A Visit to New Orleans

Through the years, I’ve been to Harrah’s New Orleans twenty times or more. They used to have dollar Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play NSU Deuces Wild, and if you played enough, you got nice mailers including food, free play, and airfare. The casino was within walking distance to the French Quarter and the Mississippi River, and it was an enjoyable city to visit. They had a Diamond Lounge where if you planned it right, you could easily consume a high proportion of your calories for free every day — and the menu varied from day to day.

So, a surprising number of Las Vegas video poker players regularly made the 2,000-mile journey to the Crescent City. Players from all over the country came as well.

 Almost a decade ago, the NSU games were removed. The loosest remaining video poker I knew about (other than 9/6 Jacks or Better at $150 a hand, or more) was what I called Pseudo NSU, and others called Airport Deuces — among many other names. It’s a 98.9% game that might be acceptable with the right promotion and slot club. Although occasionally I would go for a Seven Stars trip, the tighter games precluded me from attending regularly.

This summer, however, Bonnie and I both received too-good-to-pass-up mailers — so we didn’t. These offers were presumably based on our play at Harrah’s Cherokee — which is also in the Southeastern part of the country. In late September we booked a total of four days — two in my name, two in hers — into the hotel — immediately before a stay in Cherokee. New Orleans is, more or less, on the way to North Carolina from Las Vegas.

Although the hotel is still called Harrah’s New Orleans, the casino has become Caesars New Orleans. There is a new Caesars Hotel that will open in a few months that is slightly smaller than the existing Harrah’s Hotel (350 rooms compared to 400), with 50 of those rooms branded Nobu Hotel, which is a higher-end experience. I was told that the Harrah’s Hotel will be refurbished, possibly renamed, and will continue to be part of the casino-hotel complex there.

The casino itself was barely recognizable to me. Brand new carpet featuring Julius Caesar’s head over and over again covered the casino. When we were there, we saw plenty of empty floor space that will presumably be filled over time with slot machines. The buffet is gone, and a food court area now takes the place of where I think they used to have a theater. 

When I was there previously, I was not a slot player. Today, there are a number of good machines that are sometimes positive, and presumably more to come. Percentagewise, there are far fewer video poker machines than there used to be, although it’s possible that ratio will change when the additional machines are installed. While I didn’t do an exhaustive search, I did see some machines with pseudo NSU on them — which isn’t what it used to be but decent enough by today’s standards. 

Using your Reward Credits (RCs) for dining is a bit tricky. Your RCs are redeemed at one-for-one at the Steakhouse, Manning’s, and the food court. Most other restaurants are redeemed at two-for–one, except Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse is redeemed at three-for-one. This means a $100 check at Ruth’s Chris will cost you $300 in RCs.

There are a number of restaurants throughout the city where you can eat using RCs, at the two-for-one rate, only you have to redeem your RCs first and get a voucher. If your voucher isn’t big enough, you have to use cash or credit card to pay the rest. If your voucher is too big, you forfeit what you didn’t use.

The French Quarter retains its charm. One of my “go-to” stops every trip has been to attend an hour-long concert at Preservation Hall — a venue dedicated to playing New Orleans jazz music in its various forms. Preservation Hall itself is closed now for refurbishing, to add air conditioning among other things, but the Preservation Hall concerts still exist at the Toulouse Theatre, a few blocks away. 

There is a United States National Park on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. Every day that they were open, they used to have tours of the French Quarter at 10 a.m. I’ve been on several of them over the years — and each one was slightly different. They no longer have those, but they have free daily ranger talks about the history of New Orleans music — with each ranger giving his/her own take on it. We caught two of those — one from a lady using a piano to describe things and the second from an upright bass player who used that instrument in his talk. It was a surprise to me that the park rangers were experts on New Orleans Jazz. I thought park rangers were generally out-doorsy sorts who knew about forests and animals. But these folks know their music! The talks were enjoyable, informative, and free. 

Bonnie insisted on one snack consisting of beignets and chicory coffee. “The” place to have these snacks is Café Du Monde. This time, however, Café Beignet had no line, so we stopped there instead. Even after dusting off all of the powdered sugar that I could get off of one of these donuts, just being there caused me to ingest killer amounts of second-hand sugar. I ate one powder-free donut with a small chicory coffee to keep the peace. I’m grateful Bonnie didn’t want to go there more than once.

We’ll return to this casino — possibly just before or after a Harrah’s Cherokee trip — again. New Orleans is a unique place to visit — and one of our favorites. In my opinion, we stayed away too long.