Royal Caribbean Club Royale: Tiers, Points and Free Cruises

• Reel slots: 1 tier credit per $5 played.
• Video poker: 1 tier credit per $15 played. Cruise press reports the rate was $10 until April 1, 2026.
• Table games: no fixed rate is published. Credits depend on the game, your average bet and how long you play.
• No credits: Texas Hold'em poker, Keymaster, Cash Crane and coin pushers. Promotional play and FreePlay also earn no tier credits.
• Program year: April 1 to March 31. Tier credits are counted over that year.

Club Royale also has Reward Points, a separate spending balance. You can download them as FreePlay or exchange them for non-negotiable chips. Royal Caribbean's rewards page sets a minimum of 10,000 Reward Points to convert them into onboard credit. Players in the same stateroom may combine points for onboard credit but not for FreePlay. Points expire at the end of each sailing, so use them before you disembark.

Sources: Club Royale FAQ, Club Royale tier criteria, Club Royale rewards page. Video poker change date: Royal Caribbean Blog and Cruise Mummy.

Four tiers, set by tier credits earned in the program year. The annual cruise starts at Prime and the cabin improves with each tier.

Casino drinks are for Prime and above while you are actively playing. Spa discounts apply to services at the regular listed price, not retail products, and onboard credit is non-cashable. The $3 Choice fee is the only item in the table that comes from cruise press rather than an official Royal Caribbean page.

Sources: Club Royale tier criteria, Club Royale rewards page, Royal Caribbean SeaPass rewards guide, Club Royale FAQ. $3 Choice fee: Cruise Mummy.

Prime, Signature and Masters members get one tier cruise per program year. The cabin depends on tier: interior for Prime, balcony for Signature and Grand Suite for Masters. The official terms set these conditions:

• One cruise per year, up to 7 nights, on select ships and sailings.
• Priced for double occupancy, meaning two guests sharing the cabin.
• Taxes and fees are payable by you.
• For the current year, you must book and sail by March 31, 2027.
• Signature and Masters members may be able to choose a lower cabin category, when available.

For the 2026 to 2027 year, cruise press reports that the excluded-sailings list was replaced by a published list of eligible sailings, with about 500 sailings open to Prime, and that Masters can choose sailings of up to 25 nights in up to a Grand Suite. Royal Caribbean's official pages we reviewed still describe the 7-night limit, so confirm the current rules for your certificate before you plan around a longer cruise.

For the 2025 to 2026 year, press reported that certificates were issued April 22 to 25, 2025 and had to be used on a sailing by March 31, 2026.

Sources: Club Royale rewards page, Royal Caribbean SeaPass rewards guide. Press reports: Cruise Mummy, URComped, AOL (2025 certificate dates).

Beyond the annual tier cruise, Club Royale sends two other kinds of cruise offer.

Instant Cruise Rewards certificates are earned from your play on the current sailing, and players in the same stateroom may not combine points toward them. Royal Caribbean's SeaPass rewards guide says they are valid for 30 days after the cruise ends. Readers told Royal Caribbean Blog that certificates got less generous from around March 2026, with smaller cabins and less FreePlay.

Targeted offers arrive by email or at clubroyaleoffers.com, based on your play. Casino.org reported in December 2024 that many complimentary cruises now cover only the player. The companion pays a discounted fare, and players sailing alone still pay it. The same report said comped cruises start at about 1,500 points and that players with 3,000 or more tier credits keep cruises for two. In 2026, Cruise Mummy reported a $100 non-refundable fee per stateroom on some comped balcony and oceanview offers.

A "free" offer still costs money once taxes, fees, any companion fare and the reported booking fee are added. Price the same sailing as a paid booking before you accept, and compare the total.

Sources: Club Royale rewards page, Royal Caribbean SeaPass rewards guide. Press reports: Casino.org, Cruise Mummy, Royal Caribbean Blog.

Royal Caribbean runs a published casino match called Rewards Match. You upload a valid player's card from an eligible casino program, and if approved you get a stateroom offer with complimentary cruise fare for you and one guest sharing the cabin.

• Who can apply: the terms require every applicant to be a Crown & Anchor member opted in to marketing, 21 or over by the sailing date, and not to have sailed with Royal Caribbean in the 24 months before the request. The Rewards Match page adds that it is for US and Canadian residents, and that existing Club Royale members also need no future booking. That page lists new Club Royale members separately, but the terms make no exception for them: a recent Royal Caribbean passenger who never joined Club Royale does not qualify.
• What you pay: taxes and fees, in full, to confirm the stateroom.
• Limits: the offer covers only the ships, sail dates and cabin categories shown in it. Redeem within 15 days of issue and sail within 9 months. One per person, not combinable with other offers, and subject to Royal Caribbean's approval.
• Cruise line offers too: the terms also accept a competing cruise line's offer, and if you send both, Royal Caribbean uses whichever it judges is worth more.

Sources: Royal Caribbean Rewards Match, Rewards Match terms (last modified August 12, 2026).

The formula: coin-in needed = tier credits × dollars per credit. Reel slots are $5 per credit and video poker is $15. The table applies that to each tier and to two targeted-offer levels reported by Casino.org.

The two Casino.org levels are unofficial and date from December 2024, before the 2026 offer changes, so they may have changed. The report gave the 1,500 figure as "about 1,500 points" without saying whether it means annual tier credits or points on one sailing.

Coin-in is not money lost. It counts every bet, and winnings you bet again count again. A $100 stake played through a slot several times can produce several hundred dollars of coin-in. At $1 per spin, Prime takes 12,500 spins on reel slots.

Your expected loss is coin-in × the game's hold, the share of each bet the casino keeps over time. Hold varies by game, machine and pay table, and Royal Caribbean does not publish it, so we do not plug in one figure. As a scale: each 1 percentage point of hold is $125 of expected loss on Prime's $12,500 of slot coin-in, $1,250 on Signature's $125,000 and $5,000 on the $500,000 for Masters. Actual results swing widely around that, in both directions.

The April 2026 video poker change raised the bar by 50%. Prime went from $25,000 to $37,500 of video poker coin-in, and Masters from $1,000,000 to $1,500,000.

CruiseLookup calculation from the earning rates in the Club Royale FAQ and tier thresholds in the tier criteria. The 1,500 and 3,000 credit levels and the old $10 video poker rate are from Casino.org, Royal Caribbean Blog and Cruise Mummy.

Royal Caribbean's official FAQ says you keep the status you earn until the next April 1 evaluation. Cruise Mummy reported in August 2026 that Prime, Signature and Masters now carry status through the rest of the current year and all of the following year. The official page has not been updated to match, so treat the longer window as unconfirmed until Royal Caribbean publishes it.

Sources: Club Royale tier criteria; press report: Cruise Mummy.

Crown & Anchor: casino points do not count toward it. Crown & Anchor status comes from Cruise Points earned per night sailed, and Royal Caribbean's Points Choice rules list casino play points among the points that cannot be moved between programs. The Cruise Points from the nights you sail follow the normal Crown & Anchor rules. See our Crown & Anchor guide for those tiers.

Celebrity Blue Chip Club: there is no status match. Royal Caribbean and Celebrity both state that the two casino programs do not offer reciprocal benefits or status, even though Crown & Anchor and Captain's Club do match. Our cruise casino programs comparison covers Blue Chip and the other lines' clubs.

Sources: Royal Caribbean Points Choice FAQ, Crown & Anchor Society, Club Royale FAQ, Celebrity onboard casinos FAQ.

Gambling extra to earn a comp rarely beats paying the fare. If you are going to play anyway, Club Royale gives something back. If the cruise is the goal, watch fares instead with a free CruiseLookup price alert.