Gwilliam Gazette : Atlantic City

You may know that I have a new hobby for the past 2 years and that is travelling with credit card points. This hobby isn't for everyone, but I've found it works for me. Jacob too has become interested in it and we attempted to parlay this hobby into a free (or close to it) cruise.

It's done by "status matching" VIP levels from one casino to another, starting from top tier status in Hyatt, which I already have. To put it simply, I go to a casino and have a conversation something like this:

Me: Hi Mr/Mrs MGM Hotel/Casino! I have VIP status with Hyatt. Do you have any VIP status you would trade me for that?

MGM Hotel/Casino: Actually, we do. We will give you our VIP status. We don't want you to just be limited to Hyatt when you travel. Here you go-now you have our VIP too.

Me: Awesome! Thank you.

Me: Hi Mr/Mrs Ceasers Hotel/Casino! I have VIP status at MGM. Do you offer the same for your hotel?

Ceasers: Why yes we do! We don't want you to only stay at MGM. Here, have our VIP status too.

Well, you get the idea. Some of it you can "match" online and others have to be done in person. It goes from Hyatt to MGM to Ceasers to Hard Rock Hotel to Oceans Casino.

The kicker is that the last one, Oceans, can only be done in person...and there is only one Oceans - in Atlantic City.

So after doing a lot of research and reading a lot of forums on this for the past year, it was time to try it out and Jacob was going along to do it as well. We were pretty sure it would work - well 99.99% sure it would work.

Of course, we don't like to pay more than $50 each way for airfare anywhere, so it was a little challenging, but we made it work by flying to Newark (New York basically) on Spirit. First time flying Spirit so wasn't expecting much and it was $47 each way. Perfect.

Let's go!

The secret to Spirit is to not pick your seat and then do a "seat bid" for the exit rows. You can bid as low as $15 and we got it, going and returning.

We each had the row to ourselves

New York City

Our first stop was MGM

Well that was easy! 5 minutes

Off to Caesars

Well that was easy! 5 minutes

Caesars was pretty fancy and we walked by this very tempting dessert case!

Caesars came with some free slots so we played those. It took about 5 minutes before we had a free drink offer come up on the machine, so that was a plus!

The Caesars status also comes with $100 dinner credit (that Jacob got because he did the match a little different than I did) that can be used in Vegas.

It also comes with a free stay at Atlantis in the Bahamas, so we will need to look into that more for sure.

Then it was off to Hard Rock Casino.

Hard Rock was even fancier!

Success!

This status match came with $50 slot credit that I ended up with $42 once I played the $50

Now it was off across the street to the last one - Oceans.

Ok, this place was super fancy...and huge!

We got free lunch here and a tee shirt. Oh yeah, and 2 nights in Vegas at a partner hotel. Oh yeah, and the whole reason we came - free Oceanview cruise up to 10 days anywhere MSC sails (except China).

TA DA!!!!!!

We then had some extra time so we visited a few sights in Philadelphia before heading home.

Liberty Bell

Independence Hall

The country's first penitentiary

Wouldn't want to go to this dentist

They had this bocce ball set up....well, Jacob thought that meant it was ok to play.....I didn't think so.....anyhow, we played a few rounds. As we were walking away, one of the workers came right away and put it back to the way it was. Oops.

We did a driving tour of Valley Forge, where actually, no battle was ever fought. I didn't know that. It was a winter encampment of about 12,000 soldiers as they prepared and waited for the British army to come. Although the battle never came, over 2000 died due to disease and sickness.