Travel Destination » Travel to Atlantic City

ATLANTIC CITY WHEN IT SIZZLES.
Atlantic City is reinventing itself as a family destination,” Jennifer Lyons, public relations director of the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority had told us as she took us for a spin around her beloved city. She underscored the fact that it is being convulsed by changes and construction. The city now has a new Grand Boulevard, state-of-the art Convention Center and a recently expanded international airport. Four new casino hotels, theme restaurants, a new baseball stadium and bus station were to be ready by 1999.

The elegant resort, which first opened in the 1850s and has been the venue of the Miss America pageant since 1921, exists on a number of levels. Its proximity to the ocean provides fishing, sailing, boating, bird-watching and water sports opportunities. The Atlantic City Museum and Art Center and the amusement piers with their shopping malls, giddy rides and food courts are fun for the family.

We got a voyeuristic thrill from watching people play obsessively at its 13 24-hour casinos, enjoyed the flesh and feather cabarets and extravagazas (one dancing girl even had what looked like fruit on her head), played golf on one of its 23 courses, and gaped in disbelief at the Ripley’s Believe it Or Not Museum. We ate salt water taffy, a local delicacy till we got heartburn and gorged on sumptuous buffets. When the color had seeped from the day, the after glow of a pyrotechnic sunset flared over the Atlantic Ocean.

The city, not to be outdone, put on a light show of its own, at dusk. Hundreds of neon lights, megawatt spotlights and rim lights blinked like high voltage fireflies. Laser beamsshot telegraphically from a 90 ft light house to the sky as though the beacon were an enormous robot telling its secrets to the heavens.

However, one has only to watch the buses rolling off the expressways each morning like Patton tanks to realize that whatever the other attractions, gambling is the city’s raison d’etre. One of the two biggest gaming destinations in the US, according to Lyons (at the time of writing, 13 casinos paid out …..collectively every day), a great deal of gaming revenue is ploughed back into the community. Casino revenue has reportedly funded supermarkets, YWCAs, art centers and projects for the elderly and disabled.

Gamblers and potential clients are being enticed by more than just freebies and comps (jargon for free rooms, suites, gourmet meals, limo and helicopter rides to and from home and even reimbursement of plane fares). One of our co-passengers on the bus, Clayton Sainsbury, told us how casinos have deployed brave new marketing strategies, and are building data bases at a record rate. Not only do they detail customers’ gaming habits but use the techniques of direct mail marketing to zero in on specific customers, inviting them to cocktail parties and to even feature on their TV commercials!

The fight for the gambler’s dollar, however, goes on behind the scenes and was not in evidence in the hushed precincts of the 815-room Hilton where we stayed. We disembarked in the large bus terminal of the hotel (most hotels have large termini with comfortable departure lounges, information desks and restrooms where winners and losers count their winnings and tote up their losses.)

Later, we headed for the ocean and the boardwalk—a four and a half mile strip of planks that in a way knits the resort together: In the lingering evening light, we saw young families pushing strollers on the boardwalk, conventioneers with ID badges and libidinous teenagers. We strolled in the Ocean One shopping mall, the only one built over the Atlantic Ocean, with 125 speciality shops, a family amusement center and international food court. Resembling a ship heading out to sea, it is an illusion that confounds many a patron.

Sunday nights can be somewhat subdued in the casinos (9 of which give out on the boardwalk). At Bally’s Park Place, we melted into a group of frenzied spectators who watched people playing the slots and a variety of table games. In a savagely competitive field, each casino was looking for the edge something to set it apart from the others and win a following. On our boardwalk ramble, we strayed into Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino Resort. The onion domes (more reminiscent of Moscow than Agra), the strident clash of green, blue, gold, red rim lights made us wonder if the creator of this upstart Taj Mahal had even seen the real one.

Here you can charter your own private boat, access nearby golf facilities, indulge yourself at its spectacular spa and casino. The casino here gave us lockjaw—we gaped at the vaulted, jeweled ceilings, bevelled mirrors, 24 hand strung Austrian chandeliers and a casino floor that seemed as large as a football field. The penthouse suites are named after Alexander the Great, King Tut, Napoleon, Kublai Khan, Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and not Shah Jahan or Mumtaz Mahal! Its popular Hard Rock Café is strung with memorabilia including Johnny Cash’s guitar. A blazing pink Cadillac is suspended from the ceiling.

The casinos, characterised by sizzling intense action, exuded that winning feeling. If the Taj Mahal was a monument to ostentation, Bally’s Wild West Casino doffed its cap to the Wild West spirit. There were gushing waterfalls, simulated sand dunes and mountains with continuously performing animated robotic figures.

A gold prospector with his mule, dancing hall girls, a talking vulture and an evil villain completed the tableau. Gamblers prowled around its 75, 000 sq ft casino, 98 gaming tables and 1800 slot machines.

In gose early years, Atlantic City notched up a few firsts—Steel Pier was the world’s first amusement pier and opened in 1898; salt water taffy, a kind of fudge, originated in 1883 on the Boardwalk when a storm flooded a candy store. The first picture postcards were color versions of Atlantic City. Rolling chairs, a kind of white-wicker rickshaw debuted in 1887 and are even to- day a Boardwalk attraction. The word “airport” was first used in Atlantic City in reference to its flying field. The first Miss America was chosen in Atlantic City in 1921, and the pageant is held there to this day.

Today this 12 sq-mi metro is home to about 38,000 people and draws 37 million tourists per year. Devoid of the glitz and pizzaz of Vegas, it nevertheless has a disarming friendliness about it. It is pervaded by a sense of good cheer—surprising in a resort which gets people to drop as much money as possible in the shortest possible time!

How and Where
Philadelphia is 60 minutes away; New York is two and a half hours and Washington DC is four hours, from Atlantic City. Atlantic City is also served by the following bus companies: From New York: Academy Bus Lines: Grayline of New York: Greyhound Bus: New Jersey Transit Rail runs direct from Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and arrives and departs through the recently built terminal adjacent to the new convention center.

You can fly easily, efficiently and directly from Boston, Newark, Detroit, Ft Lauderdale, Ft. Myers, Orlando, Tampa and Philadelphia.

Atlantic City’s unique Jitney mini-buses are available to take you to your favorite casino on Pacific Avenue or in the Marina. The City’s famous wicker rolling chairs provide service up and down the boardwalk and, of course, taxis are readily available. Each casino provides ample, convenient and inexpensive self and valet parking.

By way of hotels there are: Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort, Boston Avenue and The Boardwalk, Bally’s Park Place - A Hilton Casino Resort, Park Place and Boardwalk, Caesar’s Atlantic City Hotel Casino, Claridge Casino Hotel, Boardwalk and Park Place, Resorts Casino Hotel, 1133 Boardwalk, Sands Hotel & Casino, Indiana Avenue and Brighton Park, Showboat Casino Hotel, Delaware Avenue and The Boardwalk, Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, Mississippi Avenue & Boardwalk.