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Tunica 7/21-7/24

Discussion in 'Non-Vegas Trip Reports' started by JRSOBX, Jul 24, 2012.

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  1. JRSOBX

    JRSOBX Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    Location:
    OBX, NC
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    My Trip Report

    My GF and I both own our own business. I'm a real estate appraiser and she is a florist. We live in a summer resort area and are typically really busy this time of year. I'm busy on the weekends because that is generally the only time that I can get into the beach rental houses to do my inspections, in between renters. When you are paying a few thousand to rent a house for a week, you don't want to bother with a real estate appraiser coming by to take a picture of the bathroom with all of your toiletries. My GF is busy on the weekends with weddings.

    For the last week, her kid has been out of town at his grandparent's house. This doesn't happen often, so we try to take advantage of it. We decided to find a quick trip somewhere. We didn't want to go to Vegas because the flight is just too long. Six to eight hours of flight time, plus an hour and a half to just drive to the airport. We decided on Mississippi or maybe New Orleans. I checked the Harrah's Air website but the flight schedules haven't been updated in a few months. I checked the airlines to see if there were any good deals on flights but didn't find anything really appealing. I started looking at the flight junket company websites. I found a trip to Beau Rivage but it was on a Delta flight that would have cost $500 for each of us. No thanks. I called another company and they had a Tunica trip for $279 total. We talked somebody into delivering the flowers to the wedding on Saturday and talked somebody else into watching the puppydog. Booked! Yay!

    The flight left from Richmond which is about 3 hours away. It left on a Saturday which is the main change-over day, so I needed to leave early to beat that traffic too. We woke up at butt:30 in the morning and headed out!

    The chartered flight (Allegiant Airlines) was about 45 minutes late, but we were totally entertained by a couple of older women that were ready to party! The flight finally left Richmond and landed in Roanoke about 25 minutes later to pick up more passengers. A long haired guy in his late 40s or early 50s sat across the aisle from me and kept me pretty entertained for the next hour and a half to Tunica.

    On the ground in Tunica, the flight attendants told us to cross the seatbelts on the seats when we get up. Then they told us again. They told us a few more times. They kept telling us to do it over and over. It became the joke of the weekend whenever I would run into somebody from that flight. Several times I would hear somebody shouting at me from across the casino, "Cross your seatbelts!"

    We didn't get our hotel assignments until we land and get off the plane. I had begged and pleaded for a room at the Roadhouse or Horseshoe so I didn't have to deal with the shuttle system. If I had to have the Veranda or Terrace, I asked for the Terrace so my shuttle to the casino was at least the first hotel stop. So of course I get the Veranda. :grrr: Oh well. The Veranda has decent rooms so I can live with it.

    We decide to hang out in the room for an hour or two until the luggage arrives, then hit the hot tub before we go eat. It finally arrives so we sit in a luke warm hot tub for a few minutes until a family decides to let their kids do laps. I think we were both run over a few times by these kids in the hot tub. We left, time for food.

    We caught the shuttle to Harrahs. We really weren't hungry enough for a buffet and didn't want anything upscale, especially since I only brought a pair of flip flops and a few t-shirts with me. We decided to hit Toby Keith's I Love this Bar and Grill.

    Nope, they closed that place down. They said it wasn't busy enough to keep it open. I have to call BS on that, but whatever. I guess it's down to the food court. We thought about taking the shuttle to Roadhouse, but I was starving and didn't want to have to wait 15 minutes for a shuttle, then 10 more minutes to the Roadhouse, then however long to get seated/served. Fuddruckers it is. Since we had $300 in reward credits between the two of us from the Great Escape, we really didn't plan on spending any money for food. I ended up paying for the burgers since I just can't justify letting Fuddruckers charge me 200 points per dollar. To top it all off, the Fuddruckers had a sanitation rating of B.
     
  2. JRSOBX

    JRSOBX Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    Did I mention that I hate the shuttle system? For me to leave the Veranda and go to Roadhouse, which is my preferred casino in Tunica, I have to take two shuttles. I have to stand outside the Veranda and wait for the next shuttle and hope that it isn't full from picking up people at the Terrace. It usually isn't full, but sometimes it is. Then I have to wait for the next one. They usually run about every 10 minutes or so. If I just miss a shuttle when I get down there, then the next one is full, I'll wait 20 minutes before I can even leave the hotel. Yuck. Once I finally get on the shuttle, it takes me to Harrahs. I have to get off that shuttle and wait for the shuttle to the Roadhouse/Horseshoe. This one runs every 30 minutes and I haven't seen it full. It stops running at 11 during weekdays. This sucks! There are no taxis in Tunica, so if you miss that last shuttle then you may have a problem!

    But I digress...

    After eating a burger with a sanitation grade of B and a taste grade of B-, we go back to the room to relax a little more and try to recover from waking up at butt:30 in the morning. After another hour, we enter the Harrahs Tunica transit/shuttle system and find our way down to the Roadhouse. I sit down at my favorite Monopoly slot machine and start playing with the drink ordering menu. I started ordering several different fruity drinks and playing a little Monopoly Boardwalk. I think I lost a hundred bucks and had 3 drinks in me. Time for roulette. I buy in for a hundred and play with it for an hour or so. My GF played video poker about the whole time. She came and found me when I was down to $10 bucks, so I played 5 numbers for two bucks each. I hit a number and cashed out $70. We decided to call it a night and stood at the shuttle pick-up. We were back in our hotel room a quick 45 minutes later.
     
  3. JRSOBX

    JRSOBX Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    Sunday.

    I woke up Sunday morning and walked down to the coffee bar in the lobby. I got the GF a muffin and a danish for myself. We showered and decided to head back to the Roadhouse. We hit the shuttles and eventually made it over there. We played for several hours. She played on the same $50 that she put in the VP game yesterday while I single-handedly tried to raise the value of my CET stock by hemorrhaging money. I bounced around from slots to roulette to craps. I slowly lost money on the slots, about broke even on roulette and crapped all over the dice. Point, seven. Point, seven. Point, seven. No good.

    The GF and I are getting hungry by this time so we decide to have an early dinner at the Roadhouse Diner. It was good and reasonably priced last time. I ordered a salad and ribeye, she ordered a salad and filet. The steaks were excellent! It may have even been better than when I cook a ribeye, and I make a darn good ribeye! There are only a few things that I'm good at, cooking a ribeye is one of them. The GF's filet was excellent also. The waiter was attentive and had plenty of personality. I highly recommend that place!

    During dinner, we discuss getting a room at the Roadhouse for the night so we can drink and have a good time without worrying about missing the last shuttle to Harrahs at 10:45. It would be like taking a mini vacation in the middle of our mini vacation! Yippee! The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. We hit the front desk at the Roadhouse, no vacancies. Over to the Horseshoe, same thing. No room at the inn for you! We hit the Gold Strike and Bingo!! We got a room for $55. Now we have to enter the wonderful world of the Harrahs Shuttles to pack up a bag with a change of clothes and toiletries. This ends up being a 2 hour round trip. That in itself wears us out, so we hit the hot tub at the Gold Strike.

    The pool and hot tubs at the Gold Strike are nice. It's indoors in a room with walls made of rock. The pool is small but there are two nice sized hot tubs. The area had a fair amount of garbage, but the hot tubs were hot. I was tempted to jump in the pool for a minute but really didn't think there was enough room in the pool for me. There was about 15 (loud) kids in the pool. The spa attendant stepped into the pool room and handed up both a cold bottle of water while we were soaking in the hot tub. We were both impressed with this little act.

    We decide to start at the Roadhouse and make our way back to the Gold Strike. We have a few drinks at the Roadhouse while playing slots. We have a few drinks at Horseshow while playing slots. We play a few slots at Gold Strike and don't see the first cocktail waitress. We decide to go back to the Horseshoe just so we can order drinks straight from the slot machines. We get pretty toasty and decide to head back to the Gold Strike. We play there for a little while, then I decide I'm hungry. The only place we could find open at Gold Strike was a burger joint with a fairly long line. We head back to Horseshoe. They only place open there is a burger joint too, but there isn't as long of a line. I order a fried chicken sandwich and the GF orders a BLT. They were both good. My chicken sandwich had some type of chipotle sauce that was pretty spicy. I generally don't like spicy food that late, but I was a little drunk from bottom shelf rum and needed something in my stomach. We went back to our room at Gold Strike and went to sleep.
     
  4. jpw711

    jpw711 Is that your cat?

    Joined:
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    As a Tunica junky, I'm enjoying your report. FWIW, the burger joint in GS has great burgers.

    It's a pity the roadhouse has tightened their belts, I loved staying there when it was the Sheraton.
     
    No reason to go home yet.
  5. JRSOBX

    JRSOBX Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    OBX, NC
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    Monday

    We woke up and checked out of Gold Strike. We hit some of the casino gift shops. I wanted a few shirts and the GF bought a couple purses. We still had plenty of reward credits to use. The shuttle to Harrahs just left as we walked out to the front of the Roadhouse so we had to wait around for another 30 minutes. After getting back to our room at the Veranda, we relaxed and read in the room for a while. I was slowly getting hungry and we decided to hit the buffet at the Horse Shoe. The Paula Deen buffet was pretty good the last time we were in Tunica, but I wanted to try a different one.

    Back onto the shuttles we go. yippeee!

    I can't say that I'm terribly impressed with the Village Square Buffet at the Horseshoe, and I'm not hard to impress with a buffet! There was a good selection, but it was all mediocre at best. I enjoyed the salad most of all. The dessert was ok.

    We headed back over to the Roadhouse. I played the Battleship game for about an hour. I was playing it with one other guy and we received plenty of bonus games where we battled it out. I was up a couple hundred and so was the other guy. I finally decided to cash out and of course a nice bonus game popped up as soon as I did. My team would have won and I would have gotten another couple hundred. Oh well, that is how it goes. I hit the roulette table for a few minutes but it was choppy and I went down quickly.

    At this point I decide to hit some high limit slots. I played them for a little while with no real results until some random guy walks up and rubs the playfield of my machine, then mumbles something. He turns to me and winks, then slaps my on the back and walks off. I thought it was strange, then I hit a bonus for $500. Now I like that guy, he needs to come back! I ran the rest of my cash down with no real results. I found the GF and caught the shuttle back to the Harrahs, then the shuttle to the Veranda.

    We needed to wake up early the next morning to head home. The airport shuttle leaves Harrahs at 5:45, otherwise known as Butt:45 in the morning. They were coming around to pick up our luggage at 3:45 in the morning. Yuck! Our instructions said to leave the luggage inside our hotel room and they would come get it. I'm not thrilled about having somebody come in our room at 3:45 in the morning so we pack our suitcase and drop it with the bell captain. This is the second time that I was glad I brought a backpack along with my suitcase.

    We watched a movie in the room, American Reunion. It was pretty funny if you like the American Pie series.

    We woke up EARLY the next morning and headed home.

    All in all, it was a fun trip.

    I do have to say that a couple of the shuttle drivers are highly entertaining. Melvin from Memphis really enjoys his job. He is part shuttle driver and part comedian. He was even cracking himself up with his jokes. Frederic was pretty good too. None of the other shuttle drivers make an impression on me.

    -JRS
     
  6. Hogman

    Hogman VIP Whale

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    Wife and I are headed to Tunica on Friday. Will see Wynona at Bluesville. My wife was wanting to see her.

    I took a shuttle to tunica a few months back and stayed at Harrahs, but they put us in casino tower. We only had to catch one shuttle to get to Roadhouse/HS so it wasn't too bad. I really like having a car in tunica. About a 5 hour drive. Made it too many times to count. It was quicker for us to drive than to fly if you count drive time to airport and the waiting time for flight.

    I never did see many people in Toby Keith's, so I was not surprised when it closed. I think Tunica is busy on the weekends, but not during the week. They do not even open Horseshoe buffet for breakfast during the week, they put in JB's cafe to serve breakfast on those days till buffet opens at 11am.
     
  7. bighead1970

    bighead1970 High-Roller

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    Quick post I love to read non Vegas TR!! Will comment more later.
     
  8. Alry45

    Alry45 Tourist

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    Ohh Tunica. I had some great times with you in college.

    Great trip report!
     
  9. Godolphin

    Godolphin Tourist

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    Great trip report, thanks for sharing.
     
  10. theotherone

    theotherone Low-Roller

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    I've really enjoyed this report. You are just like me --gold strike and Harrahs properties.

    I'll be there in about a month with several friends. Staying at GS. no way did I want to subject them to the idiocracy of Harrahs separated hotel fiasco so GS wins plus it's cheaper I guess because of more rooms?

    I've used the shuttle service before. It's ok. Nice to have when the wife leaves Harrahs early and Ivan shuttle back to Horseshoe when I'm ready. I remember everyone else complaining about losing while I was way up because of craps. I wish that happened every time!

    Thanks for the info u posted-- I had no idea Toby Keith's closed. That lasted what, a year and a half?
     
  11. pogo55

    pogo55 Tourist

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    Ha Ha, loved your report. My wife and I were on the same flight. When we got home and got out of the car I heard "Please Cross Your Seat Belt". It was a fun trip.

    jv
     
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