We drove up from the Chattanooga area Oct 6 and spent one night. Murphy's about 100 miles from our house, and it took a little bit over 2 hours. For us it's the exact same route as going to Cherokee, but almost an hour closer to home. We watched the progress on the build for the last couple of years on our trips to Cherokee. Crowds were huge for the first few days, but Tuesday before noon and after 6 was not crowded at all.
The casino's only 9 days old, so there are things we really liked and other things we hope will improve as time goes on. I'll make some comparisons to the original Cherokee, but with the knowledge that this property is not meant to be the same as her big sister up the road.
Casino - I guess it's between a third and half the size of Cherokee. Much more basic than Cherokee, but you can see a similar design. It's clearly built with future expansion in mind. I love the windows.
Employees are the same friendly, helpful folks that you meet at Cherokee.
The state-of-the-art ventilation system is a work in progress, I hope. It worked great in some areas and not at all in others. There are vents that look like shower drains in the floor about every 3 to 4 feet. Cool air blows up from these vents. If you stand on the vents you'll see that some of them are blowing a lot of air, but others are just barely working. The smokiest place of all was, of course, the video poker area. We both gave up machines and walked away several times because we just couldn't take it.
Non-smoking section needs work. There is a very small no-tobacco-use group of machines near the food court. It seemed to be mostly older slot machines and was not heavily used. There are no video poker machines in this area. They really need to enlarge the area, add sinage, and, most importantly, add quarter VP and newer slots. I'm spoiled to the large, always packed non-smoking area in Cherokee.
Hotel - Really, really liked it. 7 floors. 300 rooms, all non-smoking. They're smaller versions of the Creek tower rooms in Cherokee without a couch or separate seating area. Nice bathroom with a good sized shower. No tub. LG TV with better high-def and more channels than Cherokee.
Food - No restaurants, but we were fine with the food court. Panda Express, Earl of Sandwich, Papa John's, Nathan's Hot Dogs, and a real Starbucks (as opposed to a coffee place that's 'proudly serving Starbucks coffee'). They've been so busy that Panda Express was out of Orange Chicken and Beijing Beef until Thursday.
Diamond Lounge - I liked it better than the one in Cherokee. Yes, it's a lot smaller but so's the casino. They don't serve the hot meals like Cherokee, but have a couple of really nice trays of Italian cold cuts, peppers, cheeses, raw veggies, and dips. Plus, there was a tray with small bites of desserts like magic cookie bars and some kind of peanut butter/chocolate chip/toffee bar. Draft beers and house wines are $3 each in the lounge. Great friendly bartender as well.
Video Poker - Eh. We play single-line quarters almost exclusively, and the news here is not great. There isn't much of it, and what's there is not good. I think there are 24 single-line quarter machines in the whole casino. Tuesday afternoon it was hard to find an open machine. All but 4 of them are concentrated in the corner to the left of the parking lot entrance. The other 4 are on an outside wall near the main valet entrance.
There's a bank of 10 (or maybe 12) old Game Kings. DDB is 7-5. JOB is 6-5. All other games are similarly bad. And these machines are in bad shape. Their bill acceptors will only take cash. They give out tickets, but won't take them back. Lots of keys that don't work on them as well. I'm optimistically assuming that fixing these Game Kings is on the list of things to do.
That area also contains 8 new All Star Poker machines that generally have worse pay tables than the Game Kings for single line quarters. DDB is 6-5 for example. Look closely, though, because the DW game is slightly better on All Star than Game King.
The same area also has 12 additional All Star machines with multi-line quarter games.
I saw on VPFree that there are some fairly good pay tables at $5, $10, and $25. And, there are quite a few dollar machines with not-as-good pay tables as well as two banks of dollar progressives.
It's your typical CET quarter video poker, somewhat worse than that place an hour up the road. Despite the bad pay tables, we had a good gambling trip. If you don't get a lot of full houses (and I was certainly under full-housed all day), it's hard to tell the difference. Within 10 minutes of our arrival I hit aces with kicker for $500 on one of the 6-5 machines. I slowly lost the rest of the day and went home even. My husband played up and down all day until he hit a royal on a 6-5 Bdlx early evening. He went home way ahead.
Deb
The casino's only 9 days old, so there are things we really liked and other things we hope will improve as time goes on. I'll make some comparisons to the original Cherokee, but with the knowledge that this property is not meant to be the same as her big sister up the road.
Casino - I guess it's between a third and half the size of Cherokee. Much more basic than Cherokee, but you can see a similar design. It's clearly built with future expansion in mind. I love the windows.
Employees are the same friendly, helpful folks that you meet at Cherokee.
The state-of-the-art ventilation system is a work in progress, I hope. It worked great in some areas and not at all in others. There are vents that look like shower drains in the floor about every 3 to 4 feet. Cool air blows up from these vents. If you stand on the vents you'll see that some of them are blowing a lot of air, but others are just barely working. The smokiest place of all was, of course, the video poker area. We both gave up machines and walked away several times because we just couldn't take it.
Non-smoking section needs work. There is a very small no-tobacco-use group of machines near the food court. It seemed to be mostly older slot machines and was not heavily used. There are no video poker machines in this area. They really need to enlarge the area, add sinage, and, most importantly, add quarter VP and newer slots. I'm spoiled to the large, always packed non-smoking area in Cherokee.
Hotel - Really, really liked it. 7 floors. 300 rooms, all non-smoking. They're smaller versions of the Creek tower rooms in Cherokee without a couch or separate seating area. Nice bathroom with a good sized shower. No tub. LG TV with better high-def and more channels than Cherokee.
Food - No restaurants, but we were fine with the food court. Panda Express, Earl of Sandwich, Papa John's, Nathan's Hot Dogs, and a real Starbucks (as opposed to a coffee place that's 'proudly serving Starbucks coffee'). They've been so busy that Panda Express was out of Orange Chicken and Beijing Beef until Thursday.
Diamond Lounge - I liked it better than the one in Cherokee. Yes, it's a lot smaller but so's the casino. They don't serve the hot meals like Cherokee, but have a couple of really nice trays of Italian cold cuts, peppers, cheeses, raw veggies, and dips. Plus, there was a tray with small bites of desserts like magic cookie bars and some kind of peanut butter/chocolate chip/toffee bar. Draft beers and house wines are $3 each in the lounge. Great friendly bartender as well.
Video Poker - Eh. We play single-line quarters almost exclusively, and the news here is not great. There isn't much of it, and what's there is not good. I think there are 24 single-line quarter machines in the whole casino. Tuesday afternoon it was hard to find an open machine. All but 4 of them are concentrated in the corner to the left of the parking lot entrance. The other 4 are on an outside wall near the main valet entrance.
There's a bank of 10 (or maybe 12) old Game Kings. DDB is 7-5. JOB is 6-5. All other games are similarly bad. And these machines are in bad shape. Their bill acceptors will only take cash. They give out tickets, but won't take them back. Lots of keys that don't work on them as well. I'm optimistically assuming that fixing these Game Kings is on the list of things to do.
That area also contains 8 new All Star Poker machines that generally have worse pay tables than the Game Kings for single line quarters. DDB is 6-5 for example. Look closely, though, because the DW game is slightly better on All Star than Game King.
The same area also has 12 additional All Star machines with multi-line quarter games.
I saw on VPFree that there are some fairly good pay tables at $5, $10, and $25. And, there are quite a few dollar machines with not-as-good pay tables as well as two banks of dollar progressives.
It's your typical CET quarter video poker, somewhat worse than that place an hour up the road. Despite the bad pay tables, we had a good gambling trip. If you don't get a lot of full houses (and I was certainly under full-housed all day), it's hard to tell the difference. Within 10 minutes of our arrival I hit aces with kicker for $500 on one of the 6-5 machines. I slowly lost the rest of the day and went home even. My husband played up and down all day until he hit a royal on a 6-5 Bdlx early evening. He went home way ahead.
Deb
