To me a free room in Atlantic City beats all. I can be around people having a great time (or maybe not $$$), people losing themselves in the lights and sounds and having the casino and hotel staff wait on me. It’s my little getaway from reality! EVERYONE needs one of those from time to time. By my calculations, I need one about once a month.

Free hotel rooms at the casinos are one of the hardest comps to acquire. You have to play a lot, spend a lot of time putting money into the slots or playing the tables just to get these bonuses. So now the question is how do I build up my time to get these great free rooms? I don’t live far from Atlantic City (not good!) but sometimes I would play late into the night and driving home at that hour just was not an option. This leads me to where to stay until you can build up your comps to get the free room offers from the different casinos.

There are three main access routes to Atlantic City. You can get them all off the Garden State Parkway. The most common one is the Atlantic City Expressway (a toll road) that links Philadelphia to the Jersey shore.  Running parallel to the Expressway to the north and south are the Black Horse Pike (Route 40 – south of Expressway) and the White Horse Pike (Route 30 – north of Atlantic City Expressway). These are the local roads that will bring you into AC.

Along these state highways are numerous hotels and motels to fit every budget. I have to tell you that I spent some nights in pretty ugly looking rooms that were cheap just so I could build up my comps and be one of those people staying right on the boardwalk one day. It was worth it. Today I can get a room during the week at any casino in Atlantic City. The hard things to earn are the free Friday and Saturday night rooms. You really have to be a frequent guest of the casino to reap that benefit.

This is where the argument comes in: do I remain loyal to one casino and get the most bang for my buck on the comps or do I spread the wealth around by visiting several casinos during my stay and perhaps dilute my offers?

I’ll discuss this in my next post. Please leave comments below to add anything else you think might be useful to my readers.

See you on the casino floor!

 A few years later I was 21 years old and came down to Cape May again, this time to visit with friends that I had made during the summer of 1976.  Being of gambling age now we took a day trip over to Atlantic City. There were a couple of casinos on the boardwalk at that time and it was fun to play the slot machines. You could walk around with your bucket of coins (the slots dispensed coin at that time not tickets like they have today) and you went from casino to casino with your bucket if you were lucky enough to leave the casino with any coins at all. I had a lot of fun that day and I guess that’s when I caught the gambling bug.

I can actually trace my gaming history back to the summer “exhibition” we had in Ottawa every year. On the midway there was a game, Crowns & Anchors, where I would spend a fair bit of my time while other kids were trying to win stuffed animals. I was laying down my quarter as the man spun the wheel and I would win money. I really liked that feeling of winning money.  Canada didn’t have casinos yet and Las Vegas was so far away but Atlantic City was only a ten hour drive. I ventured down a couple of more times from Ottawa with friends and would manage to stay, not in the casino hotels, but off the boardwalk in the other hotels along the main drag.  We would gamble for a few days and then head home.  On one of those trips I did exceptionally well, at least for a “novice”.

It was the first night we were there and I hit pretty good on the slot machines (about $300).  I walked over to check out the roulette table and because I was not well versed in the ways of playing roulette I kind of hung back.  Initially, I just bet the red and black and then I got a little bit braver and I went inside playing the first, second or third sets of numbers on the roulette table.  Again I did pretty well and I went home that trip with money in my pocket.

In 1993 I ended up moving from Ottawa to Brooklyn and getting a job in New York City.  One New Year’s I remember there wasn’t much going on.  I didn’t know that many people so I got on the bus from Brooklyn to Atlantic City where they give you $20 to play with, drop you off for six hours and bring you back home later on.  As I got accustomed to living in the United States I gained more confidence and eventually bought a home and moved to the Jersey shore.  Now I was getting closer to Atlantic City and that made trips to the casinos extremely enticing.  You could wake up on a Saturday morning and say “Let’s go to Atlantic City for the day”.  I have done that quite a few times.  There was one trip that I took down with a friend of mine just for the day.  We watched as players put cards into the machines and at the tables handed over cards to the pit boss.  We didn’t really understand what all this was about and figured these must be some high rollers.  We lined up at one of the restaurants for dinner and, just being curious, I asked our waiter what was the deal with the cards. He told us to go to the customer service center and request a “comp” card.  Based on your play you could get discounts on rooms, meals, shows and lots of other things.  So immediately after dinner we went to get our cards. Within a few days we were getting cashback notices and offers for rooms. 

My experiences in Atlantic City took off from there.  It was an hour or so to AC and if I went down for a night I would take the day off from work. I can truthfully say I’ve probably spent more in the casinos than I’ve brought home but I’ve had a good time every time I’ve gone.

The purpose of this blog is going to be to give tips and helpful hints and have my readers leave comments along those lines for others visiting Atlantic City whether it be for an overnight, a couple of days, with or without the family or just going down for the day on a gambling jaunt with friends.  I want to share with people what’s going on in AC and to provide insights that people such as myself and, I’m sure some of my readers, have found during their travels to Jersey’s gambling shores.  Check back often, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of the post and we will talk again soon.  Thanks for reading and have a great time in Atlantic City.

See you on the casino floor!