Effective Nov 30th, the Ocean Casino inactivity requirement for re-matching is now 2 years.
Reader and MilesTalk Facebook group member Java M. just posted this to the group:
With the Status Match Merry Go Round® taking a huge hit last week with Caesars and Wyndham announcing that the Business Earner credit card would no longer qualify for matched status, this is another pretty huge blow as for most people, the entire point of the Atlantic City version of the Merry Go Round is the free MSC Cruise and, for many, the two free nights at Wynn.
I don’t know offhand how much gambling is needed for 250 Tier credits but if anyone familiar could post in the comments or in the group, it would be greatly appreciated to assess if this is an inconvenience to weed out those that won’t gamble AT ALL or if this will really crush most Merry Go Rounders.
In the meantime, it would seem that you’d want to hurry up and do the match right now if you can do so.
Once you match, you’d be able to book your Wynn nights and cruise within a couple of days. Note this post for how to speed up the MSC cruise for immediate booking.
I do want to note that given you get the 2nd Tier at 3,000 Tier Credits (Signature) and Prime at 20,000 Tier Credits, my hunch (though I’m not eligible for a rematch for quite a while myself), is that if you aren’t afraid to lose some money to get the travel perks, 250 tier credits is not crazy.
A Few Notes:
The MSC Cruise: People are having luck booking 2025 cruises now. Nobody is / has been ever quite sure the process for when you could book your 2nd cruise. But with the changes Dec 1, we don’t know if the 250 credits will apply retroactively in terms of new travel bookings or just to newly matched members. Why not call now and see if you have a cruise in mind?
The 250 Tier Credit Requirement: Since yesterday, we’ve had many people comment in the Facebook group on how much gambling this is.
Let’s put it this way: if you are afraid of putting $20 in a slot machine, this will lock you out. That is their clear intention – to get rid of people giving them zero play and costing them money on benefits
If you are the type that doesn’t mind spending a few hours gambling at a relatively modest level (say 3-4 hours at $15-$25 blackjack or spinning away $1’s on a slot machine for a few hours or – if you are skilled (or can read online notes) playing some video poker for several hours, you can easily hit the 250 Tier Credits in one trip on the day you match. Yes, there is risk you could lose several hundred dollars (or more, I can’t gauge your gambling style). But if you plan to use both the Wynn and MSC benefits, easily worth a couple of thousand dollars ++, you may be OK with this. When it’s my time to match again, I will have no problem doing this but my 18 months isn’t for about a year still.
Thoughts?
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I think you can lose the cost of the cruise trying to accumulate those points.
Anyone know how difficult it is to get 250 tier credits?
If you have prime status, call and book your 2025 cruise now. Don’t wait until after Dec. 1. I called this morning and had no problem booking late spring of 2025 even though we already have a cruise booked for December of 2024. I thought you had to wait until January to book the next cruise but that is not correct.
Hi Joan – if you don’t mind my asking, have you done any gambling with Ocean Casino this membership year? The reason I ask is, I have a comp cruise from my Ocean Prime membership booked for later this month (Dec) as you indicated, but when I called in to ask about booking an additional cruise this coming Spring 2025, they checked my Ocean Prime number and said there isn’t another comp cruise available, but that I should check back in the new year. I am wondering if this is because I don’t have any casino play with Oceans this year.
Is the type of thing where if you spend $250 in food/hotel expenses that would hit the total?
No, unfortunately Ocean does not give TCs for ancillary spend – only gambling.
Hi Dave- Regarding your statement: “When it’s my time to match again, I will have no problem doing this but my 18 months isn’t for about a year still.” Doesn’t this new 250 tier points requirement disqualify one from rematching after 18 months of inactivity because as soon as you start to gamble to earn those 250 tier points, it would restart your “inactivity clock” back to zero? I hope I’m wrong about that because I was planning to rematch this February (the month when my Hard Rock Icon status expires) as that’s when I reach the 18-month mark with Ocean. Hopefully we’ll have some new data points before then.
You can’t rematch to HR until after your card expires, so that’s March 1. Then you can rematch to Ocean in April or July depending on what they offer in terms of early matching.
As to your question, when I hit my 18 months of inactivity I will rematch to Ocean and THEN, with my new Prime card in hand, earn 250 points that day. So, no impact on the 18 months.
Thanks for the info, Dave. I misunderstood that sign regarding earning the 250 tier points, but now that makes perfect sense. So I’d actually get my new Ocean Prime card first and THEN earn the 250 points ASAP thereafter to qualify for the travel perks. For my situation, I wasn’t planning to rematch to HR at all since I would still be Icon until 2/28/25 but will hit my 18 months of on-property inactivity with Ocean on 2/10/25 (so I’m planning a quick AC trip in mid-February to match from Icon to Prime).
Not sure if this is a new thing, but now they require 24 months of inactivity. I was also under the impression I had to wait 18 months, which just passed for me a couple weeks ago. Will be going to AC tomorrow, and hopefully I can still get in.
https://www.theoceanac.com/sites/default/files/2024-11/WEB_Oct_2024_OCR_Prime_Tier_Match.pdf
Today is 1/1/2025 and my wife and I both matched to Oceans Prime and achieved the 250 tier points playing slots on the same day. This will be a long post but I wish someone would have shared all of the following with me before I went so I would have saved time and money. I hope the following helps others in the future. First, our last status match was on 10/15/2023. They should not have status matched us today because of their new 2 year rule but they did. We viewed this as a blessing and we are thankful to God for whatever force behind the customer counter at Oceans allowed us to status match. We arrived around 1 pm. Depending on your approach with slots, you will need to budget 6 to 10 hours potentially if two of you want to achieve the 250 tier points. “”” Important, get two cards when you status match because you can put in your two prime cards in two slots at the same time and accrue points simultaneously. Also, if you are nervous about losing money, have your spouse and you just focus on one card first. Then when/if you achieve the 250, you will know how much time it took and how much it cost you. Two cards gives you options and flexibility to achieve 250 points. My advice is ensure you get two not one Prime card. ***High Level Slot Summary: High cost slots do not equal fast tier points. If you are concerned about losing too much money and have time, find a slot machine with a 5 cent minimum bid and bid 5 cents until you achieve the 250. Expect that to take up to 8 hours straight of gaming. If you want to go faster, bid 25 cents a transaction and expect to take 3 hours. We spent $120 dollars total between us to achieve 250 on both our cards at the specific slot game called “Golden Egypt Grand.” These are our recommendations based on our experiences today and should not be viewed as absolutes. *** Long Version: With our two prime cards in hand, we were worried how much time and money it would take to achieve the 250. We decided to focus on my card to get the 250 to see how much it cost us and how much time it took. We thought to go to the Cove first, an area with more expensive slots for Prime card or higher players. This was a huge mistake. We went to a min bet $1 pinball slot machine with $40 to see if we could hit a few bonuses and see how the tier points would accumulate. We played 40 games and lost every time and earned 8 tier points (TP going forward to avoid having to type it out). We then sought out a 1 cent minimum bet slot that was old. My wife sat down and for an hour straight played the 1 cent minimum bet off of $5. After an hour we were up to 15 TP and she still had $2.50 left roughly. So we realized that games played seemed to have a much better impact on acclimating TP than just spending big. We did ask customer service, waitresses, floor managers, etc how to build TPs and which machines gave more than others. No one was willing to share this information with us or they just didn’t know. So understand you are most likely on your own. We were told by customer service they never have TP bonus multipliers and the “system” just calculates your TP based on your time and money spent playing. But, now that we realized total games played seems to be the key we found a 5 cent minimum bet slot machine named “Golden Egypt Grand.” I couldn’t find another slot machine with this low of a minimum, had free spins, and had wild cards. Without this slot, I don’t know how we could have made our 250 TP without potentially spending 1000’s of dollars. Now my wife and I have been in a casino only a few times and only for 5 minutes so understand this is just our experience from today. We are completely casino ignorant so maybe someone knows how to do this better. My wife and I used just my card on two machines starting with $5 each. We lasted an hour on just $5 and at the end of the hour had 50 TP!!! This slot doesn’t pay big but we would win frequently enough to be able to keep going. By 8 pm of nonstop playing the 5 cent min I finally achieved my 250 TP. Then we began to work on my wife’s card. At this point we began to play 15 cent and 25 cent bets more. We were getting tired as we have never gambled before. And by playing these higher minimus we achieved my wife’s 250 at 11 pm. Total spent was $120 dollars. The majority of it was going towards my wife’s as we were tired and had enough of gambling. One side note, I did get frustrated around 6 pm and put $100 in and started betting the max of $3.50. I again lasted about 40 games and only raised my TP by about 15. It was such a waste of money. The $40 at the cove and the $100 I went crazy on are not apart of the $120. We spent around $260 total but the $140 I mention specifically was 100% avoidable. Spending more did not help us. Again, it seems total games played is what impacts TP the most. So thankfully the Golden Egypt game lets you win a lot of games so that you can keep your spend to a minimum. Sorry if this was long but I hope this helps people in the future. Thank you for this website. We have received and taken 4 free cruises so far and now have another 2 to book costing us around $130 and about 8 hours today.
What a great post! Thank you for all the details. I think you may be one of the first to share an experience on what it takes to get those 250 TP at ocean.
I’ll be there later this month or early Feb to try it myself. Unfortunately I totally missed booking the MSC cruise before the change. Now I must go back to AC.
Any DP’s from people who matched last year but didn’t book cruise yet? I still don’t know what I want to go on, I never know my work schedule that far in advance