Thursday, July 3:
Once again, we had a late departure from home, and once again, the weather was horrible. We missed most of the rain leaving home, but ran into quite the storm on the Atlantic City Expressway. We had a brief stop at the Maryland Travel Center to pick up some dinner and arrived at Trump Taj Mahal around 1:00 am.When I went down to the lobby, there were quite a few people in line with not alot of clerks. It took around 20 minutes, which might not be a long time, but it sure seemed like it. I was expecting 2 beds in the Taj tower, since last time we were there checking in at that time, that is all that was left, so I was surprised that she told me all she had were one beds and I would be in the Chairman Tower. I said that was fine, I mean, I had no choice. She said I could move the next day, since my wife wanted two beds, since we have our daughter with us. One of the reasons I thought of was that there probably were alot of familes there and they took all of the two bed rooms.
The Chairman Tower is nice, but quite the walk from the lobby, plus it isn't accessible from the casino level, you have to take the Taj elevators to the CF level and walk across to the Chairman Tower elevators. The elevators at the Taj is always a show, since the first set of elevators go to the upper floors (I think 29 and up), while the second set of elevators go to the lower floors. People get in the first elevator and then wonder why they can't get to their floor and vice versa. The Chairman Tower elevators are the same, but I'm not sure what the floor break out is. We were on the "73rd" floor, and I think the elevator went to 75.
Our room, 7308 was nice, the rooms are getting a bit worn, but still nicer than the Taj Tower. The bathrooms have a dual vanity, single stand alone shower, and a separate water closet. One of the "cheap" things at the Taj now is that the tub/showers have a shampoo and body water dispensers installed on the wall, quite "locker room". We didn't bring Tessandra's cot, so we were wondering what to do about her. The bed is plenty big, but she was already asleep. There is a chair with an ottoman, so for the night, my wife turned the chair to the wall and put her in there. It was a little small, but she fit in there okay.
Cath went to bed and I went down to play just a little. I had $180 and I tried some 25c Random Rewards BP with no luck. Then I tried a few dollars in a keno machine before I went back for one more shot. I did hit a bonus quad for $114.75.
I have a "thing" for Goldmine VP, and they have it at the Taj. I went to play it, got a few nice FH hits, and then I got this:
That was better (possibly) than a goldmine bonus I had gotten. I tried some Shockwave and hit a quad, but didn't hit another one in ten hands. Going into "degenerate mode", I played some 10c Ultimate X. I was getting killed until finally. . .
I called it a night up about $100, which wasn't bad.
Friday, July 4:
Naturally, I got up late. We decided we'd just stay in this room, since it was nice and big. It was rainy stormy all morning. We had to figure out what we were going to do. Cath was doing Tessandra's nails, so while she was doing that, I went down to put a play day in. Things started off pretty good:
I went down a little, but then I got this:
As I said, I was the Royal away from hitting for the cycle on the machine, but unfortunately, it did not come to pass. Cath texted me and said they were ready for lunch. We walked over to Resorts and had the buffet there. Before I went up, I went to do their promo where you could get up to $750,000 in cash, but I was expecting around $5 in comp or slot play. After waiting for around 20 minutes, I get up and I get. . . $10 in comps! Oh well. . .
The buffet isn't anything great, but the Taj buffet isn't great either. Plus since Cath had a bad experience there, we went over the Resorts. The food was adequate.
We went back to the Taj and we could see the beach from the walkway between Resorts and Taj and see the waves pounding the beach. We could see a few surfers enjoying it though.
We decided to head to the pool. I called to make sure there wasn't going to be an "adults only" time at the last hour, he told me that's only on the weekend. Since we're in the Chairman Tower, we have to walk across to the Taj elevator and go to the 14th floor. Now here's a "secret", the escalators next to the elevators go up to the 14th floor and you can access the pool from there. It's also a way to bypass the security guard to get to the elevator. So it was easier for us to walk out and use that instead of fighting for an elevator.
The pool is pretty plain, although it is usually not too cold. It was a bit crowded, as I expected, but by then, the sun was starting to come out and the weather was getting nicer. We stayed there until they shut down around 5:45 pm.
Now during the day, Otto from one of the boards I frequent was in town and we suggested meeting. It was hard to find a convenient place to meet, especially since I had my daughter, because the lounges do not allow children. Tessandra was going down for a nap, so I suggested that I could meet him at the Showboat Diamond lounge around 7 (he had suggested the 7 Stars lounge at Caesars later, but then my wife and daughter would have to figure out what to do during that time).
I headed over, but stopped at the ballroom to pick up the giveaway, some Guess sunglasses. When we were coming back from lunch, we could see people already lining up to get them, but when I went there around 6:45, there was no line. They had men's or women's, and I got the women's so either my wife could use them or we could gift them away (she's currently using them).
I get up to the lounge and look around. I'm not completely sure what Otto looks like, but I think I'm pretty distinctive. I'm looking at the Diamond Lounge sign and then a guy comes up and after a while, he asks me if I'm waiting for someone. I say yes and Otto, and it's him!
So we go in and there's plenty of seating. Since I was only there for drinks, I didn't go see what food offerings they had, but back in the day when I was diamond, I recall the food offerings were okay, the soups were usually really good. When the server comes, I ask what kind of bourbon they have and she gives me a puzzled looks. She asks me if "Jack Daniels" is bourbon and I politely inform her that it is not. I ask if they have Maker's Mark (usually places do), but she said no. I say Jim Beam, since "everyone" should have that and she says yes, so that's what I get and Otto gets a merlot.
We talk about AC, gaming, traveling, wonder what's going to happen with AC in the future, when Cath texts me, she says it's close to 8 and what are we doing for dinner. I say let's just meet at Plate (at the Taj) at 8:30. Otto says his host stocked his refrigerator with beer and sodas and he doesn't want to take them back on the bus and offers them to me. I say that's great, and will give me something to bring when I show up late to dinner. I pick them up from his room and we bit a quick goodbye near the House of Blues restaurant. One of the things I talked about was the "office" (as we called it) in the back of the casino, before they put the table games there, when they had alot of full-pay VP there (I got a dealt 50c royal there), I also made Diamond in a Day there.
I text Cath and tell her I'll be there in a few minutes and text her when I'm there, but I don't get a response. I walk down the food court to the other restaurants to see if she went somewhere else and I don't see them. After a while, I go up to the room to drop the drinks off and I see her phone charging on the bathroom makeup table. Ugh. I go back down and walk through the restaurant, but I don't see them.
I finally get a text from her saying that they were in the restaurant and I should have gone in and looked for them. I told her I did, but I didn't see them. I go up and say good night to Tessandra and go back down to finish my play day. Things didn't go well for the rest of the night, although I did have a drink to celebrate Jacques' birthday.
I started losing on the $1 9/6 JoB and then losing everywhere else. I did get quads on Pick'em though:
It's a pretty boring game, but always nice when you get quads. I had one more nice hit on VP playing double STP:
As I typed that, it first came out, "STOP", which is what I should have done, but I chased those loses and lose. I did get this hit on The Great Goldfish Giveaway:
Bet $1, win $100, not too bad. I tried the old Slotto multiplayer machine with no luck (I got a horrible bonus), but did okay on the Willy Wonka machine, except I donked off my winnings. *SIGH*
I had forgotten that I needed to eat, so I went to Rim, the noodle bar, just before they closed. I decided to pay with comps, so I had to pay right as I ordered because they shut the computer down, no problem. I had a nice roast pork and rice.
I get back to the room, beaten like a monkey. . .
Saturday, July 5:
Fortunately, check out time is 12:00 noon here, as we woke up around 11:15. And fortunately, housekeeping didn't hassle us as we checked out around 12:45. I thought about getting a Saturday night stay in AC, but my Taj offers doesn't give me Saturday nights right now (and they also don't allow me to book more than two consecutive nights).My friend did invite us to stay at his family's shore house in Stone Harbor, so we headed down there, after going a bit out of our way to stop at a Wawa for some subs for lunch.
We got down there around 4:00 and they ordered some take out pizza. Tessandra enjoyed playing with the toys they had and his sister was there with her infant son, so it was nice to see them again. I did join Bob in a dip in the bay, which was quite cold. Shortly after dinner, Cath wanted Bob to take some pictures of Tessandra in her graduation cap and gown, since she didn't have any good pictures of her. Shortly after that, Cath and Tessandra went to sleep while Bob and I spent the night playing Xbox ice hockey.
Sunday, July 6:
I woke up around 11 and got our things together. We talked a while and had lunch and then headed home around 3:00ish. There was a bit of traffic on I-95 near North East, MD. We took the exit and got on Route 40 down to Aberdeen and it was cleared up by then. We made a dinner stop at the Silver Diner around 9:00 pm, and we didn't get home until late. Fortunately I did not have to work on Monday, although Cath did.Unfortunately, it wasn't a profitable trip, but we still had fun and the weather turned out pretty nice after the storm.
Looking forward to my trip to Vegas in a few weeks. I'm hoping to get some blogging in during the trip. . .
