Day 3 – Costa Maya

While most passengers spent the day exploring Costa Maya, Mexico, we decided to make the most of the quiet ship and enjoy a relaxing day onboard. With the casino open until noon, a few casual meals, and a great dinner at Jamie’s Italian, it turned into a surprisingly balanced sea-meets-port day.

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Morning: Breakfast at the Windjammer

We headed to the Windjammer buffet for breakfast, hoping for a repeat of yesterday’s ham and toast combo—but no luck. They didn’t have ham this morning, and nothing on the buffet really stood out. I ended up with toast and a muffin, which definitely wasn’t enough protein, but it was a light and easy start to the day.

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Late Morning: Casino Play Before Docking

With the Casino Royale open until the ship docked in Costa Maya around noon, we took advantage of the morning hours to play. We started around 10 a.m. and played until closing. It was a nice quiet stretch, with fewer players and no waiting for favorite machines.

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🎰 Casino Play Strategy Insight

We’re continuing our penny slot strategy—playing in the $1–$2 per spin range to stretch our bankroll and maximize point accumulation. It’s not about big wins; it’s about steady play and earning points toward Prime renewal. Slots also make tracking progress easy, since you can see exactly how many points you’ve earned—unlike table games where ratings can be hit or miss.

Day 3 play was the best so far – and pretty much a master class on luck – which all slot machine play is. Rob had the most efficient play so far at .60 pts per dollar for an A+ grade. pretty successful. I also decided to start playing and slowly working toward my own Prime status, since it looked like we were going to hit his prime with plenty of money left in the budget.

Check out our Progress Toward Prime and today’s report card. We made significant progress toward our goal and had a great points to dollar ratio. We’re already 71% there in just 3 days. While we haven’t hit it big, our overall cost for renewing prime is pretty good and so far we’ve lost pre-paid toward our next cruise about $680.

Benefits of Both Hitting Prime

You might wonder why we’d both try and achieve Prime status. Besides allowing us to receive twice the amount of free offers, by both of us achieving Prime status, we are able to combine the perks in certain circumstances.

For example, if we obtain a Free Cruise Certificate we can combine those offers for a category upgrade. For example, if we both earn enough points for an interior room, we can combine those certificates for a balcony room.

Sometimes they will let you combine other cruise offers, assuming we both get the same offer. But this is definitely a YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) and is not guaranteed. We’ve not tried this yet, so I’ll report back once we do.

But there are two main perks that interest me the most. First, if we get the same offer, we can actually each redeem our offers for our own, connecting cabins and have twice as much space. This is great if one partner gets up earlier than the other (or snores – lol). And secondly, we can invite friends to come along. I’m hoping to be able to offer our daughter and son-in-law to come along on some trips. But I have a long way to go to get to Prime.

Today, I started with playing through my $6 of free play and put in $220, earning just 102 points at the end of the session.

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Lunch: Pizza & a Midday Nap

Once the casino closed, we grabbed a quick bite at Sorrento’s Pizza. It was just okay—a quick option, but nothing memorable. After lunch, we took another nap (hey – gambling is hard work) and people watched from our balcony before getting ready for the evening.

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Afternoon: Crown Lounge & Diamond Plus Pin

Before dinner, we stopped by the Crown Lounge for some pre-dinner snacks and a quiet drink. I also finally received my Diamond Plus pin—Rob’s had been delivered to our stateroom earlier in the cruise, but for some reason, mine hadn’t shown up. The concierge checked and pulled out her secrete stash of pins. Small wins!

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Dinner: Jamie’s Italian

Dinner tonight was at Jamie’s Italian, and it was definitely a step up from our disappointing experience at 150 Central Park the night before.

• Service: The service was slow again—our dinner course took nearly 30 minutes to arrive—but the staff was friendly and attentive once things got moving.
• Food: Much better overall. I had the chicken parmesan, which was delicious, and finished with a scoop of gelato for dessert. Simple and satisfying. Rob had the lasagna and salmon.

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Evening: Low-key

We skipped the Casino and instead walked around the ship for a bit, enjoyed the evening weather on our balcony and then hit the sack. Tomorrow we head to Roatan, Honduras.

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