Laughlin gets generous---or maybe, desperate

I rarely visit Laughlin---usually, once a year, when I'm going to or from Arizona to see my relatives. I frankly don't like the place much and the gambling has gone to hell anyway. I usually get crummy offers from the Nefarious Aquarius, where the few remaining +EV VP machines reside and I've played in the past, the Riverside, where I play poker and some crummy nickel VP, and in the past, the Pioneer.

This takes the cake, though. When I was there in early February (just before the shit hit the fan), I decided to try the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co restaurant at the Golden Showers, uh, Nugget. They told me it would be a 45 minute wait for a table, so I decided to check out the VP in the meantime. The only decent machines are two (count 'em, two) 8/5 Bonus games. I stuck in a twenty, played until I was paged to the restaurant, and cashed out $16. The first and so far the last time I ever played there.

Last week, I got a bunch of overlapping offers in the mail. A total of thirteen free nights (including weekends), $210 in free play, a $50,000 slot tournament, and $50 in food credits. For what---playing nickel VP and losing four bucks??

Laughlin must really be hurting. The average age of visitors there is 70 (really!), and I would imagine that not many of them are all that thrilled with visiting right now. 

Laughlin is fun for about a day.  ANy more than that gets boring pretty quick.  One of my best lucky streaks in my gambling history came at the Pioneer Club.   I went in there with $60 and came out with over a thousand...and it wasnt one big hit....it was about a 20 little hits spread accross tables and machines.     Still love telling that story.

Aquarius has 10/7 Double Bonus and 100% 9/6 Jacks or Better (90 for the straight flush).

And if you like shellfish, I like the Harrah's steakhouse there better than anything they have in Vegas. In addition to the river view and reasonable prices, if you order the crab legs they bring you too many crab legs, and if you order the double lobster they bring you too much lobster.

Plus kayaking in the river.

There are a couple of short trips you can take from there that are kind of interesting. Go down the AZ side and go to Lake Havasu--it's a nice little excursion and there's some actual scenery. You can also go over to Kingman and visit Hualapai Mountain Park. Christmas Tree Pass is a passable dirt road that leads to some scenic spots.

damn PJ that is some great hits! 

Update: later in January, $50 WalMart card just for showing up, and another one for staying there for three free nights.

Anybody else getting Laughlin offers? I'm not really inclined to go there, but if they'll put me up for two weeks and hand me $350 worth of food, free play, and other stuff, I might be persuaded.

I wonder if it's so uncrowded that I could actually social distance, which certainly wasn't the case when I visited South Point a few months ago.

Buffets attract the crowds (especially families with kids).  No buffets, less crowding.  Make restaurant reservations early, like the day before.   Anywhere.  No buffet + the 25% capacity limit sqeezes the other eateries.

I've read some anecdotal reports that just across the river in Bullhead City, pretty much everybody is no-masking, and restaurants are allowing maskless indoor dining in direct contravention of Arizona's (pretty lax) rules. As BC is chock-full of Trumper oldsters, they've probably paid very little attention to safety guidelines since the pandemic started. And naturally--they've had several outbreaks, and currently are in the midst of a huge spike. 571 new cases since Christmas Day, and 7 deaths in Mohave County, which doesn't have that many people: 212,000.

Since Laughlin has almost no services of any kind (two fast food restaurants; one crappy little grocery store; no big-box retailers, etc.), everybody goes across the river to shop and to eat out if they don't want to dine in the casinos. (AZ sales taxes are brutally high, BTW--over 11% in BC, and if you're on an Indian rez, like Parker, downstream from BC, it's over 20%.)

The fact that people can drive across the bridge and happily dine indoors while coughing on everybody has no doubt impacted Laughlin casino restaurant business. That, and the fact that most of those restaurants are overpriced and of mediocre quality: the buffet at the Garbagecana is one of the worst I've ever experienced, for example. So anybody who has a car will probably go across the river to eat.

Just another uplifting, unbiased report from Kevin. The standard rhetoric, bashing and negativity. 

Proof, Davey-poo?