One of the biggest differences between Atlantic City and Las Vegas is the family-oriented aspects. While AC has kept something of a dingy reputation, Las Vegas turned into Disneyland, where "the kids play cardboard pirates while Mommy & Daddy drop house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots".

But I digress. Atlantic City has struggled to bring in the family crowd, but they have plans for a huge new attraction that could be a big draw - a one-hundred-million dollar water park!

According to NJ.com, the owner of the Showboat applied for a state tax credit to build a gigantic water park in what is now an empty parking lot next to the hotel.

Atlantic City has had visions of water parks in their head before - in 2012 a sailboat-shaped hotel and water park were planned for the Marina District, and in 2017 a group planned a family-friendly hotel including a water park for the former Atlantic Club casino, but money ran out.

While I think this could be awesome, I'm not going to get too excited for it just yet. We've seen lots of glitzy new casinos come and go in AC, and for whatever reason, nothing has really been able to stick and bring a shine back to the area. The outlets have cleaned up some sections of the town, the hotels are nice, the boardwalk is fine, but it's still not an area that I would consider a "family destination". Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be entirely negative, I definitely hope this is a success - I'm just going to take the patient route and wait to see how this unfolds.