Vegas Review
by EJay
>Map of Strip<
>Gambling<
>Buffets<
If you're not staying on the strip you may as well not be in Vegas. That's really the only place to be
where the hotel casino's are huge and elaborate labyrinths. All the information that I have here has
been obtained from my 2 trips to Vegas and are not exhaustive by any means, nor do they represent the
opinions of anyone else. Everything that I rank will be ranked on a basis of stars, five being the best
and one being the worst.
Map of Strip
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Gambling
As far as gambling in general is concerned, the farther away you are from the center of the strip
the better your odds are. I consider the center of the strip the Bellagio. So go in any general
direction from there and your odds get better.
- Circus Circus
- I stayed at this hotel/casino on my latest excursion. We didn't gamble there
until the day we left and luckily we did. After being down about $150 for the first two days I made
my money back plus some on blackjack table here in less than 3 hours. The dealers were really great at counting for you
if you couldn't do it fast enough. They also offered some advice and used similar hand signals that
you find in Minnesota. I didn't play any slots here, but it seemed like people were hitting jackpots
more frequently than at any of the other casinos we were at. The blackjack tables also have promotions
like the Wheel of Madness if you hit a blackjack and put a dollar down before you hit the blackjack.
They have $5 tables here too, which some casinos don't have anything less than $15 tables.
- Excalibur
- Our friends were staying at this hotel so we decided to
meet them here. It's actually a pretty cool looking casino from the outside. Again I didn't play any
of the slots here so I have no real say on that, but blackjack was my game. After searching for a while
I did find some blackjack tables and they had a handful of $5 tables. I was only at the table for an
hour before I got too tired, but I did manage to stay about $20 ahead by the time I left. Not too bad
for a cheap person like me in an hour.
- Harrahs
- Although this hotel is located pretty centrally compared to other casino's it pays pretty
well. Don't expect to find more than a couple of $5 blackjack tables if you are even able to find
blackjack tables. I looked for over 20 minutes to find a blackjack table and came up empty handed.
You're more likely to run into a Casino War table here than a blackjack table.
The slots here are pretty loose though, it took me quite a while to lose $20 at video poker. The first
couple of hours I was ahead until I started making stupid bets, so this casino is still up there
on my list.
- MGM Grand
- Finding a blackjack table is not a problem at this monstrous casino, but finding one for $5
is impossible, they are never that low. The slot machines robbed me blind to, not paying me a dime (actually a quarter) for
anything that I put in them. The MGM makes money in other ways (hotel rooms and shows) than the gambling so they don't have
to pay nearly as well to get people to go there and make a profit.
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Buffets
An all important part to any trip to Vegas includes hitting a buffet or two. I've managed to enjoy
three buffets on my trips to Vegas, one was highly recommended and I was not disappointed.
- Rio
- Rio has an amazing buffet. A friend of a friend recommended checking it out because of
the huge selection. His comments didn't do it justice. You pay one price and its like walking into
a food court at the Mall of America, only with better food. They had Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Sushi,
two American places, a Grill place, a salad bar, a pizzeria, a huge dessert section, a bar, plus some
other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting. The food was pretty good, not the best, but you could choose
whatever you were in the mood for. It was fairly priced for dinner around $18. I ate until I almost
burst, I had to walk off my dinner for 2 hours before I could put any beer on top of it.
- Circus Circus
- We headed to the buffet at Circus Circus for a breakfast buffet. I'm partial to breakfast
so my opinion may be somewhat skewed, but the food was amazing. The selection wasn't that great, but
it was breakfast. They offered scrambled eggs, pancakes, waffles, french toast, spanish scrambled eggs
biscuits and gravy, sausage, bacon, ham, among a handful of other things. They had a huge selection
of breakfast drinks too. The food was all prepared really well and tasted wonderful, the french toast
even had cinnamon on it too.
- MGM Grand
- Maybe my opinion of this hotel/casino was just skewed, probably not though, considering I hadn't
been to Vegas before staying at MGM. We decided to head to the buffet one night for dinner. We paid
roughly $20 a piece and were then greeted with a somewhat limited selection, although they did have
a decent salad bar. Once I had my plate full I sat down at our table and started to eat. All I have
to say is Old Country Buffet. The food was more bland than Macaroni and Cheese, which is what I
ended up eating because it was the only thing that tasted right. What an awful buffet.
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