UPDATE ON ELLIS ISLAND COIN PROMOTION
I was getting conflicting information about the Ellis Island September 20% bonus coin-redemption promotion so Brad and I decided to empty the giant bowl of coins that decorated our office. It took a while to scoop out the 15-year collection from Brad’s pockets and from the bottom of my purse! In fact, we only emptied half of the bowl for our first trip to check out this promotion. That filled two extremely heavy bags which we barely had the strength to drag to the car.
When we got to the casino we doubled checked the rules – yep, I am always dubious about any “good” casino promotion and I need confirmation: Yes, we could do this promo any day in September but only two times per person. Yes, we could get a 20% free play bonus but only on an amount up to $400.
So we started the process, which ended up pretty easy. Dump the coins in the machine right by the cage. A screen shows you the running count as you empty your bags. When you punch “Done,” a ticket is generated that shows your total. (Check the return slot for anything that wasn’t accepted – Palms car-wash tokens, grandkids’ arcade tokens, foreign coins. 🙂 ) Take the ticket to the cage. Mine was for $412.60 – it was too hard to stop on $400 exactly but that didn’t matter. I was given the $12.60 in cash, which will be done for any amount over $400.
Then they put the $400 plus the $80 bonus (20%) on my players card. This was a wrinkle I didn’t expect. I thought they would give me the $400 in cash and the 20% bonus would be the only part in free play. However, this didn’t bother me since I was planning on playing anyway. But if you don’t plan to play, you might want to think twice about doing this promotion. Remember what I say about promotions: The devil is always in the details.
Ah. This explains a LOT. This is much different from them giving the 100% in cash and the 20% bonus in free play. A LOT of that 100% will never make it back out the front door. For Frugal types, there’s no real difference between free play and cash, as the method is to pick the best VP machine available and “launder” the free play, cashing out regardless of the result after running it through once. For ploppies, though, it’s oh so hard to do that. Stations knows it–as I remarked earlier, 90-95% worth of free play never makes it back out the door, or so a slot manager there told me. So Ellis figures to get back not only that extra $80 but a goodly portion of the $400 as well. Pretty smart, guys! Though I still can’t understand why they aren’t being besieged by the homeless. Well, maybe they are…
By the way, can you launder the free play at one of the two remaining 9/6 JOB Quick Quads or their .25 NSUD, or are those machines ineligible for free play? If that’s so, then you have to launder the FP through one of their awful 97% games, which will cost you 3% of your money. A good deal still, but degraded a bit.
Believe it or not, $400 in coins isn’t really all THAT heavy!
If they were the Presidential or Susan B Anthony dollar coins, it would be just over 7 pounds.
Quarters, dimes and halves all weigh $20 per pound, so that’s only 20 pounds.
Now pennies and nickels – that’s where the weght comes in. $400 in nickels are close to 90 pounds, and all pennies would be about 250 pounds!
Now, one could go to the bank and buy a box of quarters for $500, and spend 15 minutes unwrapping them into a bucket, take it to Ellis Island, and get $80 in free play for about an hour’s ‘work’. And the bucket would weigh just 25 pounds…
I stand corrected-my mailer does indeed state that it is any day this month.
As you always say, the devil is in the details. So, hopefully you’ll get us the rundown on your experience. I sometimes play “free play” through once then cash out, just to determine what percent I won or lost on that amount of free play. But in this case, $400 of YOUR money was so-called free play, and that I don’t like….even if you planned to play anyway. So, give is a full rundown soon.
I would have expected that they would have given the full amount in free play. Sounds like a good promo. I might have to go to the bank first to get $400 in coins first.
Should have made $50-$70 in profit so it’s worth over $100 a person a month.
It was free play so, of course, it had to be played through at least once.
Jean,
Were you able to cash out your coin cash, once you downloaded it to a machine, or did you need to play through? I would imagine you would have to play through your free play.
Hope you turned that $480 into much-much more.
GOOD JOB!!!