Back in August we made the pilgrimage to Atlantic City to take on the holy grail of status matches using credit cards. You can see my original post here.
The final match in Atlantic City is with Ocean Casino to their Prime status. It comes with a slew of perks but the most notable are the travel benefits. Along with a free cruise on MSC, my husband and I each earned 2 free nights at Resorts World Las Vegas. This included $100 free play and $100 dining credit each.
Making the Reservation
The reservation process was a little different for each of us. Once we had decided on dates we both called the number on the travel brochure to reach the booking department as Resorts World to book 4 consecutive nights. They asked for your name and Ocean Rewards number. This was about 4 months out and we had no problems with weekends or other blackout dates. They will book you for either the Hilton or Conrad.
Because we would be working while we were there it wasn’t ideal to switch rooms half-way through. When I asked the booking agent she said as long as we were in the same hotel and room type to ask when checking in to see if they could keep us in the same room. I called first and was assigned the Conrad. When my husband called he requested the Conrad as well. We were both given Genting Rewards numbers that we needed to access our free play and dining credit. No charge for resort fee or anything else. I received a very strange confirmation email that didn’t even have an active confirmation number on it. It had the right dates and the Conrad on it so I just crossed my fingers. My husband received an official Conrad booking confirmation for his room; I was able to plug this number into the website and see his reservation.
Hotels
One week before we were set to check in my husband received an email from the Crockfords concierge; his room had been upgraded. I waited for an email to come for me too, but I simply received a Hilton Honors email a few days later with my real confirmation code. I was still in Conrad. What an internal struggle. Who was I to look the Crockfords gift horse in the mouth and say I’d rather stay at the Conrad? But we had a meeting scheduled for change over day that would be less stressful to do in the room. I figured I would still try and combine reservations when we got there and if not we would spend the in between time in the Crockfords lounge.
When we arrived we were able to go to the special Crockfords invited guest desk. They found the reservation no problem. I asked about combining the reservations and he said to call from the room. He didn’t seem to have any idea about how to get the free play or dining credit but he could see it tied to the reservation. When I called from the room she mentioned she could see the room had been upgraded to Crockfords and that one of us had been assigned 2 queens and the other 1 king. I said I didn’t care which room type and didn’t really push the subject at all, I was fully expecting a no. She was very nice, went above and beyond and said she would get it sorted and it was no problem to keep the same room.
We did have housekeeping bust through the door the day we were supposed to move, but I think he was more embarrassed than we were. One other slight hitch was the day my husband was checking out he was sent a bill from Crockfords for the entire amount of the 2 night stay. When he went downstairs to talk to them they fixed it immediately and were very apologetic.
Loading Free Play and Dining Credits
Figuring out the credits was a bit harder. The booking agent had told me I needed to take the Genting Rewards number she assigned me to the kiosk and get a card printed and create a PIN. Then take that card to the rewards desk and have them load the rewards. Seemed easy enough. I have players cards at many different casinos and have printed new ones many times. We decided to try our license to see if they already knew us in the system; the kiosk didn’t work. We tried downloading the app, scanning barcodes, etc and decided to just head straight to the rewards desk. With our IDs they were able to find the same accounts that had been created for us on the phone. We created PINs then asked to have the offers added to my husbands account since his stay was first. She kept cutting us off and was not understanding what we were talking about.
Back to the front desk. Neither the concierge or front desk staff knew anything about the offers but they could be seen on both reservations still. Back to the rewards desk with another employee. He also couldn’t find anything on our accounts to load. He told us to go talk to our host, we didn’t have a host! Finally I called back the travel brochure number I originally used to book. She was so kind and knowledgable compared to the other staff we’d dealt with on property. She said to go back to the rewards desk and tell them I have Ocean Casino rewards and it’s in the note section. It took a few minutes, but finally they were able to see the offers and load them after my husband presented his Ocean Rewards card. It took about 15 minutes for them to show up but then the freeplay could be seen in the app and on the slot machines and the dining credit was available on the food court kiosk. When I added my offer a couple days later it went much smoother because I knew what to say.
Using Credits
I had seen a lot of talk about whether or not dining credit had to be used at once (a la Caesars Celebration Dinner) or if you could use it multiple times. We weren’t particularly anxious to waste any of the credit but decided we were going to try spending most of the money on dinner and lunch at the food court. We were on eastern time so when we got hungry nothing was open yet. The regular fridge in the room was perfect for this! And then we wouldn’t feel bad if we lost $15 and still got 4 meals out of it. On the kiosk you add all the food you want from any and all vendors then check out. You will be offered to add your genting rewards number. This will open up a box showing your available dining credit. As soon as our order was complete we went back through a mock order and lo and behold the remaining money was there!
One of the employees that loaded our cards said the dining credit could be used anywhere on property, including Starbucks. While we didn’t try that or any of the sit down restaurants we did use our credits at the food court kiosks, Randy’s Donuts, Junior’s to-go and Dawg House to-go. When in person with a cashier we would just call it a voucher vs comp dollars.
The free play was very easy to use on machines, just plug your card in, enter you PIN and transfer the dollar amount you want. Maybe I haven’t been on a lot of the new machines or it’s been a while since I’ve had free play but the way they tell you how much you have to go through before you can take it out as cash was very helpful. I left with about $70 of my credit and my husband went wild on the Fortune Cup horse racing game and left with $10.
Value
Figuring out the value on hotel room can be hard based on the date you check and special rates but for this purpose I’m going to use what they originally billed us for my husbands two nights x 2.
Overall this felt like a nice little boost to the value we were already getting from taking 2 cruises. It was definitely worth our effort to make our way from South Carolina to Atlantic City last summer. Since this is the first year, I’m curious if this partnership will stick for the coming 2024-2025 Ocean calendar year.
| 4 Nights Crockfords (Tues – Sat) | $1,882.12 |
| Freeplay | $200 |
| Dining | $200 |
| Total | $2,282.12 |
