I made my first trip to Reno since early in 2001. Here are my trip
notes
The first thing I noticed is downtown Reno is a complete cluster!
Construction and streets closed everywhere. I heard that they are
building a tunnel for the trains. This is much needed because these
trains come barreling through downtown at all hours of the night with
their horns blaring. They're so loud they'll wake up almost anyone
who is not used to them, even someone in an alcohol-induced coma.
My wife and I stayed at the Silver Legacy. Prior to our trip, I
called casino host, Marge Matteoni, based on the recommendation on
Lodestones and VPFree databases. Marge comped us upfront Room and
limited FB based on me stating I would play about $5K coinin per day.
Checkin was a breeze at the Invited Guests room. They have a liquor
cabinet and refrigerator stocked with beers and your favorite soft
drinks. You have to request assistance from one of the VIP reps to
unlock the liquor cabinet. Apparently some undesirables were helping
themselves to some free alcohol, courtesy of the SL (more on this
later).
We went up to the room and called bell service to bring our bags up.
The bellman was up in about 3 minutes. Fastest bell service at a big
hotel we've ever had. The room itself was a corner room at the end of
the hall. Windows on both walls and it was oversized. We had a view
of downtown, the beautiful Sierras and
.the railroad tracks. Uh oh,
but we decided we'd give it one night to see if it was bearable.
After getting woke up 2x in our first night, we changed rooms on the
2nd night.
We had several meals in the Sweetwater Café and one meal in the
buffet. The buffet was average at best, so we stuck with Sweetwater.
Both my wife and I thought SW had very good food. In fact, I'm going
on the record stating that their blueberry pancakes are the best I've
ever eaten. We enjoyed breakfast there everyday and had a few lunches
there too. I had Chinese one day and it was also very good. We ate
one meal at the Napa Café at Harrahs. The food (General's Chicken for
me) was good, but the service was abysmal. Typical lukewarm Harrahs
experience.
Silver Legacy VP
I spent a lot of time on the 50/100 play .02/.05 9/6 JOB. A breeze to
rack up a ton of coin-in with relatively little variance. I ended up
getting about $50K coinin over the course of 3 days of play. I also
spent quite a bit of time on the .25 FPDW prog and the $1 10/7 DB
progressive. I didn't calculate the 10/7 DB meter, but it is very
low. Over the course of 3 days it only went from ~$4300 to ~$4500.
Highest I saw any of the FPDW prog get was $1120.
Misc SLegacy notes : I can confirm that the slot club day at the
Legacy runs 12A to 12A. I was told at the booth that I had $362 in
comps earned on my $50,840K coinin (to be exact), so that is a bit
higher than the .5% that has been reported by others. Maybe this is
because of some special status that the host, Marge, noted on my
account since I was coming in LRFB? Marge was unavailable on the day
I checked out (all hosts were at the Million Dollar Tourney). I
wanted to get a gift shop comp with the balance of my comp account,
but the slot club boothling was not authorized to write the scrip
only hosts. I made a small $30 room charge for a giftshop purchase
and Marge emailed me a couple days ago saying she comped it off. I'm
sure I could've charged more to the room, but I didn't want to take a
chance of paying $20 for a Tshirt <g>.
I met 2Wild for the first time. I know you've heard about all those
rumors about him, but he's actually a nice guy 
Had my 2nd meet
with tedchee and his lovely better ½. They gave me a couple pointers,
one of which was the 10/7 DB machines (one is they only pay 399 coins
on 2/3/4 4OAK's). Thanks to both of you for enriching my trip to town.
VP Highlights include : Catching all four 2's on a redraw, beating
the 10/7 prog to the tune of 6 buckets full of tokens ($800) and
several dealt FH's on the 100 play .05 machine
.and 3 Royals!! Of
course, 2 were of the .02 variety ($80) and one at the .05 level
($200). It's nice to hit a royal, but I don't really consider these
to be "real" royals.
Lowlight was losing $600 in about 15 minutes on the 50play .10 9/6
machines. Got cocky and decided to bump it up. The VP gods put the
smackdown on me for my effort.
Here's an XVP story
I'm sitting at the 50play carousel by the slot club on our last night
in town. I get a seat with a semi-view of the bar so I can watch my
Cards continue to get tortured by the Sox. I sit down and a guy next
to me strikes up a conversation with me. I'm multi-tasking, playing
VP and watching the WSeries
I try to be polite to this guy and we
converse for a couple minutes. My cocktail gets `down to the felt'
and I wait for a few minutes for a CW to walk by. Nothing. I begin to
get seriously dehydrated and I don't want to pass out in the middle
of the casino, so I do what any serious VP player/drinker would do: I
hit my change light to have a slot attendant find me a CW. The player
next to me notices I'm looking for a CW and asks if I also need a
drink. It then dawns on me that he doesn't appear to actually be
playing a machine, he's just sitting and kind of watching everything
around him. Suddenly 2 suits appear and walk right between us. Uh oh,
they've seen me silver mining (I found a total of $13.59 this trip
the silver legacy was actually a gold mine for abandoned credits and
$ in hoppers!), I think. No, they begin to question the guy next to
me. Noticing that this might make for a good story for all my
internet VP playing friends, I decide to do my duty and lean over a
bit so I can nose in on this interaction.
Suit: "Sir, can I see your ID? You've been sitting here for over an
hour and do not appear to be playing."
Drunk: "I have my card in the machine, I've been playing."
Suit1 to suit2: "Take his card and check it."
Suit1 to drunk: "Why don't we go in the back and talk?"
Drunk: "I'm not going anywhere."
Suit: "Can I see your ID? We know you're just sitting here getting
free drinks and not playing."
Drunk: "I've been playing, maybe my card isn't working. It's happened
before."
Suit2 returns to Suit1: "No play his past 3 trips."
Suit1 : "We're going to have to ask you to leave."
Drunk finally gets up and walks off.
Suit1 turns to me: "Sorry about that sir, we get them in here all the
time, we try to keep a safe environment."
Me: "Well, I don't know about all that, but I DO know I've been
waiting quite a while for a drink!"
Suit1: "What are you drinking, sir?"
I order my drink and suit apologizes then says, "I'll be right back
with your drink." Always a hoot to have the suits personally go get a
drink.
Not a classic story, but one that I found amusing.
Other properties
Eldorado
On my first night in town, I decided to watch Game 7 of the NLCS at
one of the bars at Eldorado. I was planning on playing some 9/6 JOB
at .25 and .50 levels. I think I checked every bar, but I did not see
any .25 or .50 9/6. The only 9/6 was at the $1 level (and they are
still progressive). I ended up playing NSUD at the .25 level. I
played a total of $1920 coinin during the 2 hours I watched the game
and went to the booth. They said I had $11 in comps available
(0.57%), which is close to the .6% reported. The boothling said
banked comps stay on the account for 14 months from the date they are
earned.
Harrahs
Played the $1 PE for a brief period of time late one night. This
Harrahs is a pain in the ass to navigate if you're not familiar with
the property and if you've had a couple adult beverages ;-). Total
coinin of $2780. I earned 367 Bonus RC's for a total comp rate of
0.23%.
Peppermill
If neon's your game, you'll be right at home here. Wow, talk about
sensory overload. The neon in the area of the new Oceano restaurant
was completely over the top. Tacky, tacky, tacky. I loved it! With
the printout of FPVP in hand as my map, I made my way through this
casino. There are more nooks and crannies in this casino than any
I've ever been in. I found the 5play MStrike near the roulette wheels
and sat down to give these puppies some action for the first time.
Sadly, the sound was cranked waaaay down to the point where you could
barely hear it. I know I sound like a ploppie, but I really enjoy the
sound on MS, and the fact that it was turned almost off immediately
turned me from these machines. I ended up sitting at a bar (by
Oceano) that had 3 big screens and watching my Cardinals get crushed
by the Sox (again), while playing some NSUD. As reported, they have a
new daily swipe promotion. I didn't get any coupons of value.
Listmember "tedchee" told me about their locals coupon mailer. I went
to the booth and asked for one. The boothling asked I received the
mailer for the coupons. I told a lil white lie and said, "My wife
told me to come up here to get them. I do as I'm told." Ok, so
neither parts of that statement were true, but I did score the coupon
sheet. Coupons for the last qtr of 2004, One $10 MP, One 4OAK bonus
and a couple BOGO food coupons. Score! My wife and I enjoyed a couple
very good pizzas from the food court with one of the BOGO coupons. We
also won on the MP coupon, so this sheet was definitely worth the
effort to obtain it. I played the Super Times Pay machines by Oceano.
There are only 2 machines, and they seemed like they're always busy.
I lucked out and got on one for about 30 minutes, but they were
occupied nonstop before and after I played it. I can confirm the 10
coin $1 9/6 w/ a 9400 RF didn't play them too rich for my blood.
The wife and I played 1 or 2 Casino Player $10 matchplay coupons here
without a problem.
One noticable thing about the Peppermill. The employees there were,
by far, the nicest we've experienced anywhere. They geniunly seemed
to enjoy their jobs and it showed. Note that this is different from
the 'forced' nice-nice that you get at a place like Harrahs. I could
easily make the Mill my home Reno casino. Just put some FPDW back in!
Overall, I found Reno to be a VERY refreshing change from Vegas. The
Sierras that surround Reno are beautiful, obviously it's much cooler.
The casinos weren't nearly as crowded. Not nearly as many gawking
tourists. Traffic is non-existent, with the exception of the numerous
detours due to construction. The employees were friendlier, as a
whole. Obviously the VP was very competitive. Where else can a $5K
per day get LRFB in a megaresort? Other than a trip to Circus Circus
(for ice cream), we saw VERY few children. Now that I have family in
Reno, we hope to return
of course some nice offers will help get us
to return!
Finally, a thanks to 2Wild, tedchee and halcyondays who all
helped `prep' me for my first Reno trip in years. All 3 helped
enhance my trip and maximize my EV. Gentleman, dinner is on me the
next time I'm in town.