Laughlin

I've been to L.V. many times but this is my 3rd time driving in from the east.  Is there ANY REASON to drive through Laughlin except to see a new road and dying town?  I'm not planning to stay there, now, or in the future.  Should I just put the 45 minutes in my pocket for L.V? 

I plan to stop in Henderson and have lunch at E.I. and use one of the coupons. I've see the dam inside and out!

Thanks!

Short answer: no. Absolutely, positively, no reason to go there, even just driving through. It adds about an hour to the AZ-Vegas drive, is VERY hard on your car (lonnnnnng upward trek through the desert heat), and there's nothing to see on the way. Nothing.

You know how they say a day spent fishing is not subtracted from your lifespan? Well, a day spent in Laughlin subtracts three weeks. There are tales of people going to work in the casinos who were robust apple-cheeked 25-year-old college graduates and died a year later at age 70, of multiple organ failure.

Enjoy your lunch at EI--now, that's the play. Maybe play a little to get the wheel spin from the LVA coupon? It's a +EV play. If you're not already a players' club member, signing up usually gets you a free lunch of some kind.

Thanks! I'll apply that hour to L.V.  

I went there a couple of times as day trips from Vegas.  A LONG TIME AGO.  At the time it was cool.  Colorado Belle was a cool casino (it's now closed).  You could take a boat from casino to casino. Cheap gambling.  But from what I've heard it's gone downhill bigtime.  

We saw Jay Leno there last year & he was great.  Casinos and hotel rooms are tired, service is poor

From these responses,  it sounds like Tunica with clearer water and vegetation.   The Laughlin add-on was always available in the old MLT charters in the 90's.  

Tunica, though, is near-ish Memphis and within easy striking distance of many other cities. Laughlin is 1.75 hours from Vegas, six hours from Feenicks, and a billion miles from any other civilization. There's a reason that the place had virtually no settlement until Don Laughlin got drunk and crashed his boat there.

In the 90s and about halfway through the 2000s, Laughlin was a terrific destination. Everything was sooooo cheap and the gambling was as good as Vegas. We used to roar down there once a week to jump all over promos, and we'd pay $17 a night to stay. The food in Laughlin has always been terrible (overpriced and lousy, the primary criterion being, can it be easily gummed?), but we would always just scoot across the river to Bullcrap City for that.

The remaining utility of Laughlin, for me at least, has been when I want to stay several days in Vegas and that period straddles a high-demand weekend, and my $45 weekday room becomes $685 plus resort fee, I've sped down to Laughlin and chilled out for Friday and Saturday nights at reasonable cost. But the Laughlin casinos are getting wise to that tactic. Recently, I've seen Strip-esque weekend prices in Laughlin when there's some high-traffic event going on in Vegas. No one should ever pay more than forty bucks to stay in a hotel room in Laughlin.

And FYI, the last decent video poker in Laughlin disappeared in 2023, when Aquarius took their eight remaining good machines and tossed them in the river.

The only reason you might consider going is during pool season.  The light crowds will give you a day at the pool without having to fight for chairs.    

my best night of gambling ever was at Laughlin at the Old Pioneer Club which was packed with low limit tables, good vp, and loose slots.    I was hitting on all of them.    But that was 12 years ago.    It's not like that now.

Well if you want a reason to drive through there to sightsee, it is a group of casinos along the Colorado River, and there is nothing like it in terms of those water views, in Las Vegas.   Many of the casinos actually have windows allowing some views even from the inside.  You can't rent a jetski and go out on the river just steps outside of a casino on LV, but in Laughlin you can.   Or you can take a low priced river taxi along the casinos, on the water.  If you are going this time of year, the slightly warmer temps are a welcome climate.   When it's 70 degrees in Las Vegas, it can easily be in the upper 70's in Laughlin.   In the summer, it's a negative, as it gets to 115+ degrees, too often   It's not for everyone, but it depends on the person, especially for those wanting to see it once, to change things up a bit.