Join host Justin Vacula and guest Mandi on the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast as they share their incredible experience at Atlantis Paradise Island, Bahamas.
Discover how they enjoyed a luxurious vacation at a low cost using Caesars Rewards Diamond Status. Learn about their travel hacks, including bringing food to save money, the detailed process of gaining and using Caesars Rewards status, and their adventures in the resort.
This episode contains valuable tips on maximizing credit card points, travel benefits, and making the most of Caesars Rewards. Don’t miss out on their engaging stories, practical advice, and future travel plans!
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Low-Cost Travel
00:32 Podcast Announcements and Guest Introduction
01:52 Atlantis Bahamas Trip Overview
04:16 Travel Logistics and Arrival
07:22 Exploring Atlantis Resort
10:14 Casino Experience and Rewards
15:51 Fun Activities at Atlantis
21:53 Thrilling Water Slides and Attractions
22:38 Exploring the Resort’s Beaches and Pools
23:10 Marine Life Encounters
24:07 Dining Costs and Strategies
28:01 Social Experiences and Events
28:43 Waterpark Access and Costs
29:42 Future Travel Plans and Rewards
30:42 Maximizing Caesar’s Rewards
37:15 Upcoming Trips and Events
42:34 Closing Announcements and Farewell
Show notes:
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Rough Transcript:
Theme Song: [00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures, tales to be told. Make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness, pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Justin Vacula: You’re listening to the hurdy gurdy travel podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vepula, here to help you travel the world and next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and rewards, make money, save money, and take advantage of great deals. Thanks for joining me for today’s episode, Atlantis paradise island, Bahamas trip reporter, returning podcast guest.
Mandy and I talked about the great experience we had [00:01:00] with a comp offer from Caesars Rewards Diamond Status. Visit meetup. com slash Philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia travel. Credit miles and points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are January 26th and February 23rd, 2025.
Find a link in the show notes. For more content between podcast episodes, Follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter. Follow Justin Vekula on Instagram. Subscribe to, subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on YouTube, where you can also become a channel member. Find daily content, including travel videos.
Podcast clips, community posts, and other bonus videos on with today’s episode. Welcome back to the show, Mandy.
Mandi: Hello, Justin.
Justin Vacula: You might now be the most frequent guest or you’re in competition [00:02:00] with Darren Remsburg and Mark Konchinski.
Mandi: And as a compliment.
Justin Vacula: We met some people here in Atlantis and they said you were famous, so you’ll be more famous after this episode.
Mandi: This is the way I want to be famous. If I’m going to be famous, it’s from traveling.
Justin Vacula: Better to be famous than infamous. All right, we are here in Atlantis, in the Bahamas, recording on the final night of our stay. We received a complimentary offer from Caesars Rewards with our diamond status. Can you tell listeners how we got this?
Complimentary stay.
Mandi: So this was from, like you said, the Caesar’s Diamond status. This was a match for me. Programmed by having the Wyndham Miss Earner. And that was an automatic status match with Caesar’s giving you their Diamond status. That has since dissolved. So we took advantage of this last minute [00:03:00] trip to get our rewards for the seizures.
Batman’s status, and part of that was a four night stay complimentary the Atlantis Bahamas.
Justin Vacula: And we had to pay some fees, about 70 a night in resort B’s gratuities. So 70 a night for the four nights between the two of us, I think not so bad.
Mandi: Absolutely. We actually combined both of our diamond status and were able to stay, so we could have stayed an additional three.
Justin Vacula: And other plans as well, travel interfering with other travel, the travel hackers dilemma, maybe part two. Otherwise, I think that the rates for people outside of miles and points, if people were just to pay the full rate, coming in a quick chat GPT result. Said it would be about two hundred fifty dollars per night even in this off season of January So really expensive [00:04:00] to stay here and we paid about 70 a night and I think this 250 rate They would also be paying the resort fees taxes for two of these Understanding as
Mandi: well.
Yes, and this is for the lower tier compared
Justin Vacula: The upper levels getting here, I think was pretty easy. We were already in Miami. We got off the Virgin voyages cruise, which was a recent episode. We dropped off a rental car at the airport. It was a lot of walking, lots of steps and airports as usual, but we got there early.
We spent some time in the Centurion lounge in Miami, which I think was significantly better than the admirals club lounge. Sorry, American, but the avocado toast was very, very small. And the portions at the Centurion Lounge were much bigger.
Mandi: The Centurion Lounge went far superior.
Justin Vacula: We took a short flight from Miami to the Bahamas.
We had to fill out a customs form on the flight. It was [00:05:00] interesting, partially, it said that only black or blue ink was allowed, and the flight attendants did not have blue or black ink. They wanted to give us a purple marker, which was not acceptable. So who knows how that could have gone out if we filled out the form.
In purple, but eventually we found pen with black ink, and we had to wait about 15 minutes in the customs line, which really wasn’t too difficult.
Mandi: Customs was simply checking your passport. It took all of maybe 60 seconds.
Justin Vacula: Yes, and there was no additional checking on the bags. So once we went through that line, which was mostly the facial recognition, Pulling out the passport, then we were good to go.
Mandi: You actually booked transportation for us through Majestic Tours when we were in Miami. And you found round trip for both of us was about 65. So we felt that was very reasonable for round trip transportation. [00:06:00]
Justin Vacula: The tour bus was very easy to find. We followed a sign that said Majestic Tours. There was a sign that said ground transportation, so it was very easy to find the bus area.
There was an attendant there. They said wait for the next bus that comes and the bus number. The bus driver got our luggage, put it in the back of the shuttle, and maybe it was about a 20 minute drive to the resort.
Mandi: The other thing I remember was the Bahamas, they weren’t bombarding you when you tried to get to your transportation.
They did bombard you. Offer taxis, but it wasn’t like there were 20 of them coming at you
Justin Vacula: and no uber credits, no lift. So I think the shuttle was the best option here. It was group transportation. We heard from some others that there’s private transportation, but that was much more expensive than what we got with majestic tours.
So it was okay to sit in a bus with a few other people. It wasn’t even very bumpy. I wasn’t even getting much motion sickness that I’ve had in the past and some of [00:07:00] these shuttles or small buses.
Mandi: Bus driver was very informative.
Justin Vacula: We just had to show an email confirmation. He had a register or a log of people who were supposed to be there, and we weren’t on the log, but we showed him the confirmation, we showed him the email, and it was all good.
Good and easy, and dropped us off right at the resort.
Mandi: When we got to the resort, it was very easy check in. They were waiting on us. Our room was ready. Minutes, probably, for registration. And we got our Here, they give you refillable bottles instead of bottles. So, they have multiple refilling stations throughout the property.
We had one right outside of our room, which was very convenient. We made it to the room. We were very impressed. We had a balcony, it overlooked the pool area, beach, we were able to see the royal tower from [00:08:00] where our room was, we had a refrigerator, surprisingly a Keurig, I was very impressed.
Justin Vacula: Very spacious, I would give the room probably a 7 out of 10, we must note some low points that the HVAC was loud at times.
It was acceptable, especially during the day, to simply turn it off and open the balcony door to get fresh air inside. The toilet was very slow to flush and clogged at a point, and surely you can vouch for me that I haven’t clogged toilets much in the past.
Mandi: I do think it was the plumbing, and one of our friends also said they had problems with their toilet clog.
Justin Vacula: Alright, I’ve been redeemed. So, a nice room, and this was cool coming off of the cruise ship, because the cruise ship rooms are known for being smaller, the bathroom especially smaller. The bathroom here was extremely spacious and nice. And we recorded a room video that you could find on the Hurdy Gurdy Travel [00:09:00] Podcast YouTube channel.
So you can see what the room looks like in the video.
Mandi: We had good Wi Fi throughout the stay. It was a little misleading because it says up to four devices. So Justin was really excited. He didn’t have to use
Justin Vacula: travel router
Mandi: to connect extra devices. So I Attempted to, uh, attach the Ford device and I got an error code where it showed that I had to pay, I don’t know, like 25.
So I called downstairs and said, Hey, I thought we got four devices and two Ford devices, not including Ford devices. So they were nice enough to. Give us a Wi Fi code and we were able to get four, but it wasn’t without
Justin Vacula: America loves confusion. America loves ambiguity. I think every other hotel where it says up to four, you’d actually get four.
So I don’t understand why they’re guarding the Wi Fi. Caesars is really terrible about this. Most of the properties I’ve been at. It’s a [00:10:00] max of two devices. And really, they’re just trying to nickel dine you. But yes, we did receive a code that worked. So the up to four, or three, or four really didn’t matter if they’re just giving out a code.
So really bizarre stuff.
Mandi: We had to play four hours in the casino for our comped room rate. We were able to go down. Justin had decided that we would play video poker.
Justin Vacula: If we didn’t gamble for at least four hours throughout the stay, they were talking about how you would be charged the full rate, rather than the comp plus plus.
So we decided to play four hours of video poker as they had 25 cent, five credit video poker that was available. So 1. 25 a hand in video poker. The other option would have been something like a dancing drums slot machine for 8 cents a spin. So I looked at the [00:11:00] expected value of the video poker versus the dancing drums determined that it was pretty close.
Because maybe on the dancing drums, we’re giving up about 5 10 percent to the house. This video poker looked to be something like a 97 percent return to player game. And maybe there’s a psychological argument for slot machines being very, very boring. As we were looking to maybe press the DL draw button in video poker once per minute, so we didn’t have to play much.
To get through this strategy here with this stay is to play very little, but also look somewhat reasonable in order to get these four hours in the strategy would not be to play something like five, 600 hands of video poker. We could just be slow and deliberate and we’re not there to gamble. We’re just there to fulfill the terms of the offer and get the comp stay.
Mandi: So we actually had a cell phone sitting on top of the video poker machine and every minute we would hit the deal button. [00:12:00] So we averaged approximately 60 hands in that hour and we were able to talk about the hands. There were other friends of ours that came in and we were able to explain video poker to them as well.
So it was very engaging. It actually made the time pass pretty quickly.
Justin Vacula: I invited everyone downstairs. I was thinking that if we all played at the same time, it would be a more social experience. It would be more fun, as it seems really dull just playing a hand a minute, especially when I’m used to playing something like 600 or more hands of video poker.
Especially with the training app that we’ve been continuing to use, it goes fast, and I think it’s more fun that way. So the one hand per minute is psychologically boring to me, and if I were to have to do it By myself, I’d probably break it up, as that was allowed, per terms of this offer, that you could play, for example, four one hour sessions, rather than sitting there for the full four hours in one session.
But we were able to do it all four hours in one session, stretching between [00:13:00] hands, we were walking around a little bit, but we got through it.
Mandi: We did, and I think some of the other players were appreciative of that.
Justin Vacula: Yes. And shout out to those who showed up. There was April Rose from Award Travel 101, friend of the podcast, Stan Erie.
Also Lena Aurora and Angela Caruso I’ve met at multiple miles and points events. They’re also in the gambling space as well. We met Sean, who was with Angela and Lena and two new friends, Janet and Mira. Both Ms. Janet M and Mira M.
Mandi: And Umid.
Justin Vacula: Ah, yes, Lumine was also here as well with his wife. They also had a players club that was offering us a bonus if we were to accumulate 75 points or tier points.
But this was very mysterious, as there was a countdown on the machine. As you played, the number would decrease, but then it wouldn’t show you how many points you had. And at the rewards club, they [00:14:00] said, Oh, well you just have to check back in with us and we’ll tell you your tier points. Like, what is this, 1995?
Mandi: Yeah, my counter, I noticed, I never left the machine, but my counter was starting out at like 43, 000 and then it would get all the way down to like 30, 000 and then all of a sudden it would reset to zero. I continuously played on the same machine, I never changed my bet size.
Justin Vacula: Very mysterious. Very mysterious, maybe 1994 even.
And they told us that if we earned 75 points or 75 tier points, we would get 25 in free play. So I was thinking, oh, well maybe we’ll actually get these points playing video poker, because if we’re betting 1. 25 a hand, that’s more than something like 8 cents on the dancing drums machine. But, at the end of it, we only had 5 points.
So, it wasn’t worth it playing a lot more to try to get 75 points in this mysterious system to get a rebate of only [00:15:00] 25 in free play. So, because America loves math, if we played about one hand a minute at 1. 25 and played for 4 hours, survey says, so maybe we played through about 80 in coin in in an hour.
So, for 4 hours, we played about 320 in coin in. And that got us five points.
Mandi: And we needed 75 points for 20 in free play, so we’re not winning now.
Justin Vacula: Yes, and we’re not, again, we’re not there to gamble, we were just there to fulfill the terms of the offer. We’re not going over to Roulette, we’re not going over to other games, donating money to the casino.
We found many other ways to have fun rather than playing negative expectation games in this weird reward system that wasn’t valuable. So we had our social experience with people who came. Thanks again to them, shoutout to them. And much more fun at the resort, especially with the Barbie Boardwalk Adventure.
Mandi: Oh my goodness, it was [00:16:00] so It was just a Barbie Dreamland had Barbie everywhere. There were Barbie shops, Barbie restaurants, Barbie Were at the pool area, they Bits that were Barbie themed they had a ball pit. I wasn’t sure I never saw them I think there was an event going on or something and it was closed, but Everywhere Barbie
Justin Vacula: the resort was very family friendly people of all ages were around.
They even had some kiddie pools outside and Many solo kids throughout. Maybe around 8 years old, 10 years old in the water park area, and of course older than that. Many teens. Lots of different ages represented throughout the resort, so lots to do, lots of fun. There was also an inside aquarium that was next to the Barbie Boardwalk Adventure, and an area called The [00:17:00] Dig.
Mandi: This was an aquarium with tunnels. That led you under restaurants. Sharks were everywhere. They had grouper that were probably a hundred pounds. They had all kinds sea life there.
Justin Vacula: And that was a section that was called the Predators Cove, I believe, in addition to the dig. So lots to see, and every time, of course I think of grouper.
It’s the special Kanye West song from South Park. I want to be family friendly for the YouTube ads. So, South Park fans, you can go out there and find the fish video, let’s say, from Kanye West. Do you like fish sticks, Mandy?
Mandi: I don’t gidger at South Park.
Justin Vacula: There were some other options outside, too, although I think these required payment.
Swimming with sea lions, as they called the comedians. stingrays, and you were able to feed marine life. So outside of our balcony, we saw the stingray experience and many [00:18:00] people swimming in the wetsuits with the stingrays.
Mandi: They also had sea turtles right down from our
Justin Vacula: gate.
Mandi: And they had feedings for them as well.
A
Justin Vacula: lot of cool photo opportunities throughout. There was a very big chair near the casino area that said Atlantis on it. Many many people were taking photos there. There were some crystals in the hallways that people really liked. Ah, yes. The artist for those that might not know and it was easy to find our way around.
There was lots of signage throughout the resort and there was also an Atlantis app that showed your current location.
Mandi: That was helpful many times. I think you even got lost and sent me a message and said you had taken a wrong turn.
Justin Vacula: Yes, but it wasn’t in. A state of despair, by any means. It was just walking additional steps, and we joke about Walk Vegas instead of Las Vegas, and certainly we got our steps in here.
This place is
Mandi: huge.
Justin Vacula: We had the Rapids River. People were referring to it as the Lazy River, but I thought it was the Not So Lazy River.
Mandi: [00:19:00] I’m not sure where Lazy River came from. There is absolutely nothing lazy about this. We went into an area that was pretty calm, I thought. So I was sort of expecting this nice floating through.
Yeah, that lasted about 30 seconds. And then we hit the rapids and it was this dark cave. And I mean, these were some pretty high, powerful rapids. You were thrown off, hit your head at one
Justin Vacula: point. Yes. But the, the head impact I would say would be a 10 being the worst. It would probably be a one or a two. And the second time I went through, I realized, Oh, I should push off the wall with my feet, or perhaps I should try to face forward.
So very, very small injury. But at one point I was thrown off on the rapids and then it was dragging me through the water. So I got some brush burns. It was pretty funny, but I was cool. We’re here recording and I did not die in Atlantis. That would be a disaster. Well, we also learned that. Entering at the [00:20:00] start was best because we started at maybe 0.
6 or 7 out of 9 and we were having to wait for the tubes to come through. But at the start, all the tubes were already there.
Mandi: Yeah, we didn’t know that it didn’t connect all the way around. So it was not one continuous lazy river. It starts with section one and it ends at section nine and then you physically have to get out of the
Justin Vacula: not so lazy river and move.
And then I learned saving some time that you can Go towards the end of the steps, kick off, and then get into it, because there were multiple times where you would kind of be stuck. You would have to either get out of the tube and walk to get to the next section, or you would have to vigorously paddle to get some motion to get you through the rest of it.
There were some staff members that would push you through at certain points, but there were a handful of dead zones, let’s say, where you were just kind of stuck.
Mandi: But it was a very good experience overall.
Justin Vacula: Yes, I would give it [00:21:00] somewhere around a 7 out of 10. It exceeded my expectations for sure, as the whole visit did.
Mandi: You did some water slides. You, I did not opt into the water slides, but, you did one with tubes, and then you did another one that was open. At the end was pretty aggressive, I think you said it flipped.
Justin Vacula: Yes, there were different challenge levels of these slides. The first one that I went on required a tube that you sat in.
Had to walk up many stairs. You sit in the tube and go through a slide area. It was a little dark. It wasn’t too aggressive. It was extremely safe, and it drops you into an area that’s an underwater aquarium. So you get to see sharks and other marine life. Swimming and it takes about a minute to get out of that and then it drops you into the water.
So yes, I did get water inside of my nose and mouth at one point, which was a little uncomfortable. But again, a good experience on the tube slide. And then the next one was just sitting [00:22:00] down on the slide and then it threw me into the water at the end. It wasn’t a big drop. It was, I would say, a very low difficulty challenge, but there were some others that I didn’t do.
There was one called the leap of fate. That was almost a downward drop slide, and one that was even more challenging than that. And the underwater aquarium we referred to earlier, that was really interesting by a restaurant area. There were also rope bridges throughout, which I thought also provided some good photo opportunities and vantage points.
Above the resort.
Mandi: Yeah, and there were many waterfalls that led into the road bridge. Beaches were gorgeous. Multiple beaches here. We had some that were man made, that were sort of just interior into the resort. And they had big bicycles that you could rent and ride around on one of, they had the big tires, pedal bicycles.
Those were on the interior beaches. The beaches on the [00:23:00] outside of the property. Just gorgeous. Sunsets, pools, multiple pools. You know, the landscaping, it’s just manicured. Palm trees everywhere. And then there was a lot of marine life. Like, there were pools, stingrays, multiple varieties of stingrays. We had sea turtles.
There were some big sharks. We saw one It’s just incredible. We saw a hammerhead.
Justin Vacula: And they weren’t nickel diming you either with the chairs and the beds that were out there. There were actually some really spacious beds that I know you sat on and at some Caesars properties or other properties. Oh, you need to pay 50, 80 to rent this bed for something like 20 or 30 minutes.
But here, it was really open. They did have some private cabanas in other areas. But as usual with the podcast, we’re going to try to spend the least amount possible and we still found good accommodations. In the pool areas.
Mandi: Absolutely. Yeah, they had several pools that had beds [00:24:00] overhanging into the pools and very nice cushions, Barbie themed in some, and again, those were all free.
Justin Vacula: And there was definitely a lot that wasn’t free, particularly when it came to the food. I did some scouting for the podcast. I think there was one day I got in about 11, 000 steps that I went through the resort. I left a little bit to go to the grocery stores and restaurants that were adjacent to the resort, or slightly out, I suppose.
I found some interesting data points here. A 4 can of Campbell’s soup at the grocery store, and this wasn’t even a very large can, it was a small one. Eight pack of hotdog buns, $9 and 19 cents, and this Bahamian dollar is equivalent to the US dollar. By the way, a bag of Chex mix for $9 and 35 cents, a 20 ounce bottle of teriyaki sauce for $11 and 39 cents.
Podcast fan, Stan found a [00:25:00] similar teriyaki sauce for $4 at Walmart with a simple Google search. The restaurants weren’t much better either. 15 side salad, plus plus. And by plus plus, we’re talking a 10 percent so called value added tax and a mandatory 15 percent gratuity. It seems even if you were to get takeout.
A 13 plus plus burger. A 12 kids meal chicken veggie salad. And a restaurant we found that maybe wasn’t horrendous was Chopstick. They had a not so happy happy hour. The food was still expensive during the happy hour, so the war on happiness, of course, here in Atlantis, at least in some cases. But they had a 20 Hong Kong noodle bowl soup with dumplings.
So maybe about 25 for a large bowl of soup wasn’t horrendous, but we ended up bringing [00:26:00] food. But before the food we brought, Mandy, what do you think about the dining options and the prices?
Mandi: Well they’re definitely expensive. We did discuss maybe buying groceries here. We went through several scenarios before we decided to bring.
Food was really expensive. So we did decide to bring our food from Miami. We were able to bring I brought tuna packs. We tortilla wraps. We brought coffee just in case. Fortunately, they did have a cure. We did bring an extra coffee pot just for soups to heat the water. Great. We actually managed to eat all of this.
Of
Justin Vacula: course, the answer to everything is more credit cards. And if you live in Pennsylvania, more giant. Because I was able to buy lots of the Vanilla Visa gift cards at one point when Giant was running a bonus points promotion and use those bonus points to buy groceries. I have had many [00:27:00] fills for gas and after that I still have a lot of points on the Vanilla Visa cards.
So I brought approximately 100 worth of grocery items. We also deployed some Amazon credits, Instacart or DoorDash credits that we had. So all the capital dollars went with us, and it was a bit eccentric because we brought this checked bag on the cruise ship with us where we had all the food we wanted on the cruise ship, this bag just sitting in the room for about a week, but we had free checked bags, of course, because of credit card perks and spending, so why not bring the groceries rather than as others lamented, Oh, I’m just going to budget 20 or 30 a day in food.
We saved the money, brought our food, and we’ll be eager to eat buffets and use casino comps and do all the other things we do. This was definitely hard mode with food in Atlantis, but we’ll talk about later in the episode a possible way to get resort [00:28:00] credits every day. Some other highlights, they had an event called the Junkanoo Parade, if I’m pronouncing that correctly.
It was a really vibrant experience, a lot of horns. Instruments, drums, a lot of dancing and vibrant colors.
Mandi: Varied multiple sequins and the ladies and men were just dancing down the streets. It was really entertaining. I was surprised.
Justin Vacula: Lots of people were dancing in the streets, the guests and the performers or the local Baja manians.
So very good experience and we went to this water park several times throughout the trip. We’re seeing otherwise, the waterpark tickets were included as part of being the casino comp guest or having a room reservation, perhaps both. And a quick chat GPT inquiry shows that the price for [00:29:00] the waterpark is 140 a day for Bahamanians.
I love saying that. Or otherwise. About 200 a day for others, depending on the season and other factors.
Mandi: Things are so expensive.
Justin Vacula: I definitely wouldn’t spend 200 a day for the waterpark, but I have gone to Dorney Park in Pennsylvania, Camel Beach in Pennsylvania. And maybe a reasonable entry to this waterpark would be somewhere around 50 to 75 a day.
At that point I’d probably only do it once if I had to pay here. But to get that included in the cost of the stay Is really nice. Maybe that offsets the 60, 70 a day comp rate to some extent. And, the question of the episode. Would you come back?
Mandi: I can’t wait to come back. I think this changes things for me.
I was not very interested in the Caesar’s Diamonds. Because we have to earn it organically this year. And [00:30:00] after seeing what this resort was all about, we’ll be obtaining Caesar’s diamond set, hopefully more.
Justin Vacula: Ooh, yes. At least Caesar’s diamond status because we did some digging and you found. That seven stars at the normal 150, 000 tier level get more benefits.
If we come back to Atlantis in the months of January, May, September, or October, and we’re definitely looking at January of 2026, so please clear your calendar podcast guests, and we can have the. Her Gurdy Travel meetup in Atlantis. Of course, we don’t have the week down just yet, but it’s extremely likely to come back in January of 2026.
If you have 150,000 tier credits, the seven Stars status with Caesar’s Rewards, you get a hundred dollars a night resort credit or dining credit for four nights, a five night stay. In the deluxe suite. In the Cove Tower, which is better than the [00:31:00] coral that we were in. You can pay $300 a night for two additional nights.
I don’t see doing that, but they give you the option. You get, it looks like a second complimentary room perhaps for, yes, for five nights, a hundred dollars in free play and VIP check-in, I believe, which also includes transportation.
Mandi: I’m excited to see the cove. They dropped us, well they dropped other guests off the cove before they dropped us off at the coral.
And just seeing the lobby of the cove looks really elegant.
Justin Vacula: There are also additional benefits if you have 500, 000 or 1, 000, 000 tier credits with Caesar’s Rewards. But that’s above our level, I suppose that’s the whale status, unless we find some interesting Hackity hack to get there, but I don’t think that’s likely, even with my online blackjack play in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, which is giving lots of tier credits.
And we’re going to Las [00:32:00] Vegas for a 10x tier credit multiplier, and we’re also going to go to other locations for 5x or 6x tier credit multipliers. Even returning to Las Vegas. So I’m planning on going for 7 stars. Of course for the content and the great benefits, including the Atlantis perks. And Mandy may go for the Diamond Plus or Diamond Elite for the year, but that will be determined.
Any other thoughts on the experience?
Mandi: I have been so relaxed this week. I didn’t know what to expect. I was able to enjoy the pools, met great people, good trip.
Justin Vacula: Yes, the social element was really interesting because I posted in the award travel 101 Facebook group that I was coming and asked, are other people coming?
Are others going to use their Caesars reward stay before they lose their diamond status because of the war on happiness from Wyndham? As many likely won’t re qualify, but of course we’re not giving [00:33:00] up here on the podcast and we’re explaining how to get that status in other episodes. But I knew people would want to come out in January and use the benefit.
So we met several people here, and even Brooke! A fan of the podcast posted and said, Hey, to her friends, Janet and Mira, you should meet Justin. Justin’s here as well. And he’s also in points and miles. We met many points and miles people in addition to the ones that we planned to meet. So it was a really cool social experience.
You really liked the pools you mentioned earlier, that you could just sit outside, it was very clean, it was a good environment, the weather was good, even in January.
Mandi: They didn’t have a lot of people around. There were plenty of opportunities to have your chairs, your bed if you wanted a bed, multiple areas to lounge over the pool.
Justin Vacula: So lots of nice things about Atlantis, and again, January of 2026. Looking to return and I really wouldn’t want to come here for the summer. The idea was to get out of the cold weather of Pennsylvania, and you also had [00:34:00] some cold weather at home as well.
Mandi: But let’s just be clear, I’ll come any time.
Justin Vacula: It doesn’t seem like there’s a way to do this twice a year, even if you earn Caesar’s Reward status early in the year, as we were talking about that.
So it’s just one time per status year is what 2025 recording the episode. If we were to earn status in January 2025. We couldn’t book Atlantis in February of 2025 and then go in early 2026. You just get one option. So I think saving it for January is the best play with this. And you’re also getting the lower rates and the better benefits with the stay that if you go in the peak time that it’s going to be even more expensive and you’re not getting as many benefits, especially if you have the higher levels of Caesars reward status.
Past podcast guest Justin Walter. He was lamenting the food options. I agree. So it’s bring your own food hard mode or be prepared to spend a lot. It is [00:35:00] unfortunate that you can’t use Caesars Rewards or Caesars Rewards comps here. I’m sure if you were able to do that many people would dump their comps and would get a lot of food.
So that’s strange, that even though it’s a partner, that you can’t use your comps here. I suppose we’ve been so spoiled in Miles and Points that we have so many outs. People at Hooker, oh, I have a lot of outs. We have a lot of outs. When we went to Miami, we went to Cheesecake Factory, I had Resi credits to use, we have Grubhub credits, we have so much going on.
Uber Eats, gift cards for multiple places, lounges, buffets at casinos. Casino comps, aplenty from the MGM credit card, the Caesars credit card, and soon from the Hard Rock Mastercard, which is a very interesting card that you got approved for and I’m pending. So here, bring your own food, take an extra bag, or pack the food into your existing luggage.
Very foreign to us. And to be determined, it looks like flying [00:36:00] out, we had to pay about 110 extra fee. Even if you were to use points and miles to book your flight out, you still have to pay this extra tax or fee. That’s another low point of it, that the food options aren’t there, the extra 110, but even with these low lights of the trip, I still found it to be a great experience and It’s encouraging me even more to get the 7 star status to come back for next year.
Mandi: I think that was worth it.
Justin Vacula: And some people can also use benefits like Purchase Eraser on their credit card with the Capital One Venture Card or Venture X. You can charge the flight to that, use the Purchase Eraser to offset the costs. Perhaps the U. S. Bank Altitude Reserve would offset. So there are many ways you could try to save on those little fees.
There’s allegedly a priority pass lounge in the airport on the way out. So this will be our first instance of unlimited food for free in maybe a week or two.
Mandi: I’m really [00:37:00] excited about this lounge.
Justin Vacula: We heard back from Majestic Tours. It was really nice of them. They called our room perhaps as a courtesy. Oh, we’re just calling to remind you of tomorrow’s departure.
Meet us at the bus at 9 a. m. For the flight that’s departing around noon. So the round trip really nice there It’s already taken care of and we don’t have to rely on a taxi It would probably be more expensive and maybe not fit all of the luggage either future announcements We booked this Las Vegas trip, so we’re going to be there
Mandi: from January 25th We heard about the 10x Caesars Rewards tier promotion going on this week, and Justin has figured out the math on the video poker, and we’re hoping to get, and hoping to receive Caesars Diamond this week.
Justin Vacula: Yes, our friend Michael Trager from TravelsOrg said that this promotion is a very interesting opportunity because you’re going to gain [00:38:00] 30, 000 tier credits is the bonus or maximum you can get from this promotion. And then you’re going to get additional tier credits for playing in one day. So definitely diamond plus in one promotion.
Mandi: I haven’t had to do this before. I feel like I’m pretty well versed in video. We don’t have the seizures match to Wyndham any longer. So this seems like the next process to get Caesar’s diamond status.
Justin Vacula: Yes. And then oddly enough, back to Las Vegas, January 27th. So this is interesting how it worked out because.
I was originally going to go to Atlantic City, but seeing Atlantis, seeing the benefits of the seven star status and even the diamond status, I have much more enthusiasm to return to Atlantis. A quick Vegas trip and then going back for a miles and points meet up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, with Greater Philadelphia Travel, and then back to Vegas.
Mandi: Their home away from [00:39:00] home.
Justin Vacula: Yes, I added a tab on the hurdygurdytravel. com website, upcoming and past trips, so it’s going to be 2025, January 19th to 25th in Las Vegas, January 26th, Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, January 27th through February 7th, back to Las Vegas, and then
Mandi: We have a carnival cruise match. From Long Beach, California, leaving February 8th through the 16th, February 16th to the 19th.
Justin Vacula: Yes, so a lot’s happening. It typically Is the case that if I’m going to California, going to Seattle, why not go to Vegas before or after as I’m flying past it?
Mandi: And it’s virtually free for us. Yes. It doesn’t cost anything for us.
Justin Vacula: Fan of the podcast, Beth, and former guest, Beth. Says the endless parade of free food.
So that quite didn’t happen in Atlantis, but it will in Las Vegas. And we both bought out all of the MyVegas [00:40:00] food rewards. And even after all those redemptions, I believe you still have 3 million loyalty points. I’m around 30 million even after the redemptions. So Vegas continues to be inexpensive as we’re using the MGM credit card to generate comps.
Stacking those with MyVegas, and in Vegas, we found very low rates. Even during the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, where a lot of rates were very much up. The Wyndham Desert Rose was somewhere around, what, 8500 points, or perhaps less. With the Wyndham Business Earner card, that’s not the business earners card, it’s the business earner card.
As you’re getting a 10 percent discount with the Wyndham points. I used a MyVegas complimentary knight reward for two knights at MGM Grand, and you received some comp knights at Horseshoot with Caesar’s Rewards.
Mandi: Somehow or another, Caesar has recognized me. They want me on their team, and I’m more than willing to join.
Justin Vacula: [00:41:00] Recognition by Caesar.
Mandi: Great. I keep getting offers every day, and I’m like, Justin, did you get this offer? No, I didn’t get this offer. And we have multiple Caesar’s reservations booked now. So, Garth Burke’s tickets.
Justin Vacula: Ooh, and Caesar’s palace accommodations complimentary. So maybe because you matched into the status, and maybe Some play in the past that they gave the offer, Hey, we want you.
And after the 10 X play, we might lose about three or 400 in expected value. But the benefits of the status are going to be way worth it and potential return offers or more return offers.
Mandi: In a way, it’s like a sign up bonus for a credit card. You pay for these elite travel cards. Why not pay for your diamond status with Caesars?
Especially, we get the drink vouchers, we get this Atlantis stay. I think it’s going to be well worth it.
Justin Vacula: Yes, so a sort of annual fee. In some sense, to get [00:42:00] all of these benefits.
Mandi: It’s still very new to us because we are used to just matching into the Caesar status. We’re going to see how this works and see how easy it is.
We’ll let you know.
Justin Vacula: We will have a video poker trip update in Las Vegas. So we’ll talk about that and how it will be psychologically to play for 6 hours or so a day of video poker, but we’re planning on breaking it into 3 sessions rather than sitting in front of the machine non stop for 6 hours. We’ll see how this goes.
Take a deep breather. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for future episodes. Some closing announcements, early bird ticket sales for ZorkFest 2025, a miles, points, and gambling event are now live at zorkfest. travelzork. com. I hope to see you at ZorkFest 2025 in Las Vegas, December 5th through December 7th, 2025.
I’m also looking forward to other events in 2025. And had a successful 2024 [00:43:00] speaking at events with Award Travel 101, Travels Org, Frequent Traveler University, and both Chicago Seminars events. If you’re an event organizer, would like to have me speak at your 2025 event, please contact me. Visit meetup.
com slash Philly miles and points. To RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel credit miles and points meetups, I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. The next meetups are January 26th and February 23rd, 2025. Find a link in the show notes. For more content between podcast episodes, follow Hirty Gerty Travel Podcast on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter.
Follow Justin Vukula on Instagram. Subscribe to Hirty Gerty Travel Podcast on YouTube, where you can also become a channel member. Find daily content, including travel photos. Podcast clips, community content, and other bonus videos. Search [00:44:00] HerdyGerdyTravel on Subscribestar. com or become a channel member on YouTube.
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Theme Song: Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures, tales to be told. Make and save money, the world will unfold.[00:45:00]
Fight the war on happiness, pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
Thank you for providing the transcript, it’s a big help! 🙂