Again, Mazel Tov to Barry H., on the birth of his 1st Grand Daughter!!

I say this because the cruise I was on, was in celebration of my 1st Grand Daughter's 13th Birthday as an early Bat Mitzvah gift to her.

Anyway, we departed Long Beach, CA on Sunday aboard the Carnival Splendor. Indications are the Splendor is the only ship in it's Class (Splendor Class) in the Carnival Fleet, having originally being ordered for Carnival's Costa Cruise Lines, but reassigned to Carnival when the economy changed several years back and Carnival could make better use of the ship than Costa. Hmmm, perhaps it will now go to Costa now that Costa is short a ship! And, Carnival may be re-looking their presence in the Mexican Riviera market!

Overall, the cruise was uneventfull for us, however one of the shore excursions was held-up by masked gunmen and robbed of all personal property while we were at Puerto Vallarta. 11 people lost belongings (none were hurt) and I did not even know about it until after returning to Port in Long Beach! From what I have heard, Princess Cruise Lines (part of Carnival) was considering adding Puerto Valarta to it's ports-o-call (having stopped going there previusoly) in March, but may now reconsider.
Last year the crusie lines stopped going to Mazatlan and for Carnival they just doubled stopped Caba San Lucas, rather than take a day out of the cruise. Perhaps now they will triple stop Cabo and eliminate Puerto Vallarta!

But now.... chipping!

The Splendor's on-board casino is named The Royal Flush. It is very nice, offerring many slot machines and table games of roulette (generic chips), craps, 3-card poker, let it ride, caribbean stud poker, blackjack, face up blackjack and a couple other blackjack-based games. They have a 25 cent pusher machine, a Break the Vault arcade machine and a Poker Pro electronic hold'em table ($1 - $2 No Limit, $6 max rake!).

The ship (and casino) have been in operation since 2008 (I believe) and chips are pretty much worn by now.
On a lark, I asked at the cage if they had any newer, perhaps unused chips hidden away in the vault and they said that they would check, but the person with access was gone for the day. I left my name and room number, but was not contacted. The following day I stopped by and ask if the person that took my name the day before was there, and was told that he had just gone off shift.

Needless to say, I was surprised when the cashier asked me if my name was Jim? I said yes and she produced a rack with some chips, saying I pulled these out for you. 20 $1 chips, 2 snappers and 1 $5, all new and uncirculated!!!

Wowsers! Lucky me!! This allows me to upgrade my existing set of SU to NEW, uncirculated versions!

And I now have a few $1 as traders or, if anyone is interested, I will sell a few $1 chips at $3.45 (meaning $3 and a 45 cent postage stamp via snailmail or $3.86 by PayPal, in the US).

Thanks for looking! More in a little while. Still trying to recover from peace and solitude of any vacation!

Jim