Would you like to get two treats for the price of one? Then hop on one of the bingo cruises available out there. You can have your fill of high-stakes bingo while basking in the luxury of a cruise ship. This beats dressing up and driving to local bingo hall any day of the week.

What’s on a Bingo Cruise?

Obviously, the biggest draw is the bingo competitions happening on the ship’s halls. Top prizes can increase to five or even six digits for the succeeding games, which will fill most of the itinerary. Of course, you’d be wasting the chance of experiencing the lifestyle in a cruise ship if you only stayed in the halls. Bingo players in the cruise will also enjoy delicious cuisine, entertainment choices, and the different ports that you can visit. Bingo cruise offerings have steadily increased in recent years, so you’ll be able to find one that will fit your budget and requirements.

Championship Bingo Cruise

Carnival cruises have been offering one of the most complete packages for bingo players. Their new cruise ship Splendor is also the site of the World Championship Bingo Tournament and Gaming Cruise. As its name suggests, it is over a week of bingo games aboard a ship that takes you around the Mexican paradise. The large Spectacular lounge will host the games, and the sessions are held at sea. This basically means you still have time to visit all the ports and try all the amenities of the ship. On the tournament itself, players get a 9on sheet (3 columns and 3 rows of bingo cards) per session. A prize worth $80,000 is up for grabs in the major tournament, while $30,000 will also be played for in smaller sessions across the entire cruise. That is more than a hundred thousand dollars for the players. The grand champion is awarded to the player with the largest total winnings and is also given two free tickets to the next championship bingo cruise.

Exploring the Mexican Riviera

The bingo cruise aboard the Splendor will run for more than a week starting in Los Angeles and will sail toward the Mexican coastline. You will get two days of bingo games, and then the first port will be Puerto Vallarta. The other stopovers are Mazatlan and the popular Cabo San Lucas. Every port offers varied activities that you can participate in. These include horseback riding, shopping, ATV driving.

If a particular port is not your package, you can always avail of the ship’s features. The things you do inside the ship will be more than enough to get what you have paid for. For those who can’t get enough of water, there is a built-in water slide near the pool and a Thalassotherapy area, which gives you a massage using water currents. The Splendor also has a steakhouse and a restaurant for fine dining. There is also a big lounge for you to relax while sipping a drink or having a chat with friends–all to get your mind off things and focus on the next bingo games.

A law can affect an enterprise—it’s always a given. Business owners and operators would always hope for fewer restrictions. That’s why when smoking ban was implemented in Scotland and England, a lot of bingo operators start to question the survival of the bingo halls.

What the Smoking Ban Means

Most of the bingo players are actually smokers. Thus, a lot of the social halls are spacious and well ventilated. This is to ensure that those non-smokers would not get to inhale cigarette or tobacco smoke. On the other hand, some bingo halls have separate corners for the smokers, so they don’t end up jeopardizing the health of those who don’t.

Smoking for these people has a lot of benefits. For one, it always eases up tension. Even if bingo games are simple, they can be as exciting as the usual table or card games you’re used to. After all, the game is based on luck, and no one would have inkling on who’s going to win unless someone can really come up with the required pattern.

Second, it is a form of leisure. With bingo, the only things you have to do are to listen and to mark. You even don’t have a lot of time to talk with the others; otherwise, your inattentiveness may cause your loss. Thus, rather than be alone with your thoughts, you’d rather smoke.

Third, smoking gives you the necessary heat during winter months. Bingo halls do have heaters; however, not everyone can benefit from them.

When smoking was banned, these benefits were stripped off, and somehow, this could have pushed some of the social hall players to go online. Nevertheless, you can’t put all the blame on the smoking ban for the gradual decline of bingo halls over online bingo. There are too many reasons why.

It’s All about Convenience

Though those who are playing online could smoke all they want since their home is not really a public place, it’s not really the smoking ban that pushes them to do so. In case you haven’t noticed it yet, if man is passionate about something, no law would be too challenging that would eventually force him or her to forego with it. Simply put, if one is really dedicated to playing bingo games in social halls, the law doesn’t really have to matter that much. He or she can always smoke at home.

It’s really about convenience. With online bingo games, they don’t need to travel from the social hall and back just to get a dose of entertainment. What’s more, since the Internet is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, they can play bingo whenever and wherever they want to.

They would also feel a lot safer simply because they are in their own abode. They don’t have to carry out huge amounts of money, which they need to buy the cards. No one is going to mug them just in case they win.

These are the comforts that, sad to say, bingo halls have failed to give to their players until now.

Do you know that there are actually different types of bingo games? One of these is called 90 ball bingo, which is usually played in the United Kingdom and in other commonwealth nations.

How Is It Played?

90 ball bingo has still the same goal as the more popular 75 ball bingo: you need to have all the numbers called for you to win the game. There are also patterns that need to be followed. However, when it comes to the specifics, both of these bingo games are completely different.

For starters, you will be given strips of tickets, each set containing 6 of them, rather than bingo cards. In the strips, there would be 9 rows and 5 columns. In the 9 rows, only 5 of them will have numbers while the rest would be blank spaces. Moreover, the numbers that are found in the strips would range from 1 to 90.

The Good Thing about 90 Ball Bingo

There are some things that make 90 ball bingo a lot better than 75 ball bingo. You can use the strips all throughout the session, and each session can be composed of three rounds of bingo games. This is unlike 75 ball bingo, where your card will no longer be useful once a game with a certain pattern is already over.

You will also have more chances of winning when you’re playing 90 ball bingo. This is because each game will have different stages, each with its own pattern to follow. In the first stage, you need to come up with a single horizontal line. The second pattern would be two horizontal lines, and the last one would be blackout, which means one of the strips should have all of the numbers marked. As the stages go on, the prizes will also increase. Thus, you won’t only have 3 chances of winning, but you can actually rake in more money for yourself. What’s more, you can win all three of them, as long as you can come up with the pattern required.

Now, because you have 6 tickets to mind, it can be quite difficult for you to keep track of all the numbers. However, if you’re playing online, you can turn on the auto daub, which means that the computer will be the one to mark the numbers for you while you do other stuff such as playing some chat games.

The Downsides

Because 90 ball bingo is not as well-known as the 75 ball bingo, only a number of players know how to play the game by heart. One needs to acquaint himself or herself to the game for a while. If you’re planning to play online bingo, you still have to check the bingo website, as there are some of them that don’t have 90 ball bingo.

You would also notice that this doesn’t get finished immediately. After all, there are 3 different games that you have to play. Leaving early will forfeit your chances of winning, and you’re not maximizing your tickets.