 seat if it even had a value since it is a freeroll. Gene then told me that the WPT does not make enough money from the cruises to award a $10,000 seat on every cruise so they award 4 Celebrity Invitational seats a year instead. He then told me if I wanted my money back he would refund it and I told him I had not yet registered.

I was in such disbelief that he just blatantly told me the main selling point of this cruise is a lie 4 times a year (with only 6 cruises a year on the schedule) genuinely caught me off guard and I did not even know how to respond to that without turning things VERY uncivil. Since he brought up the buy in, this would instead be a good time to segway into my question regarding the buy in amount.

So I ask him, why does the flyer say the buy ins are $150 and $125 if they are actually $150 and $150. Gene then explains to me that the cruises usually consist of three tournaments where two of them are for cash prizes and those are the buy in amounts for the cash prize games. However this paticular cruise does not have two cash prize tournaments. This was impressive. Not only did they bait and switch the prize but they also short changed me on the itinerary that they "usually" have and I would never have even known if I didn't think they were overcharging the buy in.

I was truly pretty disgusted by this point. My wife and I are experienced cruisers and we have traveled on this ship before. The service on the ship is nothing short of horrible in comparison to other cruise lines. The only reason we paid $3000 to come on this ship was for a top notch WPT experience and a chance to win a seat in a tournament that could change our lives. Instead the realization that I paid $3000 to come on board the worst cruise ship I have ever been on only to be stuck in the VFW hall game from hell and have a dream shattered was setting in.

I managed to muster one last question before losing Gene's attention. I asked how is this a $25,000 value as stated the first night of the cruise. He then explained to me the only way to buy into this tournament is to buy a seat in the WPT finals for $25,000 and entry into the Celebrity Invitational is included. I point out that a seat in BOTH tournaments would be a $25,000 value and all they were giving away was a freeroll. That’s not a $25,000 value unless they include a seat in the WPT finals. Is that the case? Gene replied with a simple "no" and I walked out of the poker room.

I probably should have called it a night at that point but after about an hour I cooled down enough to realize this is the only vacation I will have this year and I really need to do my best to make the most of it. I returned to the poker room to find one of the players, that I had been playing against all week, sitting in the dealers chair handing out the cards for the $4/$8 fixed limit game. The phrase 'professionally staffed poker room' briefly flashed through my mind. The table was full and the manager of the poker room was playing in the game. She offered me her seat but I declined and put my name on the wait list for a game of $1/$2 NL. By this point in the cruise I was stuck for about $600 or $700 from some pretty bad runs. I would have liked to play something slightly larger where I stood a better chance of making money back but $1/$2 was the only NL they had.

I came back to the room another hour later and got my NL seat. I played for an hour or two and had three flopped sets cracked but I only got away from one of them so I ended up down another $300. Maybe it was a good thing they didn't have a higher stake game going.


FRIDAY, Sept. 19
I woke up today wanting to get off the ship and just go home. I was running unbelievably bad and everything I came on the ship expecting turned out to be a sham. I was again reminded that this is the only vacation I will have this year and if I cut it short I will almost certainly regret it more than I could possibly regret finishing out the last few days. Somehow the day in Boston, lunch at the Bull and Finch and dinner at the best place on the ship to eat managed to revive my spirit and once again I headed back to the poker room that night.

It was an uneventful night but I played some with Jerry. He is the guy that was dealing the $4/$8 game the previous night. I got an explanation at the table. He told me that he is interested in coming back as a dealer for future cruises and that was to demonstrate his ability. Funny thing is for the short while I watched, Jerry seemed better than 4 out of 5 of the house dealers.


SATURDAY, Sept. 20
The final night for the poker room and the good bye cocktail party. Not wanting to deprive players of the few short remaining hours of poker left the good bye cocktail party turned out to be a table of hourderves(SP?) and an hour of open bar in the poker room.


Sunday I got off the ship as early as possible and got home before noon. I spent some time on Sunday reflecting on the cruise and the experiences I had. I wanted to be sure that my judgment had not been effected by losing money all week and I do not believe it was. Monday morning I sent an email to the contact my wife dealt with prior to the cruise and I expressed my dissatisfaction with the WPT cruise experience. I invited him to please contact me if he has any ideas or suggestions how to make this story have a happy ending. As I finish writing this it is now 13 hours after that email was sent and I have received no reply at all.


I will post updates if there are any to post,
dumwaldo

Thanks for posting this. I was toying with doing one of these cruises.

Sorry you had a bad trip waldo.
Do you have any pics of the ship?
How much did you spend and where did it sail out of /to ? Did it stop anywhere or were you forced to float out at sea everyday?

Thanks

wow just wow what a total **** up

What a terrible trip Waldo.

I never wanted to be stuck on a cruise ship playing poker. There are times when I am very dissatisfied with a poker room and just leave. To think that I might be stuck in a poker room for a week with no way out is a nightmare to me. You have just confirmed all my fears. Thank you!

OP: post a pic of the brochure or a link to the cruise

Not to speak for the OP but this looks like his cruise:

http://www.classicgamingcruises.com/08_newyork.htm

Thanks for the TR OP!

I'll definitely reconsider taking a poker-branded cruise trip I was hoping to take in the near future. LOL@ passenger dealing cards w/ floor mgr playing.

I took a cruise to the Bahamas with NCL this past April. I believe the ship was called the Gem and one of the newer ones in their fleet. The rake at the only poker table aboard of 1/2 NL was 10% up to $25. Max buy-in was $200 or 50% of biggest chip stack. This was simply outrageous yet I still played everyday as the players were bad enough to make it worth my while. On several nights, a few regulars and I, displeased with the high juice, created our own 5/5 NL self-dealt game in the ship's card/board-game room. Everyone in this game just seemingly wanted to have a good time and had their families along. I was with my sister and my parents. At one point, I jokingly offered to deal cards for 5% up to $10.

Too bad you didn't enjoy your trip. I don't blame you one bit for being pissed.

i just did an NCL cruise this summer from nyc, and in a word, it "sucked"

freestyle is BS, only 3 poker tournaments with 30% fee

no poker tables, played on BJ tables

do not waste your time or $

sorry for you OP

I have been on two cruises with this company (full disclosure I am NOT an employee of the company - I do NOT speak for them - but I did deal on both cruises).

All I can say is that your experience on this cruise very different from my experience. On both cruises I was on, the dealing staff included people who worked as professional dealers and I'm not aware of any complaints being made about the staff.

I spoke with many of the other guests and everyone I spoke with on these cruises indicated they were having a good time and seemed very satisfied. I sensed some people may have been disappointed that a game or limit they wanted wasn't getting off the ground or going as often as they wished but they also seemed to understand that is a function of the preferences of other players and that the staff was willing to spread any game or limit that the players wanted.

Both cruises I was on gave out $10,000 seats (in fact the first one they gave out two - 1 by drawing and 1 by tournament) and the tournaments for the seats had huge overlays.

Obviously you were not satisfied with your experience, I certainly hope that others find it more to their liking because it really sucks to not have a good time on your vacation.

barry...

I share your sentiments. Cruising, in general, is just not for me. Entertainment was, in a word, cheesy.
OP pretty much broke down the tourney structures, of which I did not play in.
At least on my trip there was a poker table.

Your cruise was not a poker cruise - your complaint is with the shipboard casino.


And I like the freestyle dining, but that's a matter of personal preference.

*

I really do feel bad that you didn't enjoy your cruise but 13 hours doesn't seem too much time for an answer.

About poker cruises: I still have to hear 1 person who has something good to say about them. Even normal cruises that have poker suck (rake is high, no game selection, dealers are terrible, floor is non-existent, etc).

For now I'd stick to non-moving cardrooms (this would involve avoiding cardrooms located on buses and planes if someone ever comes up with that genius idea)

thanks for the link chief

one look at the photos on that page and its oblivious that <10% of the people on that cruise aren't eligible for Social Security. Nothing but old people who like to hold playing cards and watch money go down the drop slot. It looks like you don't so much need dealers on that ship as convalescent care givers.

In August, I went on a Cardplayer cruise, and it was not anything like what was posted here. Lots of tables, professionally dealt by Vegas dealers on vacation. They would start any game that people wanted to get going including HORSE. I did post a review which here somewheres (search by my name starting August 8). Rake was $4. Largest limit tables was 15-30. My issue was that it wasn't possible to get any tables going larger than 4-8 except for the 15-30 which was full of extremely LAGGY players which made for very high variance play. This was a Alaska cruise and they had 12 tables. From talking to Linda Johnson, who owns Cardplayer cruise, their biggest cruise is their Mexico cruise where they have many more players and tables.

The spelling you are looking for is "hors d'oeuvres."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hors_d'%C5%93uvre

Thanks for the report. Confirms the picture I have in my head of these things, from everything I've heard about gambling on the open ocean.

Though I could see myself getting sucked in by a slick brochure and the WPT marquee, so I'm glad this wasn't me.

I think the Battle for the Season Pass III is a better poker vacation deal. I went to the one last year in the Bahamas and had a blast.

sorry op, that sounds like a bunch of bs

BARRY181, I agree 100% on the freestyle cruising. I have cruised with Norweigen before and do not like the style of cruise. The ONLY reason I went back on that ship was because I thought the poker experience would be top calibre since it had the WPT name attached to it.

The cruise was the one tycho_bray posted a link to.

sapol, do you think two business days is enough time because they still have not replied to me.

psandman, you were on the two cruises in 2007. One went to alaska and one went to mexico. I know this because of the three WPT cruises this year none have given out a $10,000 seat. Glad you enjoyed the generosity when WPT Cruises first started. I would have liked to enjoy that same generosity since it IS what they advertise.

eazyNY, I do not have many pictures from the week but I did snap this picture in the ships main lobby...


Spota, I decided this is absolutely relevant information pertaining to the discussion so here are some scans...

The 4 page flyer..





Another flyer


Invitation confusion



Tournamet structures



p4594spa, this post should ABSOLUTELY NOT be used as a reflection on Card Player Magazine cruises. They are a different company and function completely differently. In fact one of the other players on the ship even said to me ;if poker is your primary focus for the vacation you should have gone on a Card Player Cruise.

Conan776, thank you, I finally figured it out when I noticed it printed on one of the invitations.

No I was on one cruise in 2006 and one in 2007.

It depends on what type of answer they'll give you. I'm expecting a big answer from mid-high management and that takes time (i'd give then a week). If they take a week and they send you "I'm sorry for the problems caused, here's a voucher for a pizza" then I'd get mad (and consider some sort of Consumer Defense or FTC complaint which if I were you I'd start planning)

QFT. There are a lot of "I guess all poker cruises suck" posts in this thread. CardPlayer Cruises (Linda Johnson and Jan Fisher) run a top-notch outfit. I've never heard nor read a bad word about a CardPlayer Cruise.

(I don't work for them, but I did cruise with them once, and obviously, would recommend them to one and all.)

What a shame you had such a bad experience. Clearly you didn't go on a Card Player Cruises cruise. We have had nothing but good experiences with the best dealers and the best accommodations. We've made wonderful friends and had superb treatment. Hostesses Jan and Linda are awesome, are on every cruise and will bend over backwards to help you with anything you need. In addition they are both experienced poker professionals and attract only the best people and clientele It's like one big party and everyone is welcome regardless of youth or age. It is always a good deal and no, they do not give away a $10,000 entry or two because they are not going to increase the rates to pay for those. They will spread whatever there are enough players to play and everyone has a good time. What a shame, again. Your experience soured you on the poker cruise genre and your posting dissuaded so many others from the idea of a great cruise and awesome experience with some of the best people on the planet. you owe it to yourself to try again. This time with the right poker cruise company!
s-a