If you are getting old and looking for a good reason to celebrate your birthday, here is a couple of good ones: free food, free cruise and free entrance to a Disney Park.

 Free Disney Park Ticket

 Disney just announced a new marketing plan to give free park tickets to any person on their birthday. That’s right, if you want to celebrate your birthday with Mickey, you can do it w/o having to pay a penny and go see the famous mouse.

All you have to do is register on their website and they’ll email you a coupon valid for a free ticket to the park that you can print and present at the park entrance along with an ID to show it is really your birthday and that’s it.

Please not that the free ticket offer is only good the day of your birthday, not a day before or after, so plan accordantly. Here is the website with all the FAQ and the page where you can register

 Free Cruise

Yeap, you can even take a free cruise to the Bahamas any time during your birthday month. Discovery Cruise Line takes you from Fort Lauderdale to Bahamas on a one day cruise where you can enjoy a little bid of gambling, sun, or simply doing some shopping at the Bahamas.

All the information about this offer can be found here

 Free Food

Do you remember way back when Denny’s  Restaurant used to invite you to have free dinner on your birthday?. Well those days are gone, but there are still plenty of places that offer you free dinners, ice cream and other food related items during your birthday.

I found an excellent list on this site, so check it out and Happy Birthday!.

Bald Head ad

Bald people now have a reason to celebrate their lack of cranial hair. New Zealand’s national airline is looking for 50 bald people to use them as walking billboards by temporarily tattooing an ad on their head advertising a new speedy check in service the airline will begin offering.

For allowing the airline to use their bald head, each person will receive $666.00 (any resemblance to the “mark of the beast” is just pure coincidence as this is the equivalence of $1,000 NA dollars each person will receive)

The idea is that people standing in line at the check in line can learn about the service by reading the ad on the head of the person in front of them.

Would you shave your head and temporarily tattoo it for $666.00? With the economy the way it is, I would at least consider it!

In an effort to increase revenues in a slow economy, Jet Blue has decided to put to auction several round trip tickets and vacation packages on eBay, the most popular internet auction site.

Bidding started around $0.10 per ticket; however a quick look at the Jet Blue auction site, showed that a lot of people had bid on the tickets, and the prices continue to rise, so at the end, I really don’t think they would make too much difference compared to regular ticket prices.

The site also has “mystery vacation packages” where you would bid for a hotel and air fare package to one of the several Caribbean destinations where Jet Blue flies.

The round trip tickets originate from Boston and more than 20 other cities, and all of the flights will depart on a Thursday or Friday and return on a Sunday or Monday, with the last one landing on Oct. 6.

The auctions can be found at www.jetblue.com/ebay. Taxes and fees are additional and will vary according to the route. Bidders will need a PayPal account.

 Have you ever booked a cruise only to find out later on that a fellow passenger paid much less than what you did for the same cruise and even the same category and cabin type?

 There are several myths among cruise fanatics regarding how to save money on a cruise. The most common one is to wait until the last possible minute to get a great deal on a cruise, based on the idea that cruises will lower the price of unsold cabins as the embarkation date approaches. This might have been true in the past, but as cruises have become more and more popular and security measurements increased greatly post 9-11, the reality is that those last minute special have almost disappeared completely.  

 What many people don’t realize is that every cruise line provides travel agents with specials codes that allows them to get additional discounts for their clients. If you have an honest TA, he/she will use those codes to save you money. On the other hand, if your TA is more interested in a big commission rather than getting you a cheaper cruise, you are out of luck.

 Booking codes usually translate into big savings. For example, sometimes Costa Cruise has kids free special cruises, where up to 2 children can cruise for free when accompanied by two paying adults (except for port fees and taxes) But unless your TA enters the code KIDS when doing the booking, chances are you won’t benefit from the offer. Other times, there are special codes for past guests or military personnel and their families.

 The following table gives you a list of current discount codes for the most popular cruise lines.

 



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Magic Jack

I still remembering the time when we went to the tiny island of Caicos during one of our cruises and I needed to call home to check on the family. We had waited to disembark in order to purchase a phone card and use a public phone instead of paying a ridiculously high per-minute rate on the ship. To our surprise the only two public phones on the island were broken, and if it wouldn’t had been for a good samaritan who lend us his phone, we would have been force to pay the cruise rate or not call home at all.
A new little invention called Magic Jack is a money saving device that will allow any cruise passenger to call home from the ship at a much lower rate.
Magic Jack is basically a small device that you connect to any USB port of any computer with internet access, then you connect a regular phone to Magic Jack and voila! You have free unlimited calls to the US and Canada.

The device costs around $39.00 and it comes with the first year of unlimited local and long distance calls. After the first year, the service is $20.00 a year. All calls to the US and or Canada are free, it doesn’t matter where are you calling from. So, you might be in Europe using Magic Jack and the call is still free.
In order to use Magic Jack on a cruise ship, you still need to pay for regular internet access, but because the price of internet access is around $0.75 per minute (even wireless internet access) compared to $6.99 per minute for a phone call, you’ll be saving over $6.00 per minute on phone calls.

Many cruise lines have now signed contracts with wireless phone companies such as AT&T and T-Mobile that allows you to make calls from any ship using your cellular phone; however the rates is considered as international roaming by your cell phone provider and it might cost you between $1.75 to $4.50 per minute. This is cheaper than using the cabin phone, but much more expensive than calling home using the Magic Jack.

 



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