The Casino Part of Our Vacation

Okay, back to gambling topics.  (Yes, I know stories and pictures from other people’s vacations can be boring!)

Although, as I have said before, gambling was not a top priority on our recent road trip, we did visit several casinos:

1.  Council Bluffs Harrah’s – a two-night stay just to rest up after a couple days of heavy driving.  Comped from our 7* tier status.  They have a few 10/6 DDB machines that we played. A “real” riverboat, but it never leaves the shore. 

The large VIP lounge on the top deck serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Food selection is small but what we had was always tasty.  Brad liked the popcorn machine.  I appreciated the use of a computer.  After checking our account, the desk clerk there was able to issue a food comp without using any of our Reward Credits.  (I like that.  Since there are some Harrah’s that will sometimes redeem RC’s for free play – albeit at 2 to 1 – I like to save ours for that.  Otherwise, using RC’s for food means the comps are not really “free.”)

2. Council Bluffs Horseshoe – just a quick visit here, by free shuttle from nearby Harrah’s, to check it out.  No play – just a look around the casino and then a stop in the VIP lounge, which is very plush.  We were there in the evening just before it closed so the only food offered was desserts, but they were top-shelf!  We didn’t have time to play the wii provided for customer entertainment, but I had fun for a little while  playing the pinball machine, something I hadn’t done for years.  (In another life I was a big pinball machine “addict”!)  You could buy this pinball machine with RC’s if you had a blue-million of them!

3.  Hammond Horseshoe in Hammond, IN – a 4-night stay as Brad’s annual Harrah’s 7* trip.  Since the casino does not have their own hotel yet, they put us up at a Mariott Courtyard Inn.  Casino is very large and very Vegas-like and doesn’t seem like a “boat” at all.

Great eating options:  Certainly our top favorite buffet in a casino in the U.S.  Steakhouse is top-notch.  And the 7* lounge serves good food in probably one of the best – perhaps THE best – Harrah’s VIP lounges in the country. 

They have good VP in their High Limit room, including some of our “funnest” games, so we played heavier than usual for the three days, getting both of us well on our way to 7* for next year.  Bonus #1:  we pulled out a nice win.   Bonus #2:  Since we drove instead of our usual plane ride for a 7* trip, we saved our gas receipts and Harrah’s will pay us that as a transportation allowance.  (Even having to use high-test gas in the Mercedes, we came in at about $800, well under the $1200 maximum allowance.)

4.  Route 66 Casino Hotel – a beautiful large modern Indian casino just off I-40, west of Albuquerque, NM.  We had ignored the frequent casino ads all along our ride through Oklahoma and New Mexico on our way home – so many Indian casinos beckoning.  But they held no interest for us – after 3 weeks we couldn’t wait to get home.  However, the next to the last driving day we were hungry for a late lunch and  saw signs for the Route 66 Casino Hotel that were advertising $10 in gas for out-of-state visitors.  It looked like a big casino and we decided to check to see if they perhaps had some good restaurant options.  Good decision.  We joined the players club and found out that, as seniors, we could enjoy a $5 lunch buffet.  It was an extremely good one, with a large selection of food items.   Truly a frugal find. 

We each also got the $10 gas coupon.  Sadly we couldn’t take full advantage of it – we had filled up the gas tank not that long before – but we managed to pump in $12.  When I was crying about that $8 “waste,” Brad injected some much- needed reality by pointing out that it didn’t matter – Harrah’s was paying for our gas anyway!  Thank goodness one of us has some good sense at least part of the time!