August 7, 2017
The true reason my whole family likes vacationing in the decidedly un-family focused Atlantic City surfaced on this rainy day. Stupid O’clock in the morning approached, arrived and went on its merry way without much of a shift in position out of any of us.
The only
shifting was due to the regular thrum through the wall, which not only
disrupted the normally light sleep of my wife (occasional marching bands
excepted) but the Ancient Egyptian Mummy like immobility of myself.
We rested in
the room a bit, while making the “go home and come back” list. A brief conversation reviewed the possibility
of visiting the pool. Anabelle’s use of
the word “icky” ended that review.
A little
investigating and a trip to the front desk clarified the noise we heard came
from a proximity to the top floor mechanism of the freight elevator. Unlike the guest elevator, which even in a
twenty four hour casino slows down in the wee hours of the morning, the service
elevator runs nonstop, regardless of wee-ness.
Explaining
how much we liked the corner room got us moved directly down three floors. The view was almost indistinguishable, and
the sound was muffled. Woo-hoo…hey,
didn't you just clean that wet spot?
We originally
thought some water had dripped onto the hardwood floor from our beach
stuff. That is, until it replaced itself
each time we wiped it up if someone stepped anywhere on a large section of the
floor.
There
shouldn’t have been any pipes running under the floor there, yet we had our own
Poland Spring coming up through the boards.
After
successfully negotiating our new room, Rosa elected to stay to wait for
maintenance while Anabelle and I went to the supplier for her large and flashy
ring addiction down at the mall.
The “medium
rain that the umbrella could easily handle” we saw out the tower window was
much more “Classic Era Sit Com vacation episode Monsoon” on the Boardwalk.
Soaked by the
elements and pistol whipped by our own umbrella, we barely survived the trip to
B*Iconic. Anabelle picked out the watch
ring she was planning to buy, along with an owl ring. She left behind a massive rainbow ring
because I wondered if she’d want to wear only it and nothing else on one hand.
Before either selection or the non selection could be fully reviewed, an urgent phone call from Rosa sent us back running
through the elements.
The air
conditioner unit was leaking under the floor boards. If we were dealing with sane guests, a quick
repair job would have led to it drying up within the day. However, we were in an environment where the
room’s gorgeous view must have been ignored by slot machine zombies for over a week. Therefore the water under the boards would have been with us for most of our stay.
Despite all
of us being firmly in the “we’re not moving again” camp, we had fortunately
left the Atlantic Ocean Visiting Version of Our Stuff mostly in a contained pile
while rooting this out.
The
maintenance guy was awesome, and when they were jerking us around about finding
a room, he called in to the front desk yelling about how we just moved
everything and they needed to take care of us.
Shortly
thereafter, a bell hop arrived to trolley our bags up two floors to a full
suite!
Woo Hoo! For
real this time.
We stopped
back at the desk, which had another enormous line, to make sure everything was
stable after the multiple switches. It
was. In fact it was so stable; our
presence confused the heck out of the clerk as to why we stopped by at
all.
Crazy hungry
was well in our rear view mirror by now. That was easily resolved based on the
massive restaurant variety that draws us to stay in the Tropicana in the first
place. Casa Taco was ready to stuff us
with piles of accessible Mexican food. They must have heard us playing Chopped on the beach, as the fish tacos I use as a staple there went overboard for presentation. It was the culinary equivalent of DC's Emotional Spectrum of Lantern Corps.
Rosa went to
gamble a little while Anabelle and I rested in the suite (woo hoo!) Anabelle made a
PowerPoint slide show to help us with future restaurant selection. Since age two she’s always, “played hotel” well. I nodded off a bit and we read some comics.
(For any nerds following at home: Gaiman’s Sandman
for her, Abnett and Lanning’s Guardians
of the Galaxy for me.)
Rosa’s
gambling was unusually unsuccessful, as they hid her goldfish machine. Even so this only set her back a couple of bucks as we are not of the high stakes variety guests. If we visit an above normal number of times in a year, our comp dollars might net us a single lollipop in the taffy store. She unpacked a bit, after family a quest to
find the luggage lock keys.
The band on
the owl ring, which turned out to also be a watch, snapped almost immediately. Since
our multi angle suite view showed clearness in the sky, I was going to bring
Anabelle back to the mall to replace it.
By the time
we reached the Boardwalk, all clearness was gone and we battled through the
S.S. Minnow damaging weather system, making it about half way to the mall before giving up
and returning.
We started to
head up to the room, then because we hadn’t zig zagged enough yet, went back
down to get big pretzels.
Then we did
return to the room, and its oddly sunny view.
I’m wondering if virtual windows were included with the suite. (woo hoo!)
I grabbed the
stuff we realized we didn't need along with the list, and went to the parking
garage. They walked me part way, then
took advantage of the insane weather changes to take a clear night walk to exchange the broken ring for
the giant rainbow one.
Unlike the
previous year, where they made the last minute decision to stay all week after we got there, and I
went home to work and resupply, this year was planned.
Sort of.
Let’s just
say it was as planned as any non-Disney adventure we undertake.
Other time
off I was going to take had fallen through, meaning instead of leaving them at the
beach for two days, it was only one. Meetings
meant making it “none" wasn’t an option either.
Yup, three
crossing New Jersey the long way drives in three days. yippee.
Fortunately,
I have a system.
Accompanied
by several Diet Mountain Dews, and a stand-up comedy playlist (Kip Addota, National Lampoon and
Lewis Black) I drove up the empty parkway in mild rain having power bars for
dinner.
Meanwhile, my
wife and daughter had room service in a suite.
(woo hoo!)
Yeah, that’s
fair.
I got home in
the middle of the night, ready to pass into unconsciousness in order to be well
rested enough to face work and the return trip the next afternoon.
That is,
until I opened the mail and saw Shin Godzilla had arrived! A man’s gotta
have priorities.
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