I haven't been to the Grand Victoria Riverboat Casino in Elgin, IL, since it became part of Caesars/Eldorado so I decided to drive out there for a day trip to see how much it has changed. It's only about 35-ish miles from home so it's not that bad of a drive. They have a big parking garage, as well as an outdoor lot right across the street and parking is free. LOL I got there at around 11am.
https://www.caesars.com/grand-victoria-casino
My players card expired at the end of the year so I printed out a new one from one of their kiosks instead of waiting in line at the desk. It only took a couple of minutes to print. For a weekday, the place was pretty busy which was good to see. They added a lot new slots, but not a lot of VP. Their table games were pretty busy, but I'm not into them. LOL They also have a Laurel Lounge at the GVC for Diamond and above. Unfortunately, I'm still a lowly Platinum. Their casino is also well kept and clean including the restrooms. One nice thing is that all Illinois casinos are smoke-free. Being a riverboat, the casino isn't huge, but they have a good variety of slots/VP and table games with everything located on one level so it's easy to get around. The Horseshoe-Hammond is probably the biggest riverboat (or barge) close to Chicago, but their property has gone downhill for the past several years so I stopped going there.
I found some 9/6 JOB and 9/6 DDB so I was playing those machines for a couple of hours, but I was mainly breaking even so I switched over and played some slots. They have my favorite Top Dollar machines, but they weren't hitting very well and not producing a lot of bonus hits. I was down by about $200 so I decided to give some of the new Buffalo machines a try.
They have a good variety of the latest Buffalo machines and they were actually being nice to me today. I never played Buffalo Chief so I decided to give that a try and on the second spin, I hit a nice bonus round and ended up with 38 bonus spins in total. I was betting $2.50/spin and did good, even though I didn't hit any hand-pays. I was hitting a lot Buffalos which generated some nice wins. I was up by $1700 at one point, but I donated about another $200 before I decided to cash out at $1502.75 while I was ahead. I was also surprised that the cash machines dispenses coins, so I didn't have to go to the cashier to get that $0.75 in change.
I didn't take very many pics inside the casino, since I was told by one of the security people that no photos/videos are allowed, although I did sneak in this one hit on Buffalo Chief. It was still adding up the coins when I took this so the total was way more that what's shown in the pic.
Dining options are still rather sparse at the GVC. Both of their main restaurants have limited hours and aren't open for breakfast/lunch. The only place open was the pizza/pasta restaurant, but I didn't feel like eating pizza so I stop by Mitsuwa's (one of my favorite Japanese markets) on my way home and picked up some sushi for dinner. I didn't think of taking photos until I was done eating so no sushi pics.
