I received an offer from Harrah’s Cherokee Casino for $1,000 in free play, $500 in travel reimbursement, $250 in casino food credit, two rounds of golf, and two concert tickets — valid anytime between early April and the end of June. I also received an even bigger offer from Harrah’s New Orleans which was available for approximately the same time period. Since Bonnie had never been on a casino trip with me, it seemed a no-brainer for her to join me on back-to-back visits to both casinos where we would pick up the goodies.
Cherokee, North Carolina is located in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in western North Carolina. The casino itself is a fairly typical Harrah’s property, but the surrounding area is absolutely gorgeous — filled with outdoorsy things to do like hiking, fishing, kayaking, and bicycling in the warm months (we were there Thursday-Saturday prior to Father’s Day) and many snow-related activities in the winter.
It’s a little out of the way. The closest airport is Asheville, North Carolina, which is about fifty miles away — and even that’s a fairly small regional airport. From Vegas, we had to change planes in Atlanta and then take a small jet for an hour to Asheville. In Asheville, we rented a car for the final leg to Cherokee. It turned out that we were fortunate to have a car available since most of the outdoor activities are not within walking distance of the casino.
The video poker machines were tight. I didn’t perform an exhaustive survey, so I can’t judge whether they were tighter than an average Harrah’s casino or not. Before embarking on our trip, however, I read on www.vpfree2.com that they offered $5 NSU Deuces Wild, which I figured would be available in a High Limit Slot room. So that’s where I went to check.
Most of the machines in High Limits were of the 9/5 Double Double Bonus variety (97.87%) — or worse — but there were six Game King multi-game, multi-denomination machines. Every seat was taken and there was one player “hovering,” waiting for one of the machines to open up. One man was playing $5 Deuces Wild so I was able to verify from behind that it was indeed NSU. I decided to go to bed early and come back at about 3:30 in the morning to see if all of those machines were still occupied.
At 3:30, only three of the six machines were taken. I was easily able to sit down at an open machine, but there were times, at least briefly, when all six of the machines were again occupied simultaneously. Since I was playing early Friday morning, it is very possible that on early Saturday and Sunday mornings the machines are busy all night long.
I examined my machine before I began playing. It was $1, $2, $5 single line — with the best pay schedules at $5, somewhat weaker pay schedules at $2, and weaker still at $1. For example, in Deuces Wild they had NSU for $5 (16-10-4-4-3 — 99.73%); pseudo NSU (15-9-4-4-3 — 98.91%) for $2; and a weaker game yet (12-10-4-4-3 — 97.58%) for $1. They had several other games on the box (Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus, Jacks or Better, Joker Wild, etc.) and each followed the same pattern of bad-to-decent pay schedules as the denomination was increased.
I played quite a bit. I wanted to earn future offers as it is a lovely area with decent-enough machines. Generally speaking, playing on machines with loose pay schedules generates a low theoretical, but we’ll see. (A “theoretical” is the amount the casino expects you to lose on that game/machine.) There were some pretty poor games on the box and most of the other players were playing the $1 games, so maybe I was getting credit for more than I expected.
I could have checked in with a host afterwards to see what theoretical I earned, but I didn’t bother, primarily for two reasons. First, at some Harrah’s properties, your play is divided by the days you play. Since the casino day ended at 6 a.m. Friday (I think), I didn’t want to play more on the second day. There was no host on duty when I finished playing, so whatever information I learned about theoretical on that machine would have been too late to use. I’ll find out the information indirectly via whatever offers (if any) I get in the future. (At other properties your play is sometimes divided into the days you are checked into the casino hotel. I don’t know the rules at Cherokee.)
The second reason I didn’t ask is that at some properties employees are suspicious if you even ask about theoretical. These properties prefer their customers “barefoot and pregnant,” so to speak, and a customer knowledgeable about theoretical figures is far too knowledgeable from the casino’s point of view. Does Harrah’s Cherokee react this way? I have no idea. But I wasn’t going to take that chance if it was going to be too late to use the information anyway.
Enough about the casino. For our main recreational activity we decided to go zip lining! Both Bonnie and I are closer to seventy years old than we are to sixty, but we decided that going on ten zip lines back-to-back-to-back sounded like a fun way to spend the day. Bonnie reserved the right to bail out early if she became too scared, but she kept going, fears and all. What a trooper! It was a day we won’t forget!
The company that runs the zip lines, www.wildwaterrafting.com starts you out very slowly with a 50-foot long zip line about 10 feet off the ground so you can practice the appropriate techniques. (Different techniques are used there than on the zip line in Las Vegas. I haven’t been to the Vegas one, but the pictures they use in the advertisement show a very different harness set-up. But every place explains the techniques you need to use on their equipment.) They gradually increase the length and height of the zips before you get to the “biggie,” which is 2,200 feet long and several hundred feet in the air. They check out your technique during the early zips before they allow you on the long one. Each of the ten people in our group qualified for, and took, the long zip, but apparently every day some people chicken out. That is fine. You have to step off each platform yourself. You are never pushed. If you are too scared or otherwise not ready, they do not force you. They are prepared to lower you to the ground and it’s a short walk out to the road where the bus will pick you up if that’s what you want.
I hope we get more offers from Cherokee. Neither of us had been to North Carolina previously and it was a very nice trip, Southern hospitality, lots of things to do, and acceptable gambling. Although players always want ‘more,’ this was a very nice package.
