Voyage of the Vikings Redux – Sea Day

 Cruise Day 17

Monday, August 7, 2023

Val and I both slept well last night and enjoyed sleeping in.  We didn’t want to sleep in too long though, as we have another early day tomorrow, so we want to get a good night’s sleep tonight.

There were no lectures that interested us this morning, so after breakfast in the Neptune Lounge, we relaxed until lunchtime.  I did take the time to update the blog, but mostly we just read and relaxed.

The casino is open on sea days, so Val decided to go down after lunch and try her luck.  She has been winning lately and had some extra money, but since I have not been winning, I opted to go back to the room.  I was sitting there reading in our room when I got a WhatsApp text from Val asking me to grab her ID and bring it to the casino.  That can only mean one thing; she has hit a jackpot larger than $1,200, so I hurried on down with her driver’s license to see what has happened.

When I got there, I found her sitting at a slot machine with several attendants hovering around.  I looked at the cash balance line and saw $871.60 and wondered why she needed an ID for that, but I looked again and saw that it was actually $8,716, holy s***!!!  Val was in a bit of a daze as she filled out the paperwork, but finally got it done and went to the cashier where they counted out the money in hundred-dollar bills.

She got 9 Quick Hit symbols which is the best you can get.  The Quick Hit wins are a progressive so it must have been up to almost $4,400 when she won.  Another remarkable thing was that she was in a bonus game that payed double when she won so she got twice the amount of the progressive.  Unfortunately, Val was so shocked she didn't even think of taking a picture. When you win a progressive jackpot the amount of the jackpot reverts back to it's starting minimum (that's why it shows $3,107.64 in the photo) and goes up slowly until someone wins and it starts all over again. 

Val getting paid.

We started back to the room, but Val decided to stay behind and spend a little of her winnings.  I returned to the room and went back to reading until a short time later when she returned and showed me a picture on her phone – she had incredibly just won another $1,120 on another machine!  She had won almost $10,000 in one afternoon; it was her VERY lucky day!  Cruise ships are notorious for having low odds of winning on their slot machines, so that made these wins even more incredible.  Congratulations to Val, I was very happy for her, but I must admit, I also was a little envious.  We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at each other and just shaking our heads, still finding it a little hard to believe what had just happened.

Val's second big winner within minutes of being paid for her first one!

Our travel agent Ingrid owns the travel agency Gulliver’s Travels in San Luis Obispo.  Gulliver’s Travels is part of a network of 10,000 independent travel agents who use a company called Signature Travel to handle their bookings.  This gives smaller travel agencies some of the same clout that larger companies have in getting discounts and onboard benefits for their clients.  For certain cruises, Signature Travels has hosts onboard that organize onboard events for their clients’ customers and this cruise is one of them, a first for us.

We missed Signature Travel's first meet and greet, but they had another event late this afternoon and we attended that one.  Each attendee got a scratcher that if marked with “Winner”, they got a gift and I was one of the winners and won a pair of nice passport covers .  Compared to Val’s win today, mine was very modest, but it felt good to at least win something.  There were 62 of us on board whose travel agents use Signature Travel, so we got to talk to a few, while enjoying our favorite non-alcoholic drink onboard, an “Unleaded Margarita”.  We spent most of the time talking to Val (another Val) and Jim who were from Florida.  We had a great time and enjoyed getting together and will definitely attend the next one.

After the gathering broke up, we returned to the room and spent the rest of the evening relaxing until it was time to get ready for dinner.  It is another formal night tonight, so we’ll have to take a little extra time getting ready.  We were sailing in the North Sea and began to see big oil platforms in the distance.  Back in my working days I made my only previous trip to Scotland to test some equipment for use on those platforms.

We weren't really this close, Val used her long telephoto to get a closeup picture.

This was taken a little later and you can see the platforms lined up in the distance.

Dinner tonight was a little sad for us, we are losing our dining stewards, Supri and Al.  Al is going to be working in other dining area around the ship and Supri is going home after working for eight straight months.  We are sad to lose them, but we are very happy for Supri to be going home.  He has been very excited the last few days as his departure time drew nearer and nearer.  He will have a few months to spend with his family until his next contract starts.

Supri on the left and Al on the right.  We really enjoyed having them as our dining stewards and they were very, very good at their jobs.

After dinner, we were off to the casino, but after Val’s big win, it was very anticlimactic as we quickly lost our money and returned to our room.  We went right to bed as tomorrow we will be in Rotterdam and have an early excursion.