This was our second visit to Borgata and the first time staying in their hotel. We booked the room through a comp offer we had received from their players' club.

Check-in wait time was brief, and funny enough, the Black Card members line (the next level up for the players' club) was much longer than the Red Card line. We had an extremely pleasant young woman check us in who easily accommodated all of our requests (king-size bed, high floor, smoking). We were given a room on the 43rd floor, their top floor. The view was of the new tower being built and the bay, but since it was 5pm when we checked in it was dark out, so couldn't see anything except what was lit up.

The room was very spacious with an extremely comfortable armchair and desk. The bathroom was large with a huge shower stall and a separate alcove, with its own door, for the toilet; a great convenience when you have two people sharing a bathroom. The bed was extremely comfortable. I have to say that it was probably one of the best beds and one of the best showers that I've ever experienced in a hotel.

Now for the negative. We came to the room around 1am after gambling in the casino. As I tried to go to sleep there was an incredible wind outside; there was some rainy/sleety weather that had moved through the area that night. Being on the 43rd floor, the wind was much more intense, and I could literally feel the building shaking and hear the windows rattling. My friend said it was normal for a building this tall and we were perfectly safe, but it totally freaked me out. Not long after I started hearing a banging outside the window. It got louder and louder. I thought it was the sleet being pelted against the window, so I went and took a look. What I saw was actually this very large strap of some sort that was hanging off of one of the letters of the Borgata sign that was positioned above our window. It had a big knotted end to it and that was what kept slamming against the window. It was really annoying. I woke up my friend who told me to just put in my ear plugs and go to sleep. So I did. Unfortunately for my friend, once I had brought the sound to his attention, now he couldn't escape it and was unable to fall asleep. As the wind got fiercer the slamming got louder. It finally woke me up again even with my earplugs in. My friend was now in a rage after trying for an hour to sleep with the noise. He finally called down to the front desk and demanded that we be moved to another room. They claimed they had nothing else available in a smoking room to move us to. My friend told them to find something anyway. They of course quickly found a room, but it had two queens instead of a king, which we accepted. We threw all of our stuff together rapidly and a bellperson was there promptly to help move our bags. I pointed out to her the strap so that she would know what we were talking about and in hopes that she would report it to management. She said that it was probably something left over from when they were cleaning the windows recently. Our new room was on the 35th floor. It appeared slightly smaller than the other, but we didn't care at that point as all we wanted was sleep. The bellperson warned us that because the computers were down at the front desk, they could not give us keys to this new room, so we essentially couldn't both leave the room at the same time until we checked out in the morning.

This incident was a huge inconvenience, but I have to say that the hotel handled the response in a quick and efficient manner. One thing that was disturbing though was when we went to check out in the morning they had no record of us being in the second room. So hopefully that room got cleaned before someone was checked into it. Another note too, we stayed in ACY for two more days after this at Harrahs. After leaving Harrahs we drove past Borgata to get to the highway. I looked up at the sign and where our room was and sure enough that strap was still there flapping furiously in the wind. So I imagine other guests that weekend must have had an unpleasant night's sleep like we did.

Beyond this bizarre incident though we had a great stay. We had a nice dinner at The Metropolitan (their 24 hour cafe), and a great lunch at their buffet the next day. Service at both locations was excellent. In fact, the only service complaint I had was with the players' club desk. The women there seemed a bit annoyed that they had to actually help people. And the cashier at the hotel gift shop could've used a personality transplant.

In the casino, cocktail waitresses were plentiful. I'm not sure about the wait times for drinks though as I did not order one. The machines were just as tight as any other casino, although personally I did very well this trip winding up about $400 ahead by the time we left. The other thing I really loved though was the crowd. Because Borgata is not anywhere near the boardwalk, you don't get all the local ACY riff-raff drifting in. In fact, security was everywhere at this place, so even if some bums somehow made it to this place, they likely wouldn't have been allowed to stay long.

Overall, I was extremely satisified with Borgata. It has a great atmosphere, fun casino, wonderful rooms, and good staff. It's very much in the style of a Vegas casino. For any Vegas gamblers who have never been to ACY, I'd say don't even bother with any casinos except Borgata as you will probably be massively disappointed.