Do APs retire??

YMMV, but I don't think it's just winning players who are losing promos. The new books in my area are offering next-to-nothing in sign-up bonuses. I've also seen lower bonus bet/boost amounts, and most of my bets are only $10-$20. I doubt that's high enough on their radar to worry about how much I'm winning. I think they're all tightening up now that they've spent what their stockholders/boards will tolerate for customer acquisitiuion. 

Of course. They can't offer those promos on an ongoing, regular basis, because the inherent vig of sports bets, aside from idiot parlays and such, is relatively low. Give someone a $10 "boost" and suddenly, they're in

+EV territory. And it's pretty hard to make a "bad" straight bet, given the leveling effect of the spreads/prices. All such bets are equal.

Obviously, the books have been willing to tolerate initial losses, in order to, as you say, inflate the apparent customer base, which in turn gives stockholders hard-ons. The ephemeral nature of such a customer base doesn't faze them, given the very, very short event horizon of Corporate America these days. Was it profitable for Caesars and MGM to each offer $1000 in free bets if you lost that amount, which I of course used to make offsetting bets and thus pick up $454 of riskless profits? No. But they must have concluded that so few people would do that and then walk away, never to return (as I did), it was all worth it.

I wouldn't have expected it all to be so successful, but apparently, the public's thirst to bet on sports is insatiable. Must be that horrible horrible Biden economy.

I agree.   Definitely a significant drop in bonuses the past 12 months compared to the glory days of 2020 and 2021.   

I cant count how many trips across the state line I made bankrolling my friends and hustling the signup bonuses   As KL mentioned, I'd bring a friend and we'd bet his/her account with Team A at FanDuel then bet Team B at MGM and have the guaranteed win.   Rinse and repeat with Caesars, ESPN (formerly Barstool), BetRivers, Wynn and the old PointsBet.   Ahhh, a helluva run.   

I have an anecdote regarding "idiot" parlay bets which I will pass along later today. It involves a famous Pennsylvania bookmaker and his (first) trial.

Anyway, a huge percentage of wagers are parlays, so that's why books offer parlay boosts. They are training you to play parlays. They are also training you to be lazy. The main drawback isn't that parlays screw your odds; the main problem is that you are almost never getting optimal numbers at the one location where you bet the parlay. I can't believe people blithely never mention  that.

One big issue I have with many "APs" these days is their recruiting of friends and family for bonus whoring. It seems both arrogant and selfish to me. Why would you presume your family and friends wouldn't do it themselves if you took the hour or two (at most) necessary to explain why they should be doing  it. Why screw your family and friends out of bonuses? I don't buy the premise that, "They don't want to do it; it's too complicated." Unless your family and friends are all mentally challenged, they can do it, and very few people turn down free money when it's explained to them.

I had a friend who, back in the good old days of easy and abundant promos, recruited small armies of lowlifes (and we're talking bottom of the bottom of the barrel) to descend on some place that was offering a deal. An example was a (misguided) promo that the old Frontier offered: $125 for four sevens on any quarter machine at the bar. This amounted to 100 extra bets every 5500 hands or so: almost a 2% boost to EV. AND...the bar had 9/6 JOB! So my friend's ragtag army would descend on the Frontier at the appointed time and happily pound away. The arrangement was that any crudball who hit the bonus would be allowed to keep $25 of it. And my friend also made dozens of copies of his player's card, and they would all play with those copies--so he earned 0.2% as well in points. He instructed the crudballs to be sure to tip the bartender(s) as they happily slurped down their free drinks.

I don't know how accurately the crudballs played, or if they were so bonus-oriented that if dealt AAAA7, they would throw away the Aces and keep the 7. All I know is that my friend's minions filled up the bar once a week, and they were never thrown out. The promo ended with several thousand dollars in his pocket and a troop of happy drunks.

You assume everyone has the financial and/or psychological bankroll to hustle these bonuses.   

Not many average people have $5-10,000 sitting in a bank account doing nothing and ready for transfer to online sportsbooks.  And those few that do generally wouldn't feel comfortable having it tied up for 10-14 days. 

So offer them half the profit and they take 0 risk?  Also offered to explain how to hustle the promo themselves if they wanted to put up their own cash.  But they'd have to drive and make the bets themselves.  How many took me up on that offer?  Not one of them.   Everyone took the sure thing of the 50/50 chop and never had one of them see that deal as selfish or arrogant.  

Any AP knows not to disclose where the juice is worth the squeeze on a public forum online. :)
But, it's not sign up bonuses, match plays, or long plays like video poker.
As for sight seeing, There are many sight worthy destinations close to casinos. Grand Canyon, Yosemite, etc. etc etc.

We did venture through Blackhawk just a few weeks ago. We've been on the road since 3/5, and paid for 2 nights hotel out of pocket. Gas money and a few meals purchased, not a bad run, up $9K on the casino side. :)

The only way I can see that you would have gotten free rooms at those casinos (you didn't specifically say that's where you stayed) is if you'd been there previously, played, and gotten an invite back. I really doubt that you can just roll into any casino cold turkey (never having played there before) and get a room.

As for AP opportunities, tribal casinos are almost legendary for making blunders that can be exploited...and they are absolutely crawling with APs and would-be APs hunting for the opportunities such blunders would afford. Therefore, I don't expect any particular advantage play to last very long, and I don't mind discussing them online, since chances are, they've already been detected and stamped out anyway.

Case in point. I found a great play in the middle of freakin' nowhere, at an all but deserted tribal casino, and I settled down to play--it was worth about $130 an hour. I took a break to get a snack, stepped outside to get some fresh air--and watched in horror as a huge van with Nevada plates disgorged seven guys. They had heard about the promo and were there to stomp all over it. And that they did. The promo was canceled the next morning.

My favorite middle-of-nowhere casino was The Golden Pony in Okemah, Oklahoma. Made The Wild Wild West look classy.

It had a big golden horse statue rearing up in front. The horse was a male, and someone had stolen most of its member. 

I do appreciate the effort to provide an anatomically correct pony.