Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Winning BIG at Casino Brigadoon!

Like the Scottish village in the Broadway musical that appears for one day every century, Station Casinos opened what the R-J's Arnold Knightly dubbed months ago as "Trailer Station," an 8-hour casino on the site of the former Showboat/Castaways about six miles east of the Strip. The point was simply to hang on to the 26-acre plot's unrestricted gaming zoning, for which state law demands there be live gaming on the site for one shift every two years. This is what the splendorous thing looked like from afar:

... and from anear...

...and from inside...

Sixteen multigame video poker/blackjack machines stood along with a group of guys associated with the construction company that furnished the trailer, which is wheelchair accessible and has a portable toilet next door, per law. Station also needed seven permits and voted approval from the City Council and Nevada Gaming Control Board, and two code enforcers from the city stopped in to check off some boxes on some forms.

These were older machines -- no touch-screen, sort of cumbersome navigating through the menus -- and it only took bills, of course. So I figured, why not? (Journalistic ethics, schmethics.) I slipped $1 into the machine, which I did NOT have to jostle away from some little old lady with smoking through her oxygen tank...

...and lo and behold, after three hands of poker and three hands of blackjack, I was a big winner of $2.50! Don't scoff; as of mid-day, that was the biggest payout of the day!

Of course, when I cashed out, it made me get my money from the kindly man working as the casino floor operator.

Now I have some money to buy my NYT tomorrow when my piece on this is buried amid post-New Hampshire Primary coverage! Yay!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

You mean they didn't have one of the New "Wizard of Oz" Slots? ;-)

Seriously - Did you ask if there had been any other customers, without Windows or any other signage it would have taken a *very* curious person who didn't otherwise know about it to come in.

BrownElf said...

Steve, they mentioned in the LVRJ article that

"The only action the slot machines got was from one of the journalists covering the event who bet $1 and who reportedly got $2.50 back."

I figured it was you. Nice job.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/13557337.html

Anonymous said...

way to go. too bad there weren't any chips.

Anonymous said...

Why do I get the feeling that Jerry Lewis is reading this and saying, "Yup, that's what Vegas will look like in 20 years."?

Anonymous said...

Great Coverage, were Steve Leads the others follow, Truly LV Person of the Year :-)

Any Idea if they are doing something similar a the Lady Luck within the next Month or so? Or is there no need because there is already a Hotel Tower on Site?

THE STRIP PODCAST said...

that's a really good question. i don't know if it counts for properties that are in resort corridors (i.e. CityCenter doesn't need this, says MGM Mirage brass I asked.) It's worth looking into. I'll say that Arnold Knightly of the R-J probably would have noticed if another one had come up on the Gaming Control Board agenda, as it would have had to a few months in advance.

Anonymous said...

Help me! My mind is spinning with questions. If you have an existing bldg. like Lady Luck or Hotel Nevada, do you just have to open for 8 hrs and verify it? Is Citycenter getting a new license, or using the Boardwalk license? If the control board approves this, why were city inspectors verifying compliance? How'd Wynn do it? How's Boyd doing it with Echelon?

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Anonymous said...

I hate going to casinos, it’s so competitive and if you lose you know who has taken your money and can even watch them walk away with it. Plus those high roller casino types you see throwing stupid amounts of money on the table makes everyone fold all the time, it makes things worse! So I’ve started playing online casino blackjack instead, blackjack is a friendlier game as you don’t compete directly against the other players. You’re all just trying to beat the dealer, you don’t hate each other and you can even have a friendly chat.

Anonymous said...

Golden Palace Makes a Cameo on Rocky

It seems like Golden Palace is making a lot less headlines recently.
The last time I saw any mentioning of Golden Palace was in Rocky 6 as one of the girls that
hold the sign that indicate the number of round had their logo printed on her stomach.
This brand made “online gambling” a part of mainstream entertainment,
making it a recognizable brand name in almost any house hold in the US. However,
the international crowd, gamblers from France,
Portugal and Spain for example didn’t know a lot about this casino giant.
The promotional antics taken by the casino were targeted mostly at an American based audience.
My point is that with the globalization of online gambling, this Golden Palace has changed the way it markets itself globally,
hence the Rocky Cameo. This is as mainstream as you can get which is kind of strange for this online casino
if you have been following their history the past few years.
Appearing in a Rocky movie which is considered a classic no matter where you go in the world or
what language you speak can definitely be perceived as an attempt for creating the same brand name recognition,
where gamblers play online. It doesn’t matter if you are from Poland,
Germany or
Denmark; it’s likely that you have seen the latest Stallone installment and noticed the Golden Palace cameo.