Went to Lake Tahoe for 3 nights and stayed at Hyatt Regency with friends who
had gotten a nice offer from Vegas Rampart Casino for free airfare and rooms
(they took us as guests). They rented car and we had a nice ride from Reno
to Tahoe with beautiful scenery of pines and then the fantastic Lake.
Wouldn't want to stay at Hyatt Regency again though! No view of lake (to speak of
- windows tiny and amount of lake seen was tiny). Very small rooms, nice
beds. Rooms were not nearly as big as Harrah's/Harvey's rooms or with as good a
view. Also the cafe/coffee shop was expensive, and I didn't think the food
was that good. They have a more expensive restaurant down on the shore of
lake with good view - but it was long walk from the main hotel - we went once
to beach to see. Since my knee is bad I didn't want to walk there for meals.
Some of the rooms are also noisy through the connecting doors to other rooms.
No restaurants actually inside hotel had good view of lake. We played and
all lost on bad video poker games. Their comps were generous though, so paid
for what we ran up in food, which was good, because breakfast cost about
$40-50 each day for 2 people! On last day I found out they had a lounge room,
similar to Harrah's Diamond club, with a little food and booze, and we were
able to get access. I believe this is called the Regency Club, or something
similar. It has breakfast food such as lox, bagels, sweet rolls, and snacks
later in the day, as well as coffee/tea machines, soft drinks. It is open 24
hours for folks who stay on the 11th floor or have access to the club, but only
manned for certain hours with food.
No other restaurants seemed to be within walking distance either, unlike the
Stateline/Heavenly area where Harrahs/Harveys is.
The Hyatt has very poor VP schedules. The best seemed to be some
multidenomination progressives where all denominations and all games had various
progressives. One $1 DDB had over $4000 for Aces with kicker, plus a progressive
on Aces alone and on the royal. Unfortunately we couldn't hit a thing and had
a bad lack of quads in every game we played. Dueces Wild was an especially
awful paytable. The Hyatt does have some special promotions such as Sat.
drawings every 5 minutes for $100 and some tournaments during the week. You
choose either cashback or comps. Comps were generous - 4x the initial rate of
cashback. If you play enough, you move to higher tier levels where cash is
1/2 as much as comps or higher where it is 1:1 for comps. $1 earns you a point
at reels, $2 at VP. 2500 points = $25 in comps. But it seemed like I
earned more comps than that, since I played about 3 hours on single line $1 and
got about $100 in comps, and even though I am a fast player, I can't see how I
accumulated that much.
Weather was very good during our trip - low 70s for the most part, and with
clear sky, it was very pretty. All the pines very nice. We drove around
lake and that was nice. We saw Emerald Bay where there is a beautiful "stately"
home Vikingsholm Castle built about 1928 as summer home. Unfortunately home
is down very steep hill and no way to get there but to hike (except on Wed.
when they have handicapped access via a vehicle). This home is open during
the summer only. Gas prices are quite high in Lake Tahoe though - about the
same as in California, which has the highest prices in the country.
We also went to Virginia City (about 1 hour from Tahoe) - very interesting
town - with lots of people dressed as wild west characters - apparently many
people who live there dress this way and aren't paid actors as such. At the
Delta Saloon we saw the "suicide" table - a Faro table where people lost
their money in gold rush days there and then committed suicide. Also went on
nice short restored train ride that passed Comstock and other mines of the
period (both gold and silver) - no longer in operation. Town was like a restored
town of the 1880s. Lots of neat stuff and casinos too (bad paytables for
Video poker) - we didn't gamble, but someone was handing out coupons so we made
about $3.50 in free money!
Some snow on top of mountains but most had melted by now. Lake Tahoe has a
beautiful summer, but it does snow in fall and spring. Of course this is
great if you are a skier. There are many lifts around the lake, and a couple do
operate in the summer just to take you up for the view. On a previous trip
we took the one from Heavenly (near Harrah's at Stateline) for a great view of
Lake Tahoe.
We had some Harrah's coupons for Spa treatments so went there on one day.
The Reflections Spa is small. Service was good, but I found the Stone Massage
only so-so, while my husband loved his. Their prices are high ($190 for
about 1 hour Stone Massage), but thankfully it was covered by the coupon.
Unfortunately the tip was not included.
We also had $200 in coupons for food so ate at restaurant at top of Harrah's
-- Friday's Steakhouse. The food was pretty good. Best thing was it had
great view of lake (except for Harvey's blocking a little of view). On a
previous trip we'd eaten at the restaurant at the top of Harvey's, which was a
better restaurant with a slightly better view, but this was enjoyable.
The good thing about staying at Harvey's or Harrah's is that several
restaurants have good views of lake and also you can walk to other casinos and other
stores/restaurants, etc. I definitely would stay there next time instead of
the Hyatt Regency. Even Harrah's buffet is on the top floor of their hotel
and has a great view.
I'm not sure if Harrah's has any full pay machines anymore, but they do have
some decent progressives. I sat down on one with multigames at $1 and over
$7700 progressive royal jackpot. Unfortunately it quickly got hit by a
little old lady. Then the woman next to me then hit for $4000 or so within 10
minutes of the big hit. I felt lucky to leave even.
Then on way back to Reno (flight out of Reno) we stopped at the Peppermill
casino, because our friends had Free slot play. My friend pointed me to a
bank of machines and said, "They have a good NSU progressive." It was a $1
machine, so I sat down and I swear, about 2-5 minutes after sitting down I was
dealt 4 to a Royal. And BINGO - up came a Royal Flush for about $4300. So I
made back all the money I had lost over the weekend plus won some $!!!
Unfortunately our friends were losers for the weekend.
The odd thing was that while we had been playing at the Hyatt Regency
casino, all of us had gotten many many 4 to the Royals dealt, or 2 or 3 cards to
the royal that ended up as near miss 4 to the royal, but we couldn't get one.
We worked/played so hard, but couldn't do anything. Now in like 2 minutes,
there it was!!
The Peppermill is a weird casino. They have purple neon lights all over,
including little bulbs on ceiling, and have tinted the windows purple, and
other neon lights, so it is like a neon garden. The lights hurt your eyes. This
is inside the casino - very weird decor!! Even the steakhouse was full of
neon and weird!! They also have lots of flat screen LCD TVs hanging in all
sorts of places, but these show peaceful scenes of Italy or waterfalls or
penguins or stuff -- like a live TV feed, but actually they are loops - totally
in contrast to the overpowering neon and flashing lights all around. I said
they put them there so that players who started to go crazy from all the
neon could glance over at a peaceful pastoral scene and then stay sane!!
The Peppermill had a lot of progressives and good games though! Some
quarter NSU triple plays and 9/6 JB, and more. It was a shame we were gambling most
of the weekend at the bad Hyatt Regency casino in Tahoe not in this casino
in Reno.
We were only at the Peppermill for about two hours of food and gambling and
then left for our flight home on Southwest. I didn't like Southwest's policy
of not assigning seats in advance! The good news was that handicapped people
are loaded first (you get a special pass) so we got on and had choice of
seats.
Lake Tahoe is so beautiful, I hope to go again. If you haven't been there,
it definitely is worth the trip. There are a number of casinos around the
lake, and a few do have some good VP.
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