Atlantic City

[richlevy]

I'm here at the Tropicana Casino in AC. We brought Jeffrey along with us and left the other teenager at home for two days.

The hotel offered a room package. For other weeks, a standard room was $59 and the new Havana Towers rooms were $99. For this week the standard rooms were $98 and the Havana Towers rooms were $99.

I splurged and paid the extra $7 for 24 hours of high-speed access. We're taking turns watching Jeffrey. I've only had 5 minutes of gambling for all of yesterday (up $5 at slots and video poker).

We went down to AC a lot when we were dating, so it was interesting seeing the familiar landmarks on the way down and what's changed. We came down route 40 through part of the pine barrens. It was dark so you could see by the lights the areas that were still farms and the ones that had been developed. There are still towns in Central Jersey that look like Mayberry, but with their main street turned into a busy highway. You can still sometimes pass by abandoned motels and restaurants, some of which I know were abandoned at least ten years ago.

The 'Quarter' at Tropicana, which is a studio-lot version of Havana in the 20's, is built on what used to be an access tunnel and plain room tower between the parking garage and the main casino. They did a pretty nice job on the touches and expanded it to include shops and a nice open mall area. Last night they had a jazz group playing from a gazebo suspended between the first and second floors in the mall.

It is nice being in a newer room, since old hotel rooms, no matter how well kept up, always end up being a little shabby, which doesn't work well with institutional rooms. Shabby in a bed and breakfast can come off as quaint. Shabby with the kind of furniture and carpet you find in any chain hotel is just shabby.

If I had the choice, I would probably have opted to save the $40 per night and go with the standard room. This week the difference was only $1.

What's odd is that the package reservation page would only let you book one day at a time. I wanted to book two days so I called a live operator who told me that they were sold out of the packages and that it would be $30 more per night. I went back to the web site and booked two separate nights. I'm guessing that they allocate different blocks of rooms to their reservation operators and the web site.

I'm headed down to the poker room today while Marci and Jeff go to see both IMAX movies (NASCAR and The Polar Express). Wish me luck.

I just hope our house is still standing when we get back.