Casinos spare no expense to entertain high-rollers on New Year’s Eve

Brendan Schurr

Saturday, Dec. 30, 2000 | 10:14 a.m.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - Even the invitations are a production.

When high-rollers at Caesars Atlantic City Hotel Casino opened their invitations to this year's New Year's Eve gala, they heard "Thus Spake Zarathustra," the music from "2001: A Space Odyssey," blaring from a computer chip embedded inside.

The orange and white invitation, designed to look like a planet, asks guests to "journey into a new orbit" and enjoy a "star gazing feast and nectars fit for the gods" at the party, which will be themed "Roman Odyssey 2001."

Loyal gamblers at Bally's Park Place Casino Hotel received a feathered mask and a brightly colored poster for "El Carnival," a Brazilian New Year's celebration.

When the city's 12 casinos invite their highest rollers to their lavish New Year's Eve soirees, they spare no expense. The invitations are only the beginning.

As a show of appreciation for their best customers, the casinos throw elaborate, invitation-only parties every New Year's Eve. Each casino spends at least six months and tens of thousands of dollars on their galas.

They come up with themes, design glitzy invitations, hire decorators, book dance troupes and orchestras, create lavish menus, taste the foods, then taste them again.

Six months of planning, creating, spending and agonizing over the most minute details will all come down to four hours of blow-out-the-bank entertainment in the biggest party of the year for faithful gamblers.

"It's a way to thank your loyal customers," said Susan Kotzen, spokeswoman for Harrah's Casino Hotel.

"You want to make sure that the experience they have from the time they arrive until they leave is something that will stay with them and something they'll talk to their friends about and something they'll remember, so they continue to come back and patronize us," she said.

Harrah's ballroom will be transformed into a wild mix of red with black and white zebra stripes for their party, themed "Red, Hot and Wild." Each of their 800 guests will be given a limited edition crystal egg and a zebra-striped throw rug, she said.

On Thursday, 75 hours before the party at Bally's was set to begin, the ballroom was a beehive. Workers were busy draping hot pink, lime green and bright orange vinyl material from the ceiling, hanging 6-foot-high carnival masks and 12-foot parrots, arranging huge mirrors with pink neon flamingos and setting up life-sized canoes.

"These guys are the SWAT team of special events," Dennis Nothaft said of his workers, who were busy hammering and nailing. His Egg Harbor City company, Dennis Nothaft and Associates, was hired to design, build and install the sets for Bally's party and for several others.

Next on their schedule was hanging streamers from the ceiling and nestling several hundred multicolored balloons in nets, to be dropped at the stroke of midnight Sunday.

Next door at Caesars, technicians were checking sound levels for the music and workers were putting the finishing touches on silver-painted Roman statues.

Chefs were fine-tuning the menu, which includes filet of beef, lobster tail and crab-stuffed shrimp, and for dessert, chocolate mango marquis garnished with fresh fruit and marinated oranges, topped with a chocolate clock tower set to midnight.

The Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort was set to entertain 3,000 guests with a "24 Karat Gold" celebration, including a three-course dinner with champagne, said spokeswoman Suze DiPietro.

The arena was transformed into an opulent ballroom, with fountains, lights and waterfalls all colored gold.

At the Showboat Casino Hotel, the ballroom was made to look like a 1970's disco with a backdrop of the New York City skyline, complete with twinkling lights from the many windows, said spokeswoman Susan Tulino.

The menu for the 900 guests included lobster tail, peppered beef filet, wine and champagne, and for dessert, petits fours and chocolate cappuccino parfaits in chocolate espresso cups.

"It's really a special treat to our best players," Tulino said. "It's a way of not only celebrating New Year's with your best guests, but also thanking them."