Here, finally, is my report on Revel. As noted, it is based on three stays (plus a non-stay visit). Anyway, hope this proves useful to your AC readers.

Best,

Herbert

The phone rang and it was a long-time playing buddy with an offer I could not refuse. He and some friends were going to Revel for a couple of days and would I like to come along? Room comped. Would I!

Here are my impressions of that trip plus some input from other group members that included table players and slotties. Since that trip, I have been back to Revel to check out my first impressions. What follows is an amalgam of all these visits plus minor input from other visitors. I have tried to note changes over time.

Everyone agrees that Revel is a work in progress. Serious kinks remain to be worked out before it can become a preferred location. Some of these have been addressed but others persist. For example, one day when we telephoned they said the wait would be a half hour, bit it turned out to be much longer. And then only a message machine chimed: "we will call you back." They did but by that time enthusiasm had been considerably dampened. Getting a host appears to be a real problem. One friend has been passed to four different people and still does not have a regular host.

Calls, even when one is staying, go unanswered. This creates other problems, too. One couple was promised a suite by the person with whom they made the reservation, but when they arrived, no suite. They got it straightened out (in their favor) but only after a half hour waiting and phoning, etc. Another person found a large hotel bill waiting for them at checkout, which should have been covered. Again, lots of phone calls, waiting, impatient persons in the line behind them, until resolution (also favorable).

This problem persisted over every visit that I made to the casino for numerous guests. Lastly, a relatively high rolling friend lost over $7k and wanted to stay another night. No comp, only a room at a "discount" $129.00 rate.

Check-in can prove equally daunting. The car drop lies in the front of the building, and a slow elevator ride later, you are still in the front but on the 3^rd level. The check-in desk, however, is all the way on the other side of the edifice, at least an eighth of mile, if not more, away. More lines await. Revel could learn from Borgata or even Foxwoods on mass check ins. Another medium length walk and elevator ride to the room floor. Our quarters happened to be near the end of the corridor, another distance away. If you ever thought of bringing your aged mother or mother-in-law, think twice. I heard many people complaining about distances during visits. We should note that check in and out seem to have improved since our first visit, but that may be because there is less traffic now that the summer rush has ended.

Every room faces the ocean, a definite plus. Since work on the site is still on going, often large cranes dominate the view, particularly for people on lower floors. Ask for a high floor if you stay. The rooms and suites we visited were all spacious. In several, however, people complained about noisy air conditioners, mostly a tinny whirring sound. We ate in a mini-suite occupied by one of our group. It had a spectacular view of the estuary and coastline, and a brilliant wake-up sunrise to boot. However, here too details nagged. No table to eat on, just a really low one in front of the couch which faced inwards not towards the water. No bathrobes a la Borgata (it turns out that only maxi-suites have robes). Smallish towels but not great wraparounds. When we left our room at 8:30 am, we called housekeeping to have it made up. When we returned from lunch at 12:45, the maid had just started cleaning. Others in the party experienced similar inconveniences.

On a later visit, we got a chance to look at a two-room suite. Same great ocean, coastline view, and a table facing the ocean. However, no telephone in the sitting room, no towels in the auxiliary bathroom, and no fridge, just a mini-bar. They did conveniently supply an amenity menu that listed the prices of items which you might want to take with you, starting with the electronic tablet at $800, desk blotter at $120, on down to a $10 washcloth.

Many persons think one of Revel’s best features is its no smoking policy. That means anywhere, no special room, no cigar cubby for the high rollers, etc. People can leave the hotel and smoke, but nowhere inside, not even in the outside spaces inside the hotel grounds. We heard that they even fired some employees who smoked in their cars and came to work smelling of stale smoke. More than one dealer commented on how their health had improved since coming to work at Revel. Other AC casinos should imitate this policy.

If you go to Revel, be prepared to spend money. The comp system is quite complicated. A family of four should be prepared to shell out a lot of money. A $50-a-day comp limit may cover half your expenses, or less, if you enjoy real meals. I ate with a friend at one of the seafood gourmet restaurants. The food was excellent, well prepared, attractively served. We had no drinks and one glass of domestic wine each. The bill came to well over $200. At Mussels (a non-gourmet locale), we ate the specialty which were excellent, plus some other seafood, one drink each, and a $100 plus tab appeared for two. At the bar, a drink is $10 for non-fancy booze, though you can use comps 1X1, which means $12 including tip. One other example may illustrate this further. At one of the breakfast spots, I chose the buffet, thinking of Borgata, Nugget, or Resorts. Well, the buffet consisted of a small room with coldish cheese eggs, badly cooked bacon, and under-cooked fingerling potatoes on one side; fruits which were ok on another; and miniature croissants (which everyone knows are inferior to the larger size), muffins, and toast on a third side. No lox, no bagels, omelets, etc. Cost $21.

Big city prices to say the least. Our local diner is better. There are also special features such as a SkyGarden BBQ on weekends and all guests get free coffee in the Lobby/Library. We did get a good omelet at a breakfast place, and the Spanish restaurant Amada’s multi-course dinner at $75 produced over a dozen dishes, and not just a taste, but real portions for most items. Well worth the price; attractively presented in nice surroundings. The recently opened The Alcove serves great food. At breakfast, my friend’s hollandaise really tasted like hollandaise. Unusual for a casino spot.

Revel has its own special beach area, combed finely each morning. Umbrellas and chairs are free and there is cocktail service 12-6. The usual spa and pool areas (some indoor/outdoor heated) dot the establishment. Business and meeting rooms also abound. One humorous note is that outside the fenced-in beach area exclusively for guests is a swatch of beach, inhabited solely by dozens of sea gulls (no indication if you need a special leg band to enter or not!). The beach seems to have survived the Hurricane Sandy in pretty good condition.

One of the best things about Revel is that, almost without exception, the employees from lowest to highest are nice and they are super polite. The big exception is casino credit, which ranks with the rankest on the strip. Employees will go out of their way to solve problems, but, unfortunately, the solutions are not always there. Several times we stopped and asked questions but the individual could not answer or else had to go to another person. Employees are clearly under strict instructions to say this or answer that, thus anything out of the routine may fluster them. One in our group misplaced their player’s card. They wanted to get another one. The person at the booth asked for a driver’s license. They did not have one; therefore, no card. Passport anyone? No! Driver’s license only. It turned out that the wife of the individual actually had his card, which she produced much to the delight of our friend and consternation of the employee.

To be totally fair, many of the junior employees are clearly summer hires or newbies, with little or no experience in any casino environment. There also seems to be a pretty constant turnover at all levels and from time to time groups of prospective employees came trouping through the casino on guided tours.

Nevertheless, we came to play, not to gawk at the huge spaces, multiple eating spots, endless sitting areas, exotic humongous lampshades hanging from the ultra-high ceilings, etc. What about the casino? The gaming areas occupy most of the first floor (poker is a floor above). The area is huge and intimidating at first. Most of it is dark, somewhat like Mohegan Sun when it first opened. There is a section that faces the ocean and light comes in through floor to ceiling windows. The layout also takes a bit of getting accustomed to.

Not all rooms provide maps but they are easily available in every floor. Everything is clustered around what seems like a gigantic central column. This is surrounded by a sea of slots. The table games, except for blackjack, are each grouped in a specific area. This separates out the games from one another and makes even sight communication between players at different games nearly impossible. In all, there are over 5,000 slots and only, we were told, 64 tables. This can create a problem when things are crowded. One person in our group, whose wife played Let It Ride, got so frustrated that he actually took her to Borgata by taxi so that she could play. Even on weekend AMs, there may be only one Pai Gow table open and it is likely to be full. To be fair, this is not true at all time and for all games. Dice players had no problem getting seats, even at most peak hours.

If you do not have a Revel Card, be prepared to stand in a long line to get one. Revel will honor your level at other casinos, which is nice, but especially on weekends the lines can be forty or even fifty people long. Does anyone know if "Revel" by any chance is the "god of patience and waiting" in some Pantheon?

According to the slotties, the machines at Revel are many and varied. Three things stood out.

1. That despite the fact that a couple of the group played regularly at several other venues, the machines on the floor were often new to them.

2. More than one person reported having trouble accessing points or comps. But the general consensus held that employees quickly came to the rescue and fixed things, usually on the spot. Although here again to be fair, we did see groups of techies huddled around machines with bewildered customers.

3. For whole days at a time, NO ONE saw any player hit a jackpot. Is this worse than other casinos? Not much according to the slotties. The machines also seem to rotate pretty well, although this did mean that a favorite machine sometimes disappeared when a person went back for another visit.

My advice. Do NOT go to Revel if you are a blackjack player using Speed Count (see Frank Scoblete’s book Beat Blackjack Now: The Easiest Way to Get the Edge!"). The vast majority of games are dealer hit soft 17. This stinks. We looked for other tables and asked. Scattered tables do exist with "regular" rules and the high stakes tables use them too. The problem here is that if you are an advantage player, there is almost no where to hide as in other casinos where multiple playable spots exist. I saw not one advantage BJ player on any of my trips, although to be fair, I spent a small amount of time at these tables. Wonder why?

Almost without exception all the pit personnel and the dealers are super friendly, anxious to please. If the table is not full, be prepared for chatter, especially in the slower games like Pai Gow Poker. A female member of our party had bathroom problems and the pit person let her go to the nearby employee women’s room much to her immediate relief. Also, be prepared all over the casino to meet employees who know you if you have travelled around AC. "Oh, I waited on you at Borgata," "I remember you from Marina," etc.

Cocktail waitresses and waiters abound at almost all hours of the cycle. They are polite and also anxious to please. You can not get a Corona, but that is true in other places (although to be fair they are stocked in the bars). One big plus in my book, and with many of those I played with, is the fact that waitresses wear the traditional black cocktail dresses and waiters black tuxes, always discreet at top and bottom. A great scenic improvement over the faux Vegas or NOLA brothel outfits at Resorts and other places.

In the same vein, the exotic runway dancers just off the 4-Card, 3-Card, and Let It Ride pit are a far cry from the pole girls at Ba-Da-Bing, being both skilled at their trade and alluringly dressed without offending anyone. The music, however, is loud in this particular area reminding one at times of Borgata.

Along with the regular dealer run games, electronic offerings exist too. The usual roulette machines are present, a bank of baccarat machines not in use when we were there, stands ready to roll. And finally, at the foot of the dancer’s runway, a couple of $5 BJ machines lurk, cleverly placed as one can watch the action and play at the same time without others trying to speed them up!

Whether during the weekend or on a weekday, the casino seems to attract a goodly number of players, although weekdays since Sandy have been slow here, as in all AC (November official figures show AC gambling revenues down 27.7% from an already depressed year earlier!).

Because there are no "bus people," the crowd is relatively up scale, a fact supported by Revel’s north beach location well beyond the traditional Boardwalk area which works to inhibit walk-in traffic. Except for weekends, one sees mostly over 30s. As elsewhere, Friday and Saturday bring out the younger set, although here too there seemed to be fewer "yos" than elsewhere, probably most resembling Borgata. We got a good look at them one Saturday when some of the ice machines refused to dispense. Frantic young men carrying buckets traveled from floor to floor on both the up and down elevators looking for a machine that would produce cubes. Over time, I thought I noticed a shift toward rattier dressed younger persons (predominantly male) and certainly more groups of beer guzzling college types than on my first visits to Revel.

Casino credit functions much as in other places, but with one innovation. The whole process is done at the table by hand held tablet. This means it is faster (although a couple of times pit persons did not know how to make it work properly and had to call for help and the machines did not always function on demand). When you redeem the electronic marker at the cage be sure to ask for the receipt, which will record all the relevant data and show that you have paid the marker. While certainly a more efficient system than the traditional one, it does mean a loss of back room jobs. Similarly, Revel includes some great technology in its rooms. A touch-tone screen doubles as entrée into the phone system so you can order breakfast from bed, a TV clicker also opens/shuts the scrim and does the same with the curtain covering all or part of the window space. Lights can be lowered/raised.

The prime reason, in my book, for going to Revel are the dice tables. The tables are set together with a bar on one side and slots on the others but not crowded in. They are a good length for control shooters and although each one has particular characteristics not bouncy by AC standards (e.g. Borgata or Taj). One even has a sort of dead spot near one wall. The pit crews are competent and friendly and $10 tables exist most of the time. Two caveats, on Friday and Sat. eves the bar scene gets crowded and noisy, which can distract the players, Sunday ditto when several NFL games will be playing on the big screens behind the bar. Giants and Eagle fans abound and as we all know they are among the noisiest and most obnoxious anywhere. But having said that, a seat always existed at one of the tables whenever I looked. From what I observed, if you want a particular spot, i.e. immediately to the left of the dealer, one will open up within a relatively short span.

The dice players are pretty normal for this type of casino. Probably because of Revel’s newness and its location, I saw few grizzled old timers sitting on chairs who dot those locations, which draw the bus crowd. As elsewhere, occasionally one runs into players who really know how to shoot, which makes for great tables. The crowd seems pretty silent most of the time (except those peak hours noted above) with discrete applause for a difficult point or several in a row. But no "waahoos" that shatter the air in other places. Since there are few or no "regulars" there is not much back and forth among players or dealers/players either. Again, weekend peak times can be quite different.

So where does this all come down? Definitely worth a visit if you are a dice player who likes to eat. And more so, if your wife or girl friend is a slottie. Stay away Friday and Saturday eves, unless you are there to party, but otherwise the coast is pretty clear. Be prepared to decipher a weird comp system and to get fully charged for what you consume. Although it has a ways to go, from what has transpired to date, it looks as if Revel is willing to make adjustments and has done so in a number of important areas such as check-in. Although we were told by a very good source that the casino has cut back on comps from when it opened and our own personal experience confirmed this, in all it makes a welcome addition to the AC scene worth checking out (or in?).

Perhaps the biggest unknown about Revel is whether it will become a moneymaker or not. To date the casino has not drawn the high volume of attendance that it needs to break even and is operating at a loss. In August, it increased its loan line by $50mn to carry it through 2013, but by mid-November it had tapped most of its credit. The casino is currently negotiating another package consisting of $125mn in loans and another $125mn in revolving credit. It remains to be seen if Revel can sell this package and at least one rating agency has warned of potential default. As a recent article put it, "even the doubters have been surprised at how unpopular Revel has turned out to be among gamblers." (WSJ, Dec. 14, B2).