My BIL, Brian, had been pestering me for a while to go down to AC over 4th of July weekend as he was on vacation that week. I wasn’t sure if I would have the bankroll before the Memorial Day trip for the July trip, but when I came home ahead, I did. I also had the week of the 4th off from work. So, I booked Trump Plaza for a Saturday through Tuesday stay. Between the offers that I had from Trump Plaza, Resorts, Borgata and Bally’s; I had over $500 in free slot play and another $100+ in bounce back slot play. And of course, days before we’re supposed to leave Brian backs out. So, it turns out that it will be just Karen and I.
Saturday – July 2nd
Karen actually gets up before me and wants to surprise me by being ready early. We finally get on the road by 10:00 AM. Pass a Fung Wah bus about 30 miles west of Boston. There was a bit of traffic on the road, but it really didn’t slow things down too much. Even though I had to avoid a few pinheads that almost hit me, we made great timing until we were around exit 131 on the Garden State Parkway. Traffic was heavy from that point until around the 80 mile marker. All in all, we made decent timing as we checked in around 4:45. We got a regular room in the main tower – 1920. The elevators were slow, which was typical of how they were for the weekend.
We head down to the casino floor and earn my 20 points for the day’s giveaway. A 3 piece Bob Mackey luggage set. I’m thinking, 3 piece set – it’s got to have at least one decent sized suitcase that Spencer may be able to use. Well, the 3 piece consisted of a carry-on, a smaller carry-on, and a notebook bag. It was free and we could still use it…
About 6:30, we get a call from home. The central AC isn’t working. Karen talks with her brother Jason and he tells her not to worry about it. Take care of it Wednesday when we get home. Of course, Karen is going to worry about it the whole trip.
We had 7:00 PM dinner reservations at Roberto’s. We head up to the restaurant and we’re greeted by Marelka. (I think that’s her name.) We noticed that a few of the regular waiters aren’t on the floor tonight. The restaurant seems a bit understaffed for a busy holiday weekend. The staff that was on was really hustling. Karen and I weren’t in a hurry, so the slow pace of our meal was fine to us. However, it’s the first time at Roberto’s where I have seen irate customers due to the slowness of the kitchen. We were able to talk with some of the staff that we’ve become friendly with over the years and they confirmed that the new management has cut back staffing in both the front and rear of the house. It was pretty poor planning by management to have the place so understaffed as I heard a couple of people say that they won’t come back to the place.
After dinner, Karen and I find a couple of the 9/6 25c DDB machines. Karen prefers playing bonus poker as her money lasts longer on it, but there isn’t any 8/5 machines at TP. We play for a couple of hours and Karen decides to head up to the room. I decide to play on the 50c machine for a little while and about 10:45, I head to the other end of the casino floor and play on the dollar machine. I’m losing slowly, but still losing.
Okay, I had a bit of luck on the $2 machines the last time we were in AC. So, I moved over to my old faithfuls. (sp?) I shortly hit quad deuces without the kicker for $800. I TITO out at $650. I then run through about $400 and decide to put in the TITO. warning bells are going off in my head. Don’t put it all back in. don’t play it out…. I am hitting 4 OAKs like crazy and I have the credits up over $2,400. I was going to cash out at 2,000. Then I get dealt aces over 5s full house. I discard the 5s and get this:
BINGO!!!
That’s going to make the weekend a little nicer. I take a picture with my cell phone and send out to a few people. Karen replies; that’s nice dear. But don’t give it all back! My wife knows me so well!
Anyway, I keep playing and I am slowly giving money back. After about an hour, I am about ready to go up to the room for the night and get dealt this:
Sorry that the picture’s blurry, but I was trying to hurry and take the picture as a slot attendant was coming right over. It's quad aces with a 3 kicker. While waiting for my hand pay, a guy came over and asked me if I was the same person that hit about an hour ago. He was a little creepy, but didn’t hang around long. Still, it made me a little nervous. I play until about 1:30 or so and head up to the room.
Sunday – July 3rd
Karen and I were up and about by 11:00. Housekeeping knocked on our door about 10:30 as we did not have a do not disturb sign to put on the door. She said that she would come back with one. When we left, there was still no sign on the door. We leisurely strolled down the Boardwalk towards Resorts. It was already getting hot and humid by the time we got there. We were meeting Pattie (Sheltie Lover) and her husband Chick for brunch at Cappricio’s at 1:15. We were early, so we decided to gamble. Karen likes to play bonus poker and Resorts has plenty of them at 50c machines. I decided to play the short pay 9/5 DDB at the 50c level. Karen was holding her own, but I was giving Resorts some of Trump winnings. Pattie and Chick show up and we head up to the brunch early in hopes that we may get seated early. Well, that didn’t happen! In fact, it was just the opposite. We didn’t get seated until 1:35.
We already knew that Jorge had brought over Jamie. But, we were pleasantly surprised to find two more of the waiters from Roberto’s, Joseph and Wiston, had come over as well. It was funny because Karen and I had mentioned at dinner on Saturday that we hadn’t seen Wiston in a long time. Although we had to wait a while for a table; the food and service was worth the wait. After brunch, I picked up a huge apple pie as a giveaway. The thing must have weighed almost 10 pounds and was almost as big as a large pizza! The pie looked good and even made it home with us, but no one was in the mood for it until it went bad.
We went down to the casino floor, pie in hand. Karen and Pattie went off to play penny machines, Chick went off to I think play a Wild Cherry machine and I headed back to a VP machine. Pattie and Karen came back after a bit and Chick soon returned. We played a little VP together and then Pattie and Chick headed off to the Showboat. Karen and I played a little while longer. I continued to give some of my winnings to Resorts while Karen held her own.
We headed back to Trump Plaza as we had 6:00 PM dinner reservations at Max’s Steakhouse. When we got back to TP, we realized that we were still pretty full from brunch and re-scheduled our reservation to 8:00 PM. We now had a do not disturb sign on our door AND an unmade room. Unbelievable. So, I headed back down to the casino floor and Karen waited for housekeeping to bring up some clean towels. I decide to play on the $2 machine again and Esther is playing on one of the machines. I haven’t seen her in years. This is the foul mouth granny who used to grab my thigh at the old dollar machines. She’s just pouring in money into her machine. This f*cking machine. I’ve put 5,000 god d*mn dollars into it and I don’t even get a three of a kind. She finally hits quad 4s with a kicker for $1,600. But there’s nobody around to pay her. She goes off to find someone after waiting for about 15 minutes and it was probably almost 45 minutes before she got paid. She was steaming.
Esther asked me my name and when I said Flip, she asked like Flip Wilson? I said yes and she told me that he was one of her clients. She was a lawyer, now retired. She said that Nipsy Russell was also one of her clients. Then stated that a lot of those kind of people were her clients. She then corrected herself that she meant entertainment types. LOL!
We head up to Max’s at 8 and the place is about 2/3rds full. It’s not very busy for a holiday weekend. Originally they were going to have Roberto’s open as well, but that was closed. Now, I know why it was easy for us to change our reservations. Karen and I both had Filet Mignon and struggled to finish them. (They were very good; we just weren’t extremely hungry!) We found out that the new management had let go of the manager, Joseph, about a month or so ago. This restaurant also seemed to be understaffed.
After dinner, we head to the casino. I have $120 in free slot play, but I am having trouble accessing it as the key boards on 3/4s of the machines that I play aren’t working properly. I am playing on the 25c machines and get dealt a pair of aces and on the draw I get this:
That gives me a little bit of money to play with. Karen headed up to the room as she had a headache. (She was still stressed that the AC at home was out.) I play on a multi-denom DDB machine and bounce between 50c and $1. I would do okay on the 50c and then give it back when I would bump it up to $1. I finally head back up to the room around 1:45.
Monday – July 4th
Trump Plaza was offering the Chairman’s Club for free on Monday – reservations were required in advance. We had made our reservation for 12:00 and we showed up about 5 or 10 minutes early. The Club didn’t open until noon. There were probably about a dozen people waiting ahead of us in line. They opened the door and they had a young man at the door. He was just about useless. One group of people just walked right past him; others never made reservations; and it was almost complete chaos to get in. We grabbed a table in the corner and we saw Esther and a couple of regulars that we knew. They had some good food out, but they were not ready when the doors opened. They had things like salad fixings out; but no salad dressing. They had some really good bbq ribs – but no wet naps. They also had an interesting orange marmalade grilled chicken. It was very tasty.
The place filled up pretty quick and around 12:30 or so, a couple comes in and there’s not a table available. The woman goes over to the kid working the door and tells him: there’s a lady at one table that’s just reading a newspaper; you need to tell her to leave. And that woman over there, she’s obviously just socializing, get her to leave. Fortunately, he told her that he couldn’t do that and then a table opened up. For what it’s worth, the lady that was reading the newspaper was also having Dewars on the rocks and the lady “socializing” was Esther, who is a Signature card holder.
After eating, we head down to the casino floor for a little while. We run into Cathy and Bob and catch up with them for a little while. Then, we took a walk on the Boardwalk as Karen wanted to check out a couple of stores that sold baseball hats. She was thinking of getting Spencer a hat or two, but didn’t see any that she thought that he would like. I told her that she could get him any hat , but couldn’t buy him a Yankees hat!
We headed over to the Borgata for a couple of hours. Karen and I sat down at a multi-denom, multi-game machine. I was pretty much in the middle of what I believe was an 8 machine row. I look over to Karen’s left and I think that I recognize the person seated there. Karen decides to play a penny game and leaves. I take another quick glance and my suspicions are confirmed. It’s AC Rose. I think that the last time I saw her, she went ballistic on Jeanne-Marie about smoking. I am not doing too well and now it’s the Borgata that’s getting some of my Trump winnings. AC Rose gets up and sits to my immediate left. The name that pops up on the screen when she puts her card in confirms that it’s AC Rose. She plays about 10 minutes there and then gets up and sits to my right. She never says a thing to me and I wasn’t about to start a conversation with her.
Karen comes back and we do a stroll around the casino to see if they have Invaders from the Planet Moolah. If they did, we couldn’t find it. It’s now a little after 5:00 and we decide to grab something to eat at the buffet. Karen’s never eaten at the Borgata before. We get in line and everyone’s in the Black Label line. After a few minutes, one of the clerks/hosts/? starts going down the line checking cards. She asks the two women (African Americans) in front of us: Are you black? They show their black label cards. We show ours and then we start talking with the people in front of us. I didn’t know how to answer that question. LOL! The buffet was great – I still think it’s the best in AC. It’s now after 6 and we head back to Trump Plaza so that we don’t get stuck in the fireworks traffic.
Trump Plaza gave me free slot play in bunches for Monday. First it was $100, then I got a bonus $10 to be used between 5-8 PM and then another $40 after 9:00! Karen and I are trying to figure out where to watch the fireworks from – the Boardwalk or from our room. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to see them from the angle of the window in our room, so we decided that we’d just watch them from the Boardwalk.
We’re on the casino floor in the VP area and both of us have to go to the bathroom. When I come out, I notice this woman sitting on an end machine right near the ladies room. She’s playing keno. So, I sat down next to her and make a wiseass comment about playing keno. She turns towards me; I am sure ready to give me an earful. It’s Lydia (aka Amazon!) Hugs all around. We talk for about 20 minutes. Lydia’s machines touch screen wasn’t working right and she couldn’t get her favorite bets in. Finally we say our goodbyes so that she can finish her keno play and head back over to Bally’s to watch the fireworks with her boys.
We head out to the Boardwalk about 9:30 and there’s quite a crowd in front of Trump Plaza.
The view that we had just outside the doors was great:
The fireworks went on for about 20 minutes and were pretty impressive. Afterwards we go back in to play for a while longer. We head up to the raised area behind the elevator banks and play on those machines for a while. I get dealt Ks,Qs,Js, 10s and pull the As for a royal!
I sent out a few text messages. The Fluck is back! Karen went up to the room around 11:45 and I headed up about an hour later.
Tuesday – July 5th
Karen and I got up and headed down to 24Central for breakfast about 11:15 or so. There’s 3 parties waiting in line in the Chairman’s club line and I can see that they are all gold card holders and don’t belong in this line. I flash my Chairman’s club card and the other parties still got seated ahead of us. And then, to boot, the hostess seats in a station where she had just seated two other parties. We had to wait a bit to get our order taken and the food came out a bit slow. Again, you can tell that they’ve cut back the staff in the restaurant and I heard a couple of people complaining about the slow service.
After breakfast, we headed over to the Walk. I bought Karen a makeup bag and a wallet at the Coach outlet. She was trying to match them to the bag that we bought on one of our earlier trips, but they didn’t have that pattern anymore.
Afterwards, we went to play my last free slot play. There’s one $1 three coin 8/5 Aces & Faces machine at Trump Plaza. I had $45 in free play and put it in the machine for Karen to play on. I went over and played one of the $1 DDB machines. I was slowly giving some of winnings back, but Karen hit a couple of 4 OAKs and was happy to have the credits over $200. She finally cashed out at $221! I wanted to play on the $2 machines one last time on this trip. I quickly fed about $700 into the machine and I was going to quit soon. Karen went to the ladies room and I got a pair of fours. I pulled the other 2 fours and a kicker for a $1600 hit.
Now it was my turn to wait forever to get paid. When Karen came back from the ladies room, she went looking for a slot attendant. She finally found one and I got paid after about 30 minutes. Evidently, they only had two attendants on the entire floor that afternoon. Sheesh! I played out the rest of my credits and we went upstairs to get ready to leave.
We stopped at the White House for Italian subs and brought a half Italian home for Jason. We had perfect timing as we were able to get a table right away and then the lines began. We finally got on the road about 6:00 PM and we made it back to Malden by 11:45. We hit a little bit of road construction, but still made great timing to get home.
Finale
Trump Plaza is a mess, I’m sad to say. Short staffed restaurants, removal of a lot of good paying VP machines, dirty rugs in the elevators, etc. I really hope that they sell the place soon.
Wednesday morning I got on line to find an electrician to look at the central air. I got on the yellow pages and sorted for electricians in Malden. Of course, they always give you an expanded listing. So, I sorted by distance. The first one on the list mentions air conditioner systems. So, I click on their website link only to find a graphic gay porn site. Didn’t use those guys! The company that we did call came over later that day and we were lucky that it was only the circuit breaker that needed replacing. I was thinking that I was going to have to use my winnings to get the AC repaired.
Saturday – July 2nd
Karen actually gets up before me and wants to surprise me by being ready early. We finally get on the road by 10:00 AM. Pass a Fung Wah bus about 30 miles west of Boston. There was a bit of traffic on the road, but it really didn’t slow things down too much. Even though I had to avoid a few pinheads that almost hit me, we made great timing until we were around exit 131 on the Garden State Parkway. Traffic was heavy from that point until around the 80 mile marker. All in all, we made decent timing as we checked in around 4:45. We got a regular room in the main tower – 1920. The elevators were slow, which was typical of how they were for the weekend.
We head down to the casino floor and earn my 20 points for the day’s giveaway. A 3 piece Bob Mackey luggage set. I’m thinking, 3 piece set – it’s got to have at least one decent sized suitcase that Spencer may be able to use. Well, the 3 piece consisted of a carry-on, a smaller carry-on, and a notebook bag. It was free and we could still use it…
About 6:30, we get a call from home. The central AC isn’t working. Karen talks with her brother Jason and he tells her not to worry about it. Take care of it Wednesday when we get home. Of course, Karen is going to worry about it the whole trip.
We had 7:00 PM dinner reservations at Roberto’s. We head up to the restaurant and we’re greeted by Marelka. (I think that’s her name.) We noticed that a few of the regular waiters aren’t on the floor tonight. The restaurant seems a bit understaffed for a busy holiday weekend. The staff that was on was really hustling. Karen and I weren’t in a hurry, so the slow pace of our meal was fine to us. However, it’s the first time at Roberto’s where I have seen irate customers due to the slowness of the kitchen. We were able to talk with some of the staff that we’ve become friendly with over the years and they confirmed that the new management has cut back staffing in both the front and rear of the house. It was pretty poor planning by management to have the place so understaffed as I heard a couple of people say that they won’t come back to the place.
After dinner, Karen and I find a couple of the 9/6 25c DDB machines. Karen prefers playing bonus poker as her money lasts longer on it, but there isn’t any 8/5 machines at TP. We play for a couple of hours and Karen decides to head up to the room. I decide to play on the 50c machine for a little while and about 10:45, I head to the other end of the casino floor and play on the dollar machine. I’m losing slowly, but still losing.
Okay, I had a bit of luck on the $2 machines the last time we were in AC. So, I moved over to my old faithfuls. (sp?) I shortly hit quad deuces without the kicker for $800. I TITO out at $650. I then run through about $400 and decide to put in the TITO. warning bells are going off in my head. Don’t put it all back in. don’t play it out…. I am hitting 4 OAKs like crazy and I have the credits up over $2,400. I was going to cash out at 2,000. Then I get dealt aces over 5s full house. I discard the 5s and get this:
BINGO!!!
That’s going to make the weekend a little nicer. I take a picture with my cell phone and send out to a few people. Karen replies; that’s nice dear. But don’t give it all back! My wife knows me so well!
Anyway, I keep playing and I am slowly giving money back. After about an hour, I am about ready to go up to the room for the night and get dealt this:
Sorry that the picture’s blurry, but I was trying to hurry and take the picture as a slot attendant was coming right over. It's quad aces with a 3 kicker. While waiting for my hand pay, a guy came over and asked me if I was the same person that hit about an hour ago. He was a little creepy, but didn’t hang around long. Still, it made me a little nervous. I play until about 1:30 or so and head up to the room.
Sunday – July 3rd
Karen and I were up and about by 11:00. Housekeeping knocked on our door about 10:30 as we did not have a do not disturb sign to put on the door. She said that she would come back with one. When we left, there was still no sign on the door. We leisurely strolled down the Boardwalk towards Resorts. It was already getting hot and humid by the time we got there. We were meeting Pattie (Sheltie Lover) and her husband Chick for brunch at Cappricio’s at 1:15. We were early, so we decided to gamble. Karen likes to play bonus poker and Resorts has plenty of them at 50c machines. I decided to play the short pay 9/5 DDB at the 50c level. Karen was holding her own, but I was giving Resorts some of Trump winnings. Pattie and Chick show up and we head up to the brunch early in hopes that we may get seated early. Well, that didn’t happen! In fact, it was just the opposite. We didn’t get seated until 1:35.
We already knew that Jorge had brought over Jamie. But, we were pleasantly surprised to find two more of the waiters from Roberto’s, Joseph and Wiston, had come over as well. It was funny because Karen and I had mentioned at dinner on Saturday that we hadn’t seen Wiston in a long time. Although we had to wait a while for a table; the food and service was worth the wait. After brunch, I picked up a huge apple pie as a giveaway. The thing must have weighed almost 10 pounds and was almost as big as a large pizza! The pie looked good and even made it home with us, but no one was in the mood for it until it went bad.
We went down to the casino floor, pie in hand. Karen and Pattie went off to play penny machines, Chick went off to I think play a Wild Cherry machine and I headed back to a VP machine. Pattie and Karen came back after a bit and Chick soon returned. We played a little VP together and then Pattie and Chick headed off to the Showboat. Karen and I played a little while longer. I continued to give some of my winnings to Resorts while Karen held her own.
We headed back to Trump Plaza as we had 6:00 PM dinner reservations at Max’s Steakhouse. When we got back to TP, we realized that we were still pretty full from brunch and re-scheduled our reservation to 8:00 PM. We now had a do not disturb sign on our door AND an unmade room. Unbelievable. So, I headed back down to the casino floor and Karen waited for housekeeping to bring up some clean towels. I decide to play on the $2 machine again and Esther is playing on one of the machines. I haven’t seen her in years. This is the foul mouth granny who used to grab my thigh at the old dollar machines. She’s just pouring in money into her machine. This f*cking machine. I’ve put 5,000 god d*mn dollars into it and I don’t even get a three of a kind. She finally hits quad 4s with a kicker for $1,600. But there’s nobody around to pay her. She goes off to find someone after waiting for about 15 minutes and it was probably almost 45 minutes before she got paid. She was steaming.
Esther asked me my name and when I said Flip, she asked like Flip Wilson? I said yes and she told me that he was one of her clients. She was a lawyer, now retired. She said that Nipsy Russell was also one of her clients. Then stated that a lot of those kind of people were her clients. She then corrected herself that she meant entertainment types. LOL!
We head up to Max’s at 8 and the place is about 2/3rds full. It’s not very busy for a holiday weekend. Originally they were going to have Roberto’s open as well, but that was closed. Now, I know why it was easy for us to change our reservations. Karen and I both had Filet Mignon and struggled to finish them. (They were very good; we just weren’t extremely hungry!) We found out that the new management had let go of the manager, Joseph, about a month or so ago. This restaurant also seemed to be understaffed.
After dinner, we head to the casino. I have $120 in free slot play, but I am having trouble accessing it as the key boards on 3/4s of the machines that I play aren’t working properly. I am playing on the 25c machines and get dealt a pair of aces and on the draw I get this:
That gives me a little bit of money to play with. Karen headed up to the room as she had a headache. (She was still stressed that the AC at home was out.) I play on a multi-denom DDB machine and bounce between 50c and $1. I would do okay on the 50c and then give it back when I would bump it up to $1. I finally head back up to the room around 1:45.
Monday – July 4th
Trump Plaza was offering the Chairman’s Club for free on Monday – reservations were required in advance. We had made our reservation for 12:00 and we showed up about 5 or 10 minutes early. The Club didn’t open until noon. There were probably about a dozen people waiting ahead of us in line. They opened the door and they had a young man at the door. He was just about useless. One group of people just walked right past him; others never made reservations; and it was almost complete chaos to get in. We grabbed a table in the corner and we saw Esther and a couple of regulars that we knew. They had some good food out, but they were not ready when the doors opened. They had things like salad fixings out; but no salad dressing. They had some really good bbq ribs – but no wet naps. They also had an interesting orange marmalade grilled chicken. It was very tasty.
The place filled up pretty quick and around 12:30 or so, a couple comes in and there’s not a table available. The woman goes over to the kid working the door and tells him: there’s a lady at one table that’s just reading a newspaper; you need to tell her to leave. And that woman over there, she’s obviously just socializing, get her to leave. Fortunately, he told her that he couldn’t do that and then a table opened up. For what it’s worth, the lady that was reading the newspaper was also having Dewars on the rocks and the lady “socializing” was Esther, who is a Signature card holder.
After eating, we head down to the casino floor for a little while. We run into Cathy and Bob and catch up with them for a little while. Then, we took a walk on the Boardwalk as Karen wanted to check out a couple of stores that sold baseball hats. She was thinking of getting Spencer a hat or two, but didn’t see any that she thought that he would like. I told her that she could get him any hat , but couldn’t buy him a Yankees hat!
We headed over to the Borgata for a couple of hours. Karen and I sat down at a multi-denom, multi-game machine. I was pretty much in the middle of what I believe was an 8 machine row. I look over to Karen’s left and I think that I recognize the person seated there. Karen decides to play a penny game and leaves. I take another quick glance and my suspicions are confirmed. It’s AC Rose. I think that the last time I saw her, she went ballistic on Jeanne-Marie about smoking. I am not doing too well and now it’s the Borgata that’s getting some of my Trump winnings. AC Rose gets up and sits to my immediate left. The name that pops up on the screen when she puts her card in confirms that it’s AC Rose. She plays about 10 minutes there and then gets up and sits to my right. She never says a thing to me and I wasn’t about to start a conversation with her.
Karen comes back and we do a stroll around the casino to see if they have Invaders from the Planet Moolah. If they did, we couldn’t find it. It’s now a little after 5:00 and we decide to grab something to eat at the buffet. Karen’s never eaten at the Borgata before. We get in line and everyone’s in the Black Label line. After a few minutes, one of the clerks/hosts/? starts going down the line checking cards. She asks the two women (African Americans) in front of us: Are you black? They show their black label cards. We show ours and then we start talking with the people in front of us. I didn’t know how to answer that question. LOL! The buffet was great – I still think it’s the best in AC. It’s now after 6 and we head back to Trump Plaza so that we don’t get stuck in the fireworks traffic.
Trump Plaza gave me free slot play in bunches for Monday. First it was $100, then I got a bonus $10 to be used between 5-8 PM and then another $40 after 9:00! Karen and I are trying to figure out where to watch the fireworks from – the Boardwalk or from our room. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to see them from the angle of the window in our room, so we decided that we’d just watch them from the Boardwalk.
We’re on the casino floor in the VP area and both of us have to go to the bathroom. When I come out, I notice this woman sitting on an end machine right near the ladies room. She’s playing keno. So, I sat down next to her and make a wiseass comment about playing keno. She turns towards me; I am sure ready to give me an earful. It’s Lydia (aka Amazon!) Hugs all around. We talk for about 20 minutes. Lydia’s machines touch screen wasn’t working right and she couldn’t get her favorite bets in. Finally we say our goodbyes so that she can finish her keno play and head back over to Bally’s to watch the fireworks with her boys.
We head out to the Boardwalk about 9:30 and there’s quite a crowd in front of Trump Plaza.
The view that we had just outside the doors was great:
The fireworks went on for about 20 minutes and were pretty impressive. Afterwards we go back in to play for a while longer. We head up to the raised area behind the elevator banks and play on those machines for a while. I get dealt Ks,Qs,Js, 10s and pull the As for a royal!
I sent out a few text messages. The Fluck is back! Karen went up to the room around 11:45 and I headed up about an hour later.
Tuesday – July 5th
Karen and I got up and headed down to 24Central for breakfast about 11:15 or so. There’s 3 parties waiting in line in the Chairman’s club line and I can see that they are all gold card holders and don’t belong in this line. I flash my Chairman’s club card and the other parties still got seated ahead of us. And then, to boot, the hostess seats in a station where she had just seated two other parties. We had to wait a bit to get our order taken and the food came out a bit slow. Again, you can tell that they’ve cut back the staff in the restaurant and I heard a couple of people complaining about the slow service.
After breakfast, we headed over to the Walk. I bought Karen a makeup bag and a wallet at the Coach outlet. She was trying to match them to the bag that we bought on one of our earlier trips, but they didn’t have that pattern anymore.
Afterwards, we went to play my last free slot play. There’s one $1 three coin 8/5 Aces & Faces machine at Trump Plaza. I had $45 in free play and put it in the machine for Karen to play on. I went over and played one of the $1 DDB machines. I was slowly giving some of winnings back, but Karen hit a couple of 4 OAKs and was happy to have the credits over $200. She finally cashed out at $221! I wanted to play on the $2 machines one last time on this trip. I quickly fed about $700 into the machine and I was going to quit soon. Karen went to the ladies room and I got a pair of fours. I pulled the other 2 fours and a kicker for a $1600 hit.
Now it was my turn to wait forever to get paid. When Karen came back from the ladies room, she went looking for a slot attendant. She finally found one and I got paid after about 30 minutes. Evidently, they only had two attendants on the entire floor that afternoon. Sheesh! I played out the rest of my credits and we went upstairs to get ready to leave.
We stopped at the White House for Italian subs and brought a half Italian home for Jason. We had perfect timing as we were able to get a table right away and then the lines began. We finally got on the road about 6:00 PM and we made it back to Malden by 11:45. We hit a little bit of road construction, but still made great timing to get home.
Finale
Trump Plaza is a mess, I’m sad to say. Short staffed restaurants, removal of a lot of good paying VP machines, dirty rugs in the elevators, etc. I really hope that they sell the place soon.
Wednesday morning I got on line to find an electrician to look at the central air. I got on the yellow pages and sorted for electricians in Malden. Of course, they always give you an expanded listing. So, I sorted by distance. The first one on the list mentions air conditioner systems. So, I click on their website link only to find a graphic gay porn site. Didn’t use those guys! The company that we did call came over later that day and we were lucky that it was only the circuit breaker that needed replacing. I was thinking that I was going to have to use my winnings to get the AC repaired.
