Hi,
My wife and I just returned from a West Coast trip that included a 4 night (Mon-Thu) stay at the Peppermill Reno. Our trip started off on a dubious note when at checkin we were advised that our host, Sharon Nickson-Cox, was no longer with the Peppermill as of the previous week. We were told by several people over the next few days how "surprised" they were at this news. The wording of this statement was so consistent that I assume "surprised" is a euphemism for something specific.
A couple days later we went to see about getting a new host, and we were assigned to a very pleasant gentleman (who was, of course, "surprised" about Sharon's sudden departure). I'll intentionally omit his name for now.
We had a pretty successful trip. We spent most of our time on the 10 coin 10c SpinPoker NSUD's by the Steak House; also some play on the 50-play 10c 9/6 JB's (*) (not fully loaded) and a little bit of time on the 25c 3-play 9/6 JOB STP's, Big Split, and some other miscellany. Except for an extremely rocky start on my part during our first 24 hours on-site, we met or exceeded expectations, including at least 15 quad-deuces on the Spinnies and 4 royals on the 50-plays (one from a single card hold).
The big surprise was in comps. I should first note that we normally play long and hard -- 2 of us, probably about 8 hours/day, at decent stakes (Spinnies were $9/pull, 50-plays were usually around $7.50/pull). Our original host commitment was for a Tuscany Tower room (which is indeed very nice!) and coffee shop and buffet comped. In addition to a couple coffee shop meals, we had two casual meals (Biscotti's and Saucy's), two upscale meals (Romanza and the Steak House; no wine or liquor; Romanza bill was basically neutralized by a $50 mailer offer), and one massage. Counting tips, we had a bill of about $280 (of which about $70 was tips) -- IMHO, not excessive for a 4 night stay. On our visit last year, a similar bill was fully comped.
At checkout, we went and talked to our new host, who was very gracious about showing us all of our customer data on his screen. He showed we'd played 66 hours, about right (2 people * 8 hrs/day * 4 days). He then showed us our "total EP" (theo) of about $1400, and said that they target comping about 25-33% of that, and that we'd actually been comped at 44% already, and therefore he couldn't comp any of our remaining bill.
Yowza. And here I thought Reno was easy with comps.
His screen also reported our play from our visit last year -- about the same amount of play (60 hours, per his screen), but roughly double the "total EP".
From this data, I concluded two things: 1) They're assessing rather high rates for the Tuscany Tower rooms, even on weekdays. 2) They've halved the theo on the NSUD Spinnies, and perhaps also other games.
BTW, the evening before checking out, we also checked our point balance at the kiosks -- it claimed about 1500 points. No way is this possible if points are valued at $47/point as reported on vpFREE; I'm guessing more like $100/pt. This would also seem to match up with my theory of the theo being halved on these games, assuming "points" have something to do with theo.
Any thoughts or similar/dissimilar experiences at Peppermill lately?
(*) vpFREE database update: I believe the following games are missing or misrepresented in the database:
NSUD: the (6) Spin Pokers near the Steak House also offer 10 cent (10-coin) play ($9/spin fully loaded).
NSUD: there are (2) Spin Poker Deluxes in the hallway outside the Coffee Shop that offer 1c/2c/5c/25c (25-coin) play. Max bet is 500 coins (25 coins, 20 lines). (These games are already reported in the JOB section, which is correct, though it might be nice to note the 25-coin aspect in that entry.)
NSUD and JOB: we looked all over the place and never found the reported (2) Multistrike uprights.
JOB: there are (4) upright 5c/10c/25c 50-plays near the slot club desk.
JOB: there is an additional 25c 5-play Multistrike slant-top between the buffet and the Coffee Shop.
Big Split Poker @ 99.95%: (5) 5c/10c/25c slant-tops on the outside edge of the Cabaret Stage. We played a couple hours on these -- much like table Pai Gow Poker, they're a pleasant way to while away some time listening to music and sipping a cocktail, yay Larry!
Thanks...
--Joe
P.S. Thanks to those who responded to my query a couple weeks ago about scenic stops on our drive to/from Reno... as it turns out, our schedule worked out that we didn't really have much time for these things, but we're keeping them on the list for future trips!