This was a quick overnight trip which included Caesars Windsor and the newly opened Hollywood Casino Toledo. I haven't seen any reports on the Hollywood yet, so I thought I'd post this.
This was a hastily arranged trip that came about when, about a week prior I found in my email box an offer for 2 free tickets for Penn and Teller at Caesars Windsor on Saturday night. My wife is a big fan (me, not so much) so I thought I would call and see if they had any tickets left and the lady said, sure, we have lots of them, so I reserved 2. I have gotten quite a few free ticket offers from CW but this is the first one I ever tried to take advantage of, so I am kind of a rookie here. The lady told me I could pick up my tickets between 2:00 and 8:30 PM.
I got stuck at work on Saturday a little later than I hoped, so we got a late start. CW's rooms were going for over $200, even after logging in with my TR number, so we would be staying at a Hampton Inn out by Metro Airport. We got up there and checked in, changed clothes and started for the border.
At this point I made a HUGE blunder. The last few trips there I have opted for the tunnel rather than the bridge, since there has been construction on the bridge for seemingly decades. Well unbeknowst to me it was a race weekend, and even though the actual race is Sunday there was still a bunch of stuff going on downtown and I got into a traffic tie-up that took about 45 minutes to negotiate. Then after getting into Canada the parking garage at CW was full and they sent us to the overflow lot (where we had to take a shuttle bus to the casino) which cost us probably another half hour. Despite all that we still managed to get to the casino by 8:15 and I dashed to the box office but unfortunately I was too late and they had no tickets for me. The best they could do was put me on a waiting list for standing room only tickets. My wife has had problems with her foot and I knew she wouldn't be able to stand for a whole show, so I turned it down. Guess I'll know to get there a lot earlier next time.
Nothing much to do now but gamble. CW still has the original Star Trek machines and someone was getting up as I walked by, so I sat down. I dropped $80 without even one bonus round. I gave up and headed to the Hangover machines. I put in a $20 and was hitting some bonuses and staying even. I had $15 in FSP but it wouldn't load on the machine. At this point I'm regretting ever opening the email with the free ticket offer.
Pretty soon the other Hangover opens up and my wife sits down. We're doing alright, staying even when my wife gets a bonus round and picks all 5 red jackpot symbols (the top progressive, Alan's). I have played this way more than she has and I have yet to even play for either of the top 2 progressives, so this is quite amazing. She is playing minimum bet so she has 2 chances to pick the winning purse (oops, satchel) and she picks it on her first try for $512.68. Really sweet for a .50 bet. To top it off she picks the next best purse to tack on another $100 to the big win. I have seen this progressive hit before but never at minimum bet. I shot a video of it and I may try to post it if I can figure out how. She played it down to $600 and cashed out.
We really haven't played enough at this point to maintain our normal level of play (we have about 130 points and I normally play about 200 - 250) but I was still a little disgusted at the ticket snafu (even though we profited from it) and wanted to get out of there with their money, so we left. There was about a half hour wait at the border and we headed back to our hotel.
The next day we had breakfast and headed south to the new Hollywood Casino just south of Toledo. It has been open less than a week and we expected it to be packed. Surprisingly we got a parking place probably 20 steps from the doors of the casino. We tried to get slot cards at the booth (which consists of several folding tables set end to end with a bunch of computer terminals sitting on them) but there were probably 200 people in line, so we passed.
This is one of the nicest looking casinos I have seen. High ceilings with tons of big television screens (some of them downright huge) showing movie trailers. The table games pit has smaller TV screens showing live sports. That's the good news. The bad news came when perusing the VP machines. This place may have the worst video poker I've ever seen. Jacks or Better was 6/5. Double Bonus was 9/6/4, improving slightly to 9/6/5 at the $1.00 level. Bonus poker paid even money for 2 pair. And I saved the best for last ... quarter DDB was 6/5. Yes, I'm not making that up, 6/5. I did see some 8/5 in dollars. Needless to say this is not the place to go to play VP. I didn't see any progressives.
Other than the VP a tour of the casino floor revealed, as you would expect, all the newer themed slots (Sex in the City, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Hangover, Ghostbusters) and they were .01, unlike the 2-centers that Horseshoe Cleveland decided to go with. BJ was all $25 minimum except for one $15 table which had about 15 people standing behind the ones seated. Several of the $25 tables were empty with the dealers just standing there. Why not lower a few more tables to $15 and get some people in those seats? I cannot understand the thought process of these people that run table games pits sometimes.
I played Hangover for a bit (wthout a card), got up and the line looked like it had gone down a little, so I got my card after about a 20 minute wait. I played some more Hangover and later Ghostbusters for quite a while and took a $15 loss. My wife said she dropped about $20.
On the way out we walked past the poker room and it looks great. They had 12 tables going (two 3-6 limit, nine 1-2 NL and one 2-5 NL) and they had interest lists for some games you don't see in many rooms, like 3-6 Omaha Hi-lo 8 or better. I don't know how often I'll come back here but I'd like to try the poker room. Looks very nice.
That ended this trip and our next one is a one-nighter in Cleveland in a couple weeks. Thanks for reading!
This was a hastily arranged trip that came about when, about a week prior I found in my email box an offer for 2 free tickets for Penn and Teller at Caesars Windsor on Saturday night. My wife is a big fan (me, not so much) so I thought I would call and see if they had any tickets left and the lady said, sure, we have lots of them, so I reserved 2. I have gotten quite a few free ticket offers from CW but this is the first one I ever tried to take advantage of, so I am kind of a rookie here. The lady told me I could pick up my tickets between 2:00 and 8:30 PM.
I got stuck at work on Saturday a little later than I hoped, so we got a late start. CW's rooms were going for over $200, even after logging in with my TR number, so we would be staying at a Hampton Inn out by Metro Airport. We got up there and checked in, changed clothes and started for the border.
At this point I made a HUGE blunder. The last few trips there I have opted for the tunnel rather than the bridge, since there has been construction on the bridge for seemingly decades. Well unbeknowst to me it was a race weekend, and even though the actual race is Sunday there was still a bunch of stuff going on downtown and I got into a traffic tie-up that took about 45 minutes to negotiate. Then after getting into Canada the parking garage at CW was full and they sent us to the overflow lot (where we had to take a shuttle bus to the casino) which cost us probably another half hour. Despite all that we still managed to get to the casino by 8:15 and I dashed to the box office but unfortunately I was too late and they had no tickets for me. The best they could do was put me on a waiting list for standing room only tickets. My wife has had problems with her foot and I knew she wouldn't be able to stand for a whole show, so I turned it down. Guess I'll know to get there a lot earlier next time.
Nothing much to do now but gamble. CW still has the original Star Trek machines and someone was getting up as I walked by, so I sat down. I dropped $80 without even one bonus round. I gave up and headed to the Hangover machines. I put in a $20 and was hitting some bonuses and staying even. I had $15 in FSP but it wouldn't load on the machine. At this point I'm regretting ever opening the email with the free ticket offer.
Pretty soon the other Hangover opens up and my wife sits down. We're doing alright, staying even when my wife gets a bonus round and picks all 5 red jackpot symbols (the top progressive, Alan's). I have played this way more than she has and I have yet to even play for either of the top 2 progressives, so this is quite amazing. She is playing minimum bet so she has 2 chances to pick the winning purse (oops, satchel) and she picks it on her first try for $512.68. Really sweet for a .50 bet. To top it off she picks the next best purse to tack on another $100 to the big win. I have seen this progressive hit before but never at minimum bet. I shot a video of it and I may try to post it if I can figure out how. She played it down to $600 and cashed out.
We really haven't played enough at this point to maintain our normal level of play (we have about 130 points and I normally play about 200 - 250) but I was still a little disgusted at the ticket snafu (even though we profited from it) and wanted to get out of there with their money, so we left. There was about a half hour wait at the border and we headed back to our hotel.
The next day we had breakfast and headed south to the new Hollywood Casino just south of Toledo. It has been open less than a week and we expected it to be packed. Surprisingly we got a parking place probably 20 steps from the doors of the casino. We tried to get slot cards at the booth (which consists of several folding tables set end to end with a bunch of computer terminals sitting on them) but there were probably 200 people in line, so we passed.
This is one of the nicest looking casinos I have seen. High ceilings with tons of big television screens (some of them downright huge) showing movie trailers. The table games pit has smaller TV screens showing live sports. That's the good news. The bad news came when perusing the VP machines. This place may have the worst video poker I've ever seen. Jacks or Better was 6/5. Double Bonus was 9/6/4, improving slightly to 9/6/5 at the $1.00 level. Bonus poker paid even money for 2 pair. And I saved the best for last ... quarter DDB was 6/5. Yes, I'm not making that up, 6/5. I did see some 8/5 in dollars. Needless to say this is not the place to go to play VP. I didn't see any progressives.
Other than the VP a tour of the casino floor revealed, as you would expect, all the newer themed slots (Sex in the City, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Hangover, Ghostbusters) and they were .01, unlike the 2-centers that Horseshoe Cleveland decided to go with. BJ was all $25 minimum except for one $15 table which had about 15 people standing behind the ones seated. Several of the $25 tables were empty with the dealers just standing there. Why not lower a few more tables to $15 and get some people in those seats? I cannot understand the thought process of these people that run table games pits sometimes.
I played Hangover for a bit (wthout a card), got up and the line looked like it had gone down a little, so I got my card after about a 20 minute wait. I played some more Hangover and later Ghostbusters for quite a while and took a $15 loss. My wife said she dropped about $20.
On the way out we walked past the poker room and it looks great. They had 12 tables going (two 3-6 limit, nine 1-2 NL and one 2-5 NL) and they had interest lists for some games you don't see in many rooms, like 3-6 Omaha Hi-lo 8 or better. I don't know how often I'll come back here but I'd like to try the poker room. Looks very nice.
That ended this trip and our next one is a one-nighter in Cleveland in a couple weeks. Thanks for reading!
