My wife and I went up to Atlantic City to celebrate New Year Eve 2010. We chose The Pool After Dark at the Harrah’s Resort because it sounded fun. While we had a good time (very little of it, explain later), we definitely wouldn’t do it again.
To set up the proper context for the rant, the general admission tickets were $145/ticket ($125 + $20 processing fee). We went with “Will Call” because the cheapest mailing option was $15 dollars. Not cheap but to be expected for NYE I suppose.
The party was 9pm – 12am. We arrived at exactly 9pm to find two REALLY long lines; One for Will Call and the other to get in if you have the tickets in hand. When you are done with Will Call, you still need to get in the other line to get in. My wife and I decided to split up to hopefully save time.
At around 10:30pm, ~1.5hr worth of waiting, I was only half the distance closer to the front of the Will Call line — there were only two alphabet-challenged staff working the Will Call table. Luckily, the event folks finally decided to accept printed receipts from online order and my wife was at the front of the entrance line. We pitty the fools who didn’t bring a copy of the receipts.
After a few more moments of cluster-f*ness, we finally got in (around 10:45pm I think). The place was packed with people all with the same mindset — rush to the bar and stay there to get their monies worth. I think we had 4 – 6 drinks a piece because we took turn ordering non-stop. By 12am, open bar was over … $145 and 1.25hrs worth of drinking later, we had no idea what The Pool look like or a moment to dance because we were too busy trying to get drinks.
If you are a single, it might be worth looking into because there were a lot of folks looking for “action”. However, for everyone else, save your money and do/go something else!
