NJEA Teachers Convention and Birthday Trip in AC: 11/7-11/10

Hey, everybody. I thought I'd start a new thread for my trip to AC starting tomorrow and lasting four days. The initial reason for the trip is that I'm attending the NJEA Teachers Convention in Atlantic City and we're extending the visit another two days, because it's my wife's birthday as well. She'll be joining me on Friday for two nights.

This should be a great convention. I've scheduled nine hours of professional development workshops with a focus this year of learning to improve my integration of technology in the classroom. I'm working toward becoming a certified Google Educator, so this is right up my alley. I've also saved time for exploring the convention floor and meeting some authors. Last year, I found some excellent resources that I was able to use really effectively, so I hope this will really help some kids succeed.

I've been saving up for a while for this trip so I'll be going with a bankroll of $4000. I'll be staying at the Water Club at the Borgata in a Vista Club room, which I think is their name for a corner room. They had offered a Fiore Suite as well, but I let my wife choose the room since it's her birthday and she preferred the Water Club.

Not-So-Fun-Fact: I was getting concerned that I was spending too much time and money playing in NJ online casinos, so I did the responsible thing and self-excluded for a year from online gambling. Every casino company in New Jersey was totally fine with that except for CET. CET closed my Total Rewards account and made me forfeit all my reward credits. I'm also now banned from every CET casino in the world. So, word of warning, if you choose to self-exclude from online gambling in New Jersey, CET will not want any of your money ever again. (I suppose I could request reinstatement in a year, but after being treated like that, I don't think so.)

 

Ugh. I knew that was CET policy. Was Boyd's too when they partly owned Borgata, iirc.

Have fun with land based gambling this weekend!

 

Good luck at the Borg, always nice to have a business/pleasure trip.

 

have fun - at the convention and at Borgata ... I will be staying there beginning on Sunday.

 

Sounds like you’ll have a great getaway.

Ac is always pretty busy for the teachers convention. My mom will be down for some of the workshops.

I may be down there tomorrow night trying to win some money at poker off of the teachers. Then be at Harrah’s Friday night with the wife and kids. The kids always like the indoor pool once the weather turns and also hitting the buffet.

 

As to the CET self exclusion list for online gambling. There are two settings to choose from.. One option is to do the self exclusionary list which bans you from everything, everywhere forever....Than there is another option for taking time off. I think you can choose the amount of days you need. 60days, 90 days, 6 months... etc. It won’t allow you online access to gambling and stops emails for CET online gambling but doesn’t cut you out from the hotel casinos.

 

Your not missing anything from CET anyway. Go spend some time at hard rock and ocean!

 

I am writing this while laying on a comfy bed wearing a fancy bathrobe in my Vista Club room at the Water Club with panoramic floor to ceiling windows with a view of the marina and the casino skyline along the Boardwalk in AC. Feels good to be a baller.

I headed down to AC straight after school ended today, since I had packed everything the night before and I got here around 4:15 pm. Check-in was a cinch with the Water Club's desk and took less than five minutes. I lugged all my stuff up to the room and put the champagne and wine for my wife's birthday celebration into the mini fridge which DOES NOT have a mini-bar. (Take that, CET in Vegas.) I also packed stuff for my lunches at the convention because they never have any healthy food and it's so overpriced. I also brought my Starbucks gift card which they take downstairs in the casino so that's what I'll do for breakfasts while here.

My ultimate goal with every casino trip is to spend on nothing but gambling, gas, and tolls. That's it. Everything else should be comped or brought from home. I even used My Vegas rewards for $25 in express comps and $10 in freeplay to save even more.

After check-in, I hit the casino. I loaded up $100 of freeplay and played Wheel of Fortune at $5/spin. Not a bad start because I turned that freeplay into $155 of real money. After that, I went and played this penny slot machine called Xerxes at $4/spin, because I'm a sucker for slots based on ancient civilizations. They always seem classy yet primal. I hit a bonus for $600 earned my way up to $700 and then cashed out when I was down to $500.

Time for dinner. I stopped over at Bread + Butter and had them make me a meatball grinder with no cheese (because I'm allergic) and charged it to the room. Then I went back to the room for a moment to drink some water from the refillable bottle I brought from home. Total cost of dinner: $12.50 including tip and that will be comped at the end of the trip.

Back downstairs and I played some Bier Haus, but that tramp Heidi stole my money. So then I went and played Cleopatra, before realizing that I couldn't wager more than $1 at a time on that penny slot, so I moved on. I blew some money on a game that had a redhead on it, because who doesn't like a redhead? And then I found another more modern version of Cleopatra with lots of wilds and all kinds of flashing graphics that people enjoy; I very quickly won another $600 on a bonus with that game, which brought me back to even again. Not bad.

From there, I played some Triple Double Stars reel slots and lost a couple hundred before hitting for $400. Then I wandered around and played all the goofy flashy slots that don't really payout, because why not? I'm here to have fun and having fun means playing cheesy Egypt and Alexander the Great themed slot machines. I also played a 2 cent machine at $2/spin because it looked like it was about a thousand years old, so I figured it might pay out. Nope. Just sucked up money like a Real Housewife of Hoboken.

So total damage for the evening was $500 in losses, which is far below my budget of $1000 for the evening and I played for about five and a half hours. I earned 1910 points and $143 in express comps as well as 7050 tier credits. I'll probably play the same amount tomorrow night since I'll need to go to bed (casino) early again due to the convention, but I could probably play longer over the weekend and possibly make Pearl for the first time ever. We'll see how it goes.

Now I'm heading to bed, because the convention starts tomorrow morning and I have some workshops with my name on them.

 

sounds like a fun start at Borgata.... enjoy the conference

 

Following along because who doesn't love a good Atlantic City TR!

 

Today was a tale of two parts of my trip: A good convention and bad gambling.

The convention was great. I spent the first two hours there wandering the convention floor, meeting authors who are also teachers, and getting swag. I now have an additional five reusable grocery bags, which will get used because some reusable bags that I've been using for fifteen years are so ratty that they need to be recycled. I do most of my grocery shopping at wholesale stores or Target, where reusable bags are extremely useful. In addition, I made some connections with different organizations that can provide good free resources for my classroom.

I attended three workshops over the course of 4 1/2 hours and all three were quite good. I now know a lot more ways to incorporate technology into my lessons plus now I know how to get certification as a mindfulness teacher for our Social Emotional Learning initiative. Social Emotional Learning basically involves teaching kids to feel empathy, the lack of which is becoming a serious problem in schools due to the influence of social media.

All in all, a very successful first day of the convention.

When I got back to the hotel, I decided to get the day's bankroll out of the room safe and go play some slots again. What could go wrong? I did so well with my bankroll yesterday. Alas, I couldn't hit anything. I played the day's $70 of freeplay on Wheel of Fortune and the game hoovered it up. I played Xerxes and same thing. Triple Diamond, same. Quick Hits, same. 2 cent ancient machine, nada. The biggest hit I had for the day was $60. Yes, $60. Pathetic. I blew threw the day's $1000 in about three hours and decided to just call it a night early. I guess there's always one night like that on a trip. I tend to have a lot of those nights, though. *sigh*

The food is still pretty good here, though. I ate at Bread + Butter again and got a hot corned beef sandwich with coleslaw which cost about $13.50 with tip. Then I drank my own water again. After eating at Starbucks for breakfast and packing my own lunch, I'm doing pretty well on reducing my expenses.

Here's how bad the gambling day went:
Losses for the day: $1000
Tier credits earned: 2954
Points Earned: 390
Express comps earned: $64

Lithium78 and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

However, there are still two days left to this trip and I still have plenty of my bankroll. The convention ends tomorrow afternoon and then my wife arrives in the evening. We should be eating some better meals once she arrives, so I'll be able to report on that, plus we'll have champagne and wine, and drinks as we lounge at the Water Club indoor pool. Things should pick up a little more soon, so all is not lost.

 

I played a little this morning while waiting for the shuttle bus to the convention. Burned through $200 in about a half hour. No hits. 300 tier credits. Ouch. I will get $100 freeplay when I return this afternoon so hopefully that will help. My luck has been lousy the last couple of days.

 

Ok, that is more like it. After completing the second very valuable day of workshops at the convention, I returned and had a great run on a Zeus Lightning something or other game. I have had three Jack and diets so I feel sufficiently buzzed and I hit all kinds of bonuses. That's what I like. When I get to play for a long time. I played for another two and a half hours and now I am taking a break because my wife is about to arrive. She will probably want the buffet which is fantastic here at the Borgata. Then we'll see what she would like to do because It's her birthday. Her birthday, her choice. The trip transitions from work to play. Let's have some fun!

 

It ended up taking my wife three and a half hours to get from work to Atlantic City because there was a bad storm and traffic was really backed up. There was also an accident with a tractor trailer, which slowed things down a lot on the Garden State Parkway. Luckily, she made it safely and I helped her bring her luggage up to the hotel room, but she decided against going to the buffet tonight.

She said she wanted something quick because she was really hungry and she didn't think she could beat the buffet tonight. (Which is what we always try to do.) So, instead she chose Burgers and Fries in the Borgata Marketplace, which is their food court. It was still really good food, because this is the Borgata. We had gourmet burgers and milkshakes. I had the Texas Burger with bacon, onion rings, and barbecue sauce, but no cheese since I am allergic. My milkshake was called the Peanut Butter Bomb and it really tasted like they exploded some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups inside it. My wife was really happy with the food.

Afterward, we went back up to the hotel room so my wife could open presents but she decided against popping the champagne tonight because she was feeling tired. We still did some laps around the casino floor to get our steps in, but then she went back up stairs to rest and I went back out to gamble some more.

I played for another two hours and had some pretty okay hits. My largest for the evening was $320.00 on Lock It Link, when I missed filling the screen by one square. (Darn it.) I also had hits of $220.00, $128.00, and $222.96. I took some photos, but I'll post them later. Mostly, I played Lock It Link, but also a game called Longhorn Jackpots, which had a fun western theme.

Altogether, I played for about five hours today and still stayed within my budget for the day. Not bad at all.

Totals for the day:
Losses for the day: $1000
Tier credits earned: 3969
Points earned: 510
Express comps earned: I lost track, but I'm up to $388

I've been charging everything to the room and we'll settle with express comps when we check out on Sunday. I have plenty of my bankroll left for tomorrow which will be my last chance to get a real jackpot on this trip. I keep hoping I'll hit something really exciting, because I've only had one handpay in my entire time gambling. I'd love to finish this trip with a bang. Overall, though, I had a lot more fun today. I feel like I should have earned more tier credits, but I don't really know why I didn't. I guess earning tier credits at the Borgata is just really different from Vegas. At any rate, MLife should be happy with my play, because I've already earned nearly double the tier credits of my last visit and I still have another day of play to come.

 

Okay, that is much more like it. We had Starbucks for breakfast this morning and had some morning champagne to celebrate my wife's birthday. Then I hit the slots for some more fun. I hit so many bonuses on Zeus Unleashed including one for $275 when I only had $5 left in the machine. So exciting. Right now, I am sitting at 17191 tier credits for this trip so far.

Now we are taking a break to go swimming in the Water Club pool, then dinner tonight at Izakaya for some amazing Asian food and cold sake. Later, we plan to catch the live rock band at the Gypsy Bar.

My own birthday is a week from today and my wife gave me a gorgeous Elvis Jailhouse Rock shirt from Lansky Brothers in Memphis. I plan to wear it to Gypsy Bar tonight so the King of Rock n' Roll can give his blessing to the establishment.

Let the fun continue!

 

Nice dude!

 

Ever try that tasting menu at izakaya? Well worth the price

 

I told my wife that she could have whatever she wants at Izakaya. I have $430 in reward comps right now, so we literally can eat whatever. We went there once before and tried that $7 a plate meal thingy, so maybe we will do that again. Ever since they revamped the menu, their food has been so good.

The plan after dinner is to go for a walk outside and then return to play some more before we go to Gypsy Bar. I'm trying to find out if they still have skill-based games here, because those are the only slots my wife will play. Otherwise, she gets bored.

 

If you like espresso martinis angelines is the best...gypsy bar is known for their strawberry mojito

 

Thanks for the suggestion. We will try that drink.