Fun Trip to Atlantic City, Circa 2022 – Part 1

This was my first purely recreational casino trip.

Yes, my first casino trip, to Las Vegas in 1984, was mostly recreational; it was Brad’s and my first vacation together in our new wonderful relationship. Still, there was a tiny bit of “trying to do the smart thing.” I had read that table players were smarter than slot players, so I played blackjack, although I didn’t know there was anything called “basic strategy.”  Brad hadn’t read anything about casinos, so he merrily hit the slots. I couldn’t understand why I was losing my behind and Brad was coming to my table showing me heavy buckets of dollar tokens. Of course, by the end of the trip, we both were responsible for our disappeared bankroll.

When we got home, I hit the library and we started becoming life-long students of smart gambling. I’m not saying we didn’t think having fun wasn’t an important goal. For 38 years, we had more fun than we could have ever imagined. But we found that playing smart – losing less and winning more – increased the fun factor.  Kind of having your cake and eating it too!

However, circumstances change. Because of Brad’s declining health, we could no longer do casino trips together like we had for so many years. Three years of caregiving were taking its toll on me. I needed a vacation and Angela and Steve volunteered to take care of Brad. I love to travel, so where did I want to go and what did I want to do? Lie on the beach?Sightsee in new places or visit old haunts? Look for entertaining activities? Whatever I chose, the main goal was to just relax and have fun.

Fortunately, the answer came in my mailbox, a great offer from Caesars Rewards Air that was generated by my previous heavy play at CZR properties: A free charter flight to Atlantic City and a three-night stay at the Tropicana, right on the Boardwalk.  And best of all, I could bring a guest. Susan, my good friend and fellow senior resident at Legacy Reserve, was happy to help me use this comp. She recently lost her husband after years of being his caregiver, so she shared my goal to have a fun and relaxing vacation.

On August 9, we started our adventure. The first good news was that we didn’t have to go to Atlanta to catch our flight, like on some of these charter trips. That airport is a zoo!  Since I don’t drive anymore, Susan drove us in her car to the Middle Georgia Regional Airport, located in a lonely country “field” outside of Macon. We parked in the free lot just outside the tiny (compared to Atlanta) terminal to check into our flight and give them our luggage. And making us feel like we were still back in the ’50s, we walked right out onto the tarmac to climb the stairs rolled up to the airplane door. Surprisingly, the plane was a large 737 and we hadn’t nearly filled it up. But then we were informed we would stop in Augusta, where we picked up a lot more excited CZR players. The atmosphere grew even more enthusiastic when it was announced that Caesars was comping everyone to a free alcoholic beverage.

Once we arrived at the Atlantic City airport, buses were waiting to take us to our hotel. By the time we ate lunch, we were given our room keys and found our luggage awaiting us there, a smooth operation that saved our old backs! My host had requested an upgrade, so we were given an extra-large studio. This is an old casino building, but they’re doing a lot of renovation. I would call the room nice, but not fancy.

As is the usual these days, both in casino-hotels and others, there was no daily room service unless you requested it. (I miss those days when in some hotels, they gave you free play if you skipped the daily room service.)  However, we had no complaints. We had plenty of space, the beds were comfortable, and an ocean view provided us a picture-perfect full moon to enjoy at night.

Neither Susan nor I are foodies and we both got bored with the restaurant-style meals we were mostly served every evening in the Legacy dining room. Although there were many full-service and upscale dining options at the Tropicana, our mantra for this trip was “Bring on the fast food!”: tacos, ice cream treats, deli favorites, hamburgers at Hooter’s, and an unusual breakfast crepe at LaPetite Creperie. We did have one special meal at P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, where we split an orange chicken main dish. Good thing we didn’t order two entrees, because we’d first ordered to share their house-specialty appetizer, lettuce wraps. These were the best I’ve ever eaten and almost a meal in themselves.

Of course, we could have chosen to eat at other places in town: recommended famous gourmet restaurants on and off the Boardwalk and food offerings in other casinos and all along the Boardwalk. However, I had a big balance in my Reward Credits account, so we could eat free at any of the three CZR properties, Caesars and Harrah’s as well as the Trop. But we were so busy relaxing that we never got to either one of the sister properties and we easily found enough fun food at the Trop.

One of the places where we were planning to relax was the beach. Storms had been predicted, but to our delight, the first day dawned sunny and dry and we were into our bathing suits and out the casino door right onto the Boardwalk. Just a few steps over a sand dune stretched a wide beach right to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean water. Many brave souls were in that water, but mostly younger than us. We put our feet in, just to say we were “in the ocean,” but it was too cold and wouldn’t be relaxing for our old bodies.  Relaxing would be stretching out on our beach towels and soaking in the sun.

I had kind of figured that we would spend a few hours relaxing here, forgetting I hadn’t laid out on a beach for 25 years, plus I suffer heat exhaustion if I’m in the sun very long.  So about an hour of trying to get comfortable on our beach towels – I’d also forgotten sand was so hard – we decided to go back to the room. I’m glad there wasn’t a video camera pointed at us as we struggled to get up. It would have been a good scene for a comedy film. Susan is eight years younger than I am and a little more limber, but we were both laughing so hard that it was making the task of getting upright even more difficult.

She finally got on her feet, then helped me up. But by that time, I was well on my way to a sun stroke. Where we were on the beach, nearer the water, the sand was smooth to walk on, but as we make our way back, the sand became heavy and deep. I really thought I was going to pass out and Susan would have to go back to the lifeguard tower to get help. This was not part of our relaxing plan. However, I summoned up some inner strength I didn’t know I had and finally made it to the Boardwalk, where I slumped on a bench and drank some water.  After a little rest, I caught my breath and walked back into the Trop. I was gonna survive! We stopped at the deli and ordered a brunch sandwich to take back to the room where we rested and laughed about our non-relaxing beach adventure.

Fortunately, this picture was taken, by a friendly lifeguard, before we started our sunbathing.

As you all know, it’s hard for me to tell a short story. So this has become Part 1. I haven’t even mentioned gambling and yes, we did spend quite a bit of time in casinos.

Fortunately, it was more relaxing than our beach time. And although I promised you in my last couple of blogs that this was not to be an advantage-play trip, I actually surprised myself that so many of the smart-gambling concepts I’ve talked about over the years could be applied during a strictly recreational casino visit. I guess being frugal is in my DNA. Stay tuned for Part 2.