MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
Casino Bus Junkets On The Decline, But Still Delivering Geriatric Gamblers Daily to Atlantic City
By MICHAEL B. FARRELL and MATT LEON
MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

ON THE BUS TO ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- "You better step on it," shouted one of the few young men aboard the Gold Line casino bus bound for Atlantic City, N.J., from Washington's Union Station.

It was 8:30 a.m. on a recent Saturday and passengers on the casino coach were already getting antsy. They all were eager to be on their way and chafed as the bus stopped to collect a few stray gambling day-trippers waiting on the sidewalk outside a suburban Washington Holiday Inn.

A silver-haired, 60-something couple boarded. Two single men, traveling separately, climbed on board and found their seats. The passengers, mostly black and old enough to be collecting Social Security checks, settled in as the bus headed onto Interstate 95 north. They stared at the traffic, read newspapers or how-to blackjack books. Two women in back shared laughs over a six-pack of Miller High Life.

In a few hours, this Gold Line bus would join the hundreds of other buses that arrive in Atlantic City daily from locations scattered throughout the East Coast. Buses filled with Chinese-Americans arrive from New York's Chinatown daily. Buses chartered for seniors from retirement communities in New Jersey often clog the streets. Other gamblers who arrive via bus are drawn by cheap fares-usually $20 for a round-trip ticket-and cash incentives-somewhere between $13 and $17.

"I'm hooked," said Josephine Rucker, who was traveling on the bus from Washington. This great grandmother and home health care nurse goes to Atlantic City via bus at least twice a month.

Rucker wouldn't reveal her age, but was quick to show wrinkled photographs of her great-grandchildren while giving up her gambling secrets. The most she's won: $1,800.

"But I don't always come home a winner," she said, explaining that on some trips she's lost as much as $500 to the slot machines.

Just behind Rucker sat Joyce Brown, 38, a mother of two who has traveled to Atlantic City via the gambling bus at least 100 times, she said. "I love Atlantic City. I can't afford Las Vegas," she said. The most she's ever won in Atlantic City is about $800.

At the Tropicana Casino alone, buses from 79 different locations arrive every day at its bus terminal. Bus companies like Ramblin' Gamblin' from New Paltz, N.Y., Leisure Line in northern New Jersey, and Service Tour from Brooklyn, N.Y., stock the city's 13 casinos with senior gamblers, many toting Ziploc bags stuffed with quarters or change purses bulging with coins.

Although people still arrive by the busload on any given day, the number of gamblers coming by coach is dwindling. Casinos want to draw customers wearing Prada pumps instead orthopedic shoes, so their marketing efforts are geared toward snaring big spenders, not just seniors on a budget.

And their efforts are beginning to show.

In 2002, 321,919 buses carrying about 8.1 million visitors pulled into Atlantic City, which made up 25 percent of the city's total annual visitors. In 2001, 8.5 million arrived on gambling coaches and 9.5 visitors came on the bus in 2000. Bus traffic peaked in 1988 at 14.9 million.

"Casinos have been trying to attract more people to drive and more people to come in and spend the night," said Dan Heneghan of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.

A road-widening project near the city's newest casino, The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, is one of many infrastructure improvement projects under way to accommodate more vehicle traffic.

Though there is an airport nearby, Atlantic City has yet to break through as a destination resort. The average visitor stays only eight hours, according to Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., chief executive of the American Gaming Association, the industry's Washington lobby.

The bus numbers are dropping because of gambling spots like Dover, Del., said Harold Turley, director of operations for Gold Line. "Atlantic City is not the attraction it used to be," he said.

Since the first casino opened in Atlantic City in 1978, gambling spots have opened in Delaware Park and Dover, Del, and at Indian Casinos in New York. Pennsylvania and Maryland are threatening to add gambling options that would increase Atlantic City's competition.

Glenn Lillie, vice president of communications for Smith O'Keefe, a public relations firm in Atlantic City that works with the gambling industry, said casinos have marketing efforts to lure driving customers who will typically stay overnight instead of day-trippers who stay only a few hours.

And more upscale casinos, like the city's new Borgata Casino Hotel & Spa, trying to lure a more chic audience, are not anxious to attract bus-riders.

Even so, the Gold Line, and others like it, continues to operate at least one bus per day and sometimes two on Saturdays carrying about 30 passengers each. The bus typically departs in the morning at 8:30 and returns that same day at 7 p.m.

When the bus finally arrived and parked in the exhaust-filled terminal in the bowels of the Tropicana, a stocky woman boarded, carrying a clipboard. She welcomed the busload of groggy travelers and tried to lure the seasoned day-trippers with $17 in cash. Some riders would wait to see if the Sands casino, the next stop, was offering more.

The gamblers who grabbed Tropicana's cash made their way through the gassy terminal and ambled toward the glow and clang of the slot machines. They had less than seven hours before their bus would depart for the return trip.

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