Once upon a time I was booked for a trip to Europe, for a fest.  As it got closer and the lineup didn’t get anywhere near as great as I had come to expect it to be, the less I wanted to go.  Finally I threw in the towel, but decided to keep two days off work to get a break.   Where oh where should I go with this newly found free time?  Oh hey, GAMBLING sounds good.

I tried to stay at Borgata, since they have been sending me two night offers.  Problem is, they were not available on my dates.  I could use them if I wanted to go a week later.  But once I got the idea in my head that I was taking a break from work and going gambling, the idea of waiting a whole other week seemed too long.  So I booked a CET comp.  CET owns three properties in Atlantic City and all three properties came up as comped for me.  Ballys was immediately crossed off my list because there once was a time where no matter what room type I would book, I would end up in their crappy Claridge Tower.  Thing is, that building is now a completely separate hotel so you no longer run the risk of being put there.  But I am still mad, so no thank you.  That left me to choose between Caesars and Harrahs, the latter offering me a suite.  Pretty tempting.  But I chose Caesars instead.  Let me go on a little rant here.

If you have read my reports over the years,  you know I love gambling with a large iced coffee.  None of the CET properties have a Starbucks.  Or a Dunkin Donuts.  Harrahs has nothing in walking distance.  Caesars has both a Starbucks and a Dunkin Donuts in walking distance.  Although some will argue with me about it being too scary to walk a few blocks off the Boardwalk.  Please, don’t.

It was really sweet when Trump Plaza was open, as they had a Starbucks.  It kills me that it went away when the casino did.  So now I will stay at Caesars and walk to either Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks.  In case you care (you shouldn’t) I prefer Dunkin Donuts but I have a bunch of money on my Starbucks gift card (god bless everyone who gives Starbucks gift cards as holiday presents) so that is that.

If you want to respond and tell me that Caesars and Ballys AND Harrahs all have places that sell coffee on their properties, I will save you the trouble.  I do know this.  I also know that zero of them have super sized iced coffee.  I promise you, this is not my first caffeine infused rodeo.

I have free play at both Ballys and Caesars, $10 each day so $60 total.  I also have $20 at Borgata, $10 from my offers and $10 from MyVegas.  I also purchased a Groupon for Resorts.  For $30 I get $20 free play, $20 dining credit at any restaurant and $20 to play on their online casino (which I cannot do until I am in the state of New Jersey.)

I also got $25 free play from the casino bonus for riding the bus.  I had to work for this one.  Normally, I buy bus tickets online, and they do not have an option to print at home, so I pick them up at Port Authority.   Greyhound now allows you to print at home, so I did.  And there was no casino bonus.   I got to Port Authority an hour and a half early to deal with this.  Have you ever spoken to a Greyhound employee at Port Authority?  Here’s a tip: Avoid this at all costs.  It is not their fault at all they are curmudgeons.  They deal with assholes all day long.   Like the guy who refused to believe he could not get a refund on a non-refundable ticket, or the guy who cut the line, got denied cutting the line, started yelling about coming back with his AK, and so on.

Finally it was my turn.  I explain my dilemma and am told that I needed to book a ticket to the casino, not the bus terminal. But I did, see?  Caesars.   Then it was that I must have picked the wrong ticket type.  Nope.  Finally she stops making suggestions and just looks up the ticket type for me.  Oh hey, I booked a discounted ticket so that is why I did not get the bonus coupon.  Except that I did not book a discounted ticket. She looks again.  “Oh, you did purchase the right ticket type, why didn’t you get the casino bonus?”  Exactly.  She voids my ticket and reissues me a new one, with the bonus.  SCORE.

I will never print at home again.

My bus was only half full, so I had two seats to myself.  It makes me laugh that there was a point in time where the 2.5 hour ride used to seem absolutely unbearable to me.  After a 26 hour flight to China, this was a walk in the park.

We get to Caesars, I get my bus bonus.  They have changed the rules on this.   You now have to wait half an hour before it hits your card, and it is only good until 5:00 am.

I took a walk to the gas station about a two block distance from Caesars to get water and soda.   Then I checked in.   I get asked “Are you interested in an upgrade?”   Um, I don’t know?  “Well we have suites available at a discount……..”  Yeah, no thanks.   I get room 7503 in the Ocean Tower.  Don’t let the room number fool you, it is on the fifth floor.

I get to the elevator, it opens and there is a man in there who cannot figure out at all how to get the elevator to work.  You have to put your card into a slot, and then push your floor.  Nope, this is too complicated for him.  So I put my card in, pick my floor and tell him to pick his while the light is still green. He does.

The elevator stops at the third floor and some guy gets on.  Then we stop at the fifth floor and I need to get off.  OG dude has his suitcase almost completely blocking the door, newbie is blocking the rest.  I say “excuse me” and neither move.  I yell “EXCUSE ME” and newbie turns sideways, but he is the same width sideways as he was front ways so this does not help.  OG dude grabs his suitcase handle but does not move the bag.  I yell “I NEED TO GET OFF THE ELEVATOR!”  No one moves.  I am getting so annoyed thinking the door is going to shut and I am going to have to go to both their floors, which OG would never have even gotten to push the button for if not for me, if one of these fucking assholes does not let me off the fucking elevator.  I am getting off this elevator.  Just ask that woman who I accidentally knocked down in Las Vegas when she would not move out of my way when I tried to exit an elevator.

I ended up wrapping my foot around OG dude’s suitcase and pulling it with my foot, out of my way, while squeezing past Newbie on my way out and yelling “ASSHOLES.”   That’ll learn ’em.

I had booked a premium ocean view room.  We all know that you are not guaranteed a room type so I was not surprised that my ocean view looked like this:

I did have a Jacuzzi, or as my buddy Royal Flusher likes to call them, a Jizzcuzzi.

Oh and no Do Not Disturb sign.  But don’t worry guys, I will spare you the rant that I normally make when this happens to me.  If I still have your attention after the elevator story, I would be pushing my luck ranting any further.  And if I am going to push my luck, it is going to be on a video poker machine.

My plan is to use my $25 bus bonus, $10 free play at Caesars from an offer, and $10 Ballys from an offer.  Zero cash, just the free play. Then I will get dinner to go and watch Survivor in my room.

I lost the $35 in Caesars on a Double Double Bonus Ultimate X video poker machine.  Then I lost a $20 in cash, because I said I was not going to play cash.  Over to Ballys, where I lost the free play and $60 in cash (didn’t I just say zero cash?) before this saved me:

I cashed out, got some Johnny Rockets to go and went to the room with zero damage done.  I watched television, because I love television.  Then I played the $20 free play at Resorts online casino, that I got from the Resorts Groupon I purchased.  I played quarter Double Double Bonus video poker.  It was weird to realize I was gambling in my room, in my pajamas, while watching television.   I never hit anything significant, but the $20 lasted about half an hour   So there is that.  You get a bonus for depositing money.  I am not sure if it was a new sign up thing.  But I had an offer to double my deposit.  I will say, gambling twice as much money in my pajamas and never being around people, sounds kind of sweet.  But I knew it could also be dangerous so I didn’t do it.

I didn’t want to go back out since I had almost broke my budget in less than an hour, so I went to sleep to prepare myself for winning a bazillion dollars tomorrow.