In March, Kristina and I had the crazy idea to take a road trip. Like many others, we needed a long vacation.
Kristina spent much of the following five weeks working hard on the itinerary. This included details on all the amenities at the casino properties. This is a significant amount of the content for the Advantage websites that we will launch soon. West Virginia Advantage is already live.
We determined Cincinnati was the best base for our journey. We flew Allegiant there on May 6. We bought a Delta ticket to return on May 21.
The original plan had us hitting southern and northwestern Indiana first. This would have given us 66 casinos to visit. However, the Hard Rock Indiana opening date conflicted with that. Kristina determined the solution to this was to go there after we hit all the other casinos on our list.
We never got to that part of Indiana due to fatigue and the overwhelming amount of data and pictures that we already needed to organize. We stopped at 58 casinos along the map shown below. It was just under 3,000 miles with the detours off the path.
We covered every casino and racino in Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. We visited all public casinos in West Virginia, as well as eight in southern Michigan and five in eastern Indiana.
The 58 casinos we visited, in order
- Four Winds Casino, South Bend, IN
- Blue Chip Casino, Michigan City, IN
- Four Winds Casino, New Buffalo, MI
- Four Winds Casino, Dowagiac, MI
- Four Winds Casino, Hartford, MI
- Gun Lake Casino, Wayland, MI
- Firekeepers, Battle Creek, MI
- MGM Grand, Detroit, MI
- MotorCity Casino, Detroit, MI
- Greektown Casino, Detroit, MI
- Hollywood Casino, Toledo, OH
- MGM Racino, Northfield, OH
- JACK Thistledown Racino, North Randall, OH
- JACK Casino, Cleveland, OH
- Presque Isle Downs and Casino, Erie, PA
- Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley, Youngstown, OH
- Mountaineer Casino, New Cumberland, WV
- Wheeling Island Casino, Wheeling, WV
- Meadows Casino, Washington, PA
- Rivers Casino, Pittsburgh, PA
- Live! Casino, Pittsburgh, PA
- Lady Luck Nemacolin, Farmington, PA
- Rocky Gap Casino, Flintstone, MD
- Hollywood Casino at Penn National, Grantville, PA
- Mohegan Sun Pocono, Wilkes-Barre, PA
- Mount Airy Casino, Mt Pocono, PA
- Wind Creek Bethlehem, Bethlehem, PA
- Valley Forge Casino, King of Prussia, PA
- Parx Casino, Bensalem, PA
- Rivers Casino, Philadelphia, PA
- Live! Casino, Philadelphia, PA
- Harrah’s Philadelphia, Chester, PA
- Caesars, Atlantic City, NJ
- Resorts, Atlantic City, NJ
- Hard Rock Casino, Atlantic City, NJ
- Ocean Resort, Atlantic City, NJ
- Tropicana, Atlantic City, NJ
- Bally’s, Atlantic City, NJ
- Wild Wild West, Atlantic City, NJ
- Golden Nugget, Atlantic City, NJ
- Harrah’s, Atlantic City, NJ
- Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ
- Ocean Downs Casino, Berlin, MD
- Hollywood Casino, Perryville, MD
- Horseshoe Casino, Baltimore, MD
- Live! Casino, Hanover, MD
- MGM National Harbor, Forest Heights, MD
- Hollywood Casino, Charles Town, WV
- Mardi Gras Casino, Cross Lanes, WV
- Scioto Downs, Columbus, OH
- Hollywood Casino, Columbus, OH
- Hollywood Gaming, Dayton, OH
- Miami Valley Gaming, Lebanon, OH
- Hard Rock Casino, Cincinnati, OH
- Belterra Park, Cincinnati, OH
- Hollywood Casino, Lawrenceburg, IN
- Rising Star Casino, Rising Sun, IN
- Belterra Casino, Florence, IN
Where we stayed the night
We spent nights in the following cities. Only one stay was at a casino-hotel. That was three nights at Caesars Atlantic City. We had too much luggage to deal with staying at larger hotels.
- South Bend, IN
- Ann Arbor, MI
- Cleveland, OH
- Wheeling, WV
- Grantville, PA
- Bensalem, PA
- Atlantic City, NJ (three nights)
- Washington DC (two nights)
- Allegheny Grove, MD
- Columbus, OH
- Florence, KY (two nights)
Our favorite casinos on the road trip
Kristina and I agreed on Firekeepers in Battle Creek, Michigan being our favorite casino out of the 58 that we visited. My least favorite ones were Ohio racinos that only offer slots and keno.
Kristina enjoys the casino architecture. This includes light fixtures, designs and carpet. She chose Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City as one of her favorites for those reasons.
The best blackjack game that I found was in southern Indiana. It is a double deck that stands on all 17’s. Players can double on 9, 10 and 11, including after splitting. This game is dealt at Rising Star in Rising Sun, Indiana. Hollywood Casino in the same area has this game with double down on 10 and 11 only. The minimum is $50.
Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg wins the best variety of quality video poker. It has quarter up to $5 full pay Triple Double Bonus, Jacks or Better, Bonus Deuces Wild and other 99% or better games. It was my favorite for casino games on the trip.
The best pay table on a common video poker game that I found was 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe. It is available in the $1 denomination at Belterra Casino in Florence, Indiana and the $5 denomination at Hollywood Casino in Toledo, Ohio.
I will publish trip reports for our entire trip in the coming weeks. It is over 10,000 words.
