Carnival Citi Review | My Honest Assessment

What are other players saying about Carnival Citi?

Don’t take only my word about Carnival Citi. It’s important to check out reviews from both fans and detractors. Trustpilot is a great place to see what the public is saying about Carnival Citi Casino.

Carnival Citi’s 4.6 rating on Trustpilot is one of the highest I’ve seen for a social casino, so clearly, it has satisfied hundreds of players.

Here are two recent reviews that I found helpful.

My real experience using Carnival Citi Casino

To review Carnival Citi in a fair and honest way, I signed up for the social casino and tested every feature I could. I claimed the no-deposit bonus, played the free slots, and chatted with customer so that my ratings could reflect Carnival Citi’s real capabilities and policies.

Here are my final grades—numbers I arrived at by comparing Carnival Citi to the rest of the sweeps casino industry. I’ll explain the thinking behind my grades throughout this review.

Website and app experience | 3.7 / 5

Carnival Citi cuts a familiar figure if you already play at sweeps casinos.

When I logged in for the first time, I saw my Coin and Sweeps Chips balances at the top of the screen. These are the two token types at Carnival Citi. Coins are for freeplay and far more plentiful than Sweeps Chips (SC). Meanwhile, SC are Carnival Citi’s version of “sweeps coins.” You can swap the Chips for cash prizes if you win enough of them ($100 minimum).

Layoutwise, the website resembles Chumba Casino. It’s defined by a few large banners and 200+ game options right in the middle of the screen. The aesthetics are sort of like clip-art Mardi Gras with purple and yellow flourishes on a white background.

In my opinion, the quality of graphics could use a boost to keep players interested. A colorful theme like what you find at Vegas Gems Casino would help in this regard. Especially for a site that launched in 2023, I would hope for a sharper, more modern interface.

Granted, I can find everything I need at Carnival Citi. The “Buy” and “Redeem” options are in the right side menu. I can scroll all the way to the footer to find the options.

There are three UX hiccups I need to mention, though.

In theory, if you hit the “i” at the top of the screen, Carnival Citi will display your Sweeps Chips balance and how many of your SC are now redeemable for prizes. But Carnival Citi doesn’t show you any winnings in the redeemable balance until you’ve played through ALL your Sweeps Chips.

I don’t care for that. Keeping a live tally of your redeemable SC is a basic form of player reassurance and transparency. Making me play through a whole stack of chips to view any of my winnings requires the player to take a leap of faith that the winnings are being counted behind the scenes. In my experience, online casino players aren’t big leaps of faith. Did my redeemable balance eventually show? Thankfully, yes. But take the mystery out of it, Carnival Citi.

Another disappointment is that the “Arcade” button on the home page didn’t pull up any arcade games for me. It just retrieved some of the major slot game categories from the home page. I was hoping for Fishing games or Crash, like you find at Stake.US Casino.

There’s one more visual improvement I want to see. When I’m playing a slot, the interface takes over the full screen. My only option for returning to the homepage is to hit my browser’s back button. Most of the smoothest social casinos, like Crown Coins, would show you a ‘Home’ button or a faded version of the homepage behind your game. These nav tools would reassure you that the rest of the site is still a click away.

Ultimately, I give a 3.7 because Carnival Citi’s website works, but there are obvious shortcomings compared to its competition.

Did I like the Carnival Citi app?

Carnival Citi does not currently have a dedicated mobile app for smartphones or tablets. Compared to other competitors who offer a mobile app, such as LuckyLand Casino, Carnival Citi has some catching up to do.

Even if there is no dedicated mobile app on the horizon, one quick and easy fix we would like to see is a more prominent search bar so that players can easily and quickly jump into their favorite games. Granted, there is a search bar, but it appears only once you scroll down to the ‘All’ category.

Carnival Citi bonus | 4.5 / 5

Here’s an area where Carnival Citi Casino performs quite well. When I signed up, I received the following no-deposit bonus right away: 10,000,000 Coins and 5,000 SC. I did not need to enter a Carnival Citi promo code.

By g up, I also became eligible for five daily bonuses. Each one was worth 1 million GC and 1,000 SC. I did not have to claim these bonuses consecutively, just on different days of my choosing.

You might be saying to yourself, “5,000 SC! That’s the biggest sweeps bonus I’ve ever seen.” Pump the brakes slightly. The volume of Sweeps Chips at Carnival Citi is approximately 1,000 times the proportion you’ll find at most sweepstakes casinos. But that doesn’t mean I have thousands of dollars. When I play and win, I see that conversion rate in action. I won 14,000 Sweeps Chips while playing the Buffalo Run slot, and it amounted to $14 in my redeemable balance.

So, if 5,000 Sweeps Chips are equivalent to 5 free Sweeps Coins at , that’s still a strong welcome bonus! Only top social casinos like WOW Vegas and High 5 give away that many SC at . It’s much more common to find 2.5 SC or fewer at sites like MegaBonanza.

As for the 10 million Coins, this amounts to a wealth of trial tokens. That said, the minimum spin on most slots I tested was somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 Coins, so this is another area where it feels like Carnival Citi has multiplied your basic tokens by 1,000 just for the grandeur of it all. (Sites like Scrooge Casino similarly inflate their SC value for marketing’s sake.)

How did I use my Carnival Citi bonus?

I started spinning away, of course. I began playing the Buffalo Run with my Sweeps Chips and had an amazing run of luck—eight wins in my first 20 spins. I’ll share more of that story in the “Prize Likelihood” section, as it takes a slightly bittersweet turn.

The El Patrón cowboy slot also made for a fun pitstop with my Coin balance. I spun 12,500 Coins at a time and had some good luck with the wild symbols to boost my balance.

I was hoping to play some video poker with my bonus, but none of the nine variants are available until you make a purchase.

Prize likelihood at Carnival Citi Casino | 3.5 / 5

Like most sweeps casinos, Carnival Citi will let you claim a cash prize if you win enough during SC play. Once you have enough eligible Sweeps Chips (a minimum of 100,000), you can redeem them for a cash prize. Every 1,000 Sweeps Chips you have played through can be exchanged for $1 USD. All prize redemptions at Carnival Citi occur through the instant banking service Trustly. It’s a great tool with a stellar reputation. I’m glad Carnival Citi uses it.

All these policies amount to a 1x playthrough requirement and a minimum $100 prize. Those policies are fairly normal in the sweeps world. They’re the same ones you’ll find at Pulsz Casino and FunzCity.

After those pretty standard rules, the prize policies at Carnival Citi get … weird.

The first roadblock appeared to me after I had some success playing with my no-deposit bonus. I had $13 in my redeemable balance and was ready to purchase some coin packages, get some free Sweeps Chips, and see if I could claim a prize during testing.

When I navigated to the coin store, this goofy little pop-up window (looking straight out of 2002) informed me that you’re not allowed to make a purchase if your current SC balance is more than $8 (a.k.a. 8,000 Chips).

I have certainly never encountered a rule like this at any other sweeps casino. For one, it seems totally arbitrary. Why 8,000 Chips? Why not 23,432 Chips? Customer couldn’t tell me. And second, I really don’t like it when a sweeps casino tosses random rules in the way of prize redemption. I was literally about to go spend money on Coins … the site is going to stop me because my balance was already too good? Let’s get in line with industry standards here.

Moreover, at one point I saw my 13,969 SC balance being counted as $13 toward a possible redemption. The rounding down there is conspicuous. I’m not saying bump me up to $14, but wouldn’t $13.97 be the fair conversion? Don’t nickel and dime the player.

Shall we get even weirder? When you’re ready to redeem a cash prize at Carnival Citi, you first need to answer a few trivia questions to get your prize. They’re questions about Carnival Citi’s games, mostly. I have been assured by customer that getting the questions wrong will not impact your SC balance. It’s just a logistical hurdle to earn your prize.

Strange and unnecessary as the trivia component is, I’m guessing it’s a legal thing. This puts another level of gamesmanship in the sweeps process to separate Carnival Citi further from real money gambling.

Did I get a cash prize?

I was not able to collect the minimum $100 in winnings necessary to claim a prize. At least not with my budget of $20 and my playtime maximum of one hour.

Let the record show I absolutely believe people win and cash out at Carnival Citi. I won plenty while spinning slots, and Trustpilot is full of happy reviews from customers who claimed prizes.

But I again need to emphasize how Carnival Citi’s bizarre prize rules impacted my attempts to get a prize.

I had my no-deposit bonus of 5,000 SC and started spinning on Buffalo Run. I had terrific luck and ended up with a balance of 13,969 SC after eight wins in 20 spins.

I thought to myself, “This is great! Time to go buy some Coins, get some free Chips as my gift, and see if I can get to $100.” This is when I encountered the rule that you can’t make a purchase if your SC balance is over 8,000.

Now, if I were being charitable, I would say this rule implies Carnival Citi is carving out an identity as a lower-stakes site. After all, the minimum redemption is $2,000, so maybe they’re trying to stop players from collecting too big of wins and being disappointed by the prize cap.

But mostly, this just seems like a ploy to stop players from racking up enough SC to get a prize. In my case, I had to either turn my $13 into $100 by itself, or else lose my way down $8 before I could make a purchase. Who wants to do that? I was sitting there rooting for myself to lose because all the small and medium slot wins that kept my balance above 8,000 SC did me no good.

By the time I lost enough to purchase Coins and get more Sweeps Chips, my luck had run out, and I wasn’t able to spin my way up to $100 in winnings. It’s entirely possible your luck could be better.

Benefits for existing s at Carnival Citi | 4.2 / 5

I found Carnival Citi to have a nice, simple array of bonuses for regular players.

Those perks begin with the daily bonus, which has some pros and cons. On the good side, the bonus gives you some generous Coin and Chip amounts. It’s 1 million Coins and 1,000 SC every time you . If you consider that 1,000 Sweeps Chips is about 1 Sweeps Coin at other sites, only Chumba gives away this many SC each time you .

On the less positive side, you can only claim this bonus five times, so it’s not technically the every-day bonus you’d find at sites like NoLimitCoins. I will note, though, that the daily bonus resets to five more claimable opportunities every time you buy a Coin package. So if you plan to buy coins with some regularity, this is a nice perk.

My favorite bonus for regular players at Carnival Citi are the Lucky Draws. These are regularly scheduled SC raffles, and you earn entry through your play. Each time I played 10,000 SC on Carnival Citi’s games, I was automatically awarded three raffle tickets. Each ticket constitutes an entry into Carnival Citi’s daily, weekly, and monthly Lucky Draws. Here’s a breakdown of the three raffles.

Of course, Carnival Citi also offers Coin purchase packages that come with free Sweeps Chips. You can see all the current options in the screenshot below.

Will I keep playing?

I will, in part because I’m particularly interested in Carnival Citi’s many VIP games. About half the games—including all video poker titles—are unlocked after a $2.99 purchase, and I haven’t had a chance to try them all yet.

Then, there’s another echelon of games that don’t unlock until you have VIP access. These games become available to the after a purchase of $24.99 or more.

Carnival Citi Game Collection | 3.9 / 5

Carnival Citi’s game library has a few clear strengths and a few clear drawbacks.

On the one hand, it’s unique that most of Carnival Citi’s 200+ games are in-house exclusives. If you’re sick of seeing the same branded games at every social casino, this could be a breath of fresh air.

That said, in practice, Carnival Citi’s games feel more like generic, store-brand versions of all the Buffalo, Joker, and Olympus slots you’re used to seeing from companies like Baba Casino recently.

Meanwhile, I was delighted to see that Carnival Citi’s video poker library has grown to nine games. This is a smart niche for a social casino to cultivate, as so few of these sites even carry classic table games anymore. Carnival Citi is doubling down to become the no. 1 sweeps casino for video poker.

Caveat incoming. All nine of those variants are paywalled. Granted, it’s only a $2.99 Coin purchase to unlock them, but I never like to see an entire game category restricted at what purports to be a freeplay site. I think it would be reasonable to open up 2-3 of these video pokers to all customers—even those who haven’t yet bought coins.

Here’s a fuller breakdown of Carnival Citi Casino’s game library:

Game Type	How Many?	Providers	Standout Game in The Category	Why Play It?
All Slots	200+	GMW, Habanero, KA Gaming		Ten Tigers is my pick due to its six progressive jackpots and 96% RTP.
Video Poker	9	GMW		My favorite video poker game is Double Bonus Deuces Wild due to its Auto Hold feature that makes gaming easier.
Arcade	7	KA Gaming		I enjoy playing Force of Dragon because of its 3 different rooms and excellent graphics.
Solitaire	3	GMW		I like Vegas Solitaire for its twist on the classic game that makes it slightly more challenging and exciting.
Keno	2	GMW		Cleo’s Keno is my pick of Keno games because of how easy it is to play and how smooth the gameplay is.

What’s missing from the library?

One thing you could say is missing from Carnival Citi’s game selection is sheer volume. Two hundred games is one of the smaller libraries in the industry. It’s completely eclipsed by the 1,000+ game selections at The Money Factory, where you’ll find thousands of exciting slot games to enjoy.

Carnival Citi could also consider adding live dealer casino games if it wants to keep up the cutting edge of the industry.

Finally, I still don’t understand why the ‘Arcade’ tab on the website brings up the same categories as the ‘Slots’ tab. The arcade games remain buried in with the slots.