 A place for folks who'd rather see gas pumps than volcanoes. What do you expect from a casino owned and operated by a chain of gas stations? Nothing here is dazzling, but if you're just looking for something just a little run-down, it's okay.
Coupons Available for Terrible's Casino: Two hotel nights for $49 (selected months), two-for-one buffet, $10 table game matchplay. (Click Here For More Info.)
   
Room Quality: The regular rooms are large and standard, which makes them a good value. Rooms come equipped with a king bed or two queen beds, table and chairs, a dresser and flat-screen TV. The bathrooms are average, with a single sink and tub/shower combo. The Tower rooms have better furnishings, but are still quite average hotel rooms. Well, big for a hotel room, anyway. If you live in a castle, you probably won't get too excited. The better amenities are the blowdryers and coffee-makers in each room. You can get either a "courtyard" view or "city" view. Courtyard looks in on the pool area at the center of the complex and we prefer this view since it's quieter than the "city" views, which look out over the street. Your west-facing city view may have a nice panorama of the Strip. All rooms have free wi-fi, so ruining your vacation is just a click away.
Service Quality: Good. Check-in is never too long a wait, but walks to rooms can be somewhat long from the casino since there are four buildings that surround the central pool area.
What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: Shampoo/conditioner all rolled into one little bottle. It's really nothing special, but worth stuffing in your toilet kit anyway.
Clientele: They are shooting for the locals and drawing budget-minded tourists, too. Mostly it's a 40s and over crowd, pretty quiet and dedicated to their favorite slots and video poker.
How's the Pool? It's nice. They did a good job landscaping the grounds and there are green lawns and palm trees surrounding the somewhat-small pool. There are tons of lounge chairs available.
Table Games: They only have a few tables in the small, crowded casino, but they include blackjack, craps with the now-standard 3x4x5x odds, 3-card poker and roulette. There are two poker tables too. It's possible that the craps table and poker tables could be closed during very slow times, but the blackjack is always going.
Bet Minimums: Blackjack has a $5 shoe game, craps may let you in for $3 at the slowest times. The roulette wheel has a $5 minimum with $1 chips.
Machines: From a penny to five bucks. Actually, half the machines are penny. They have almost all video slots, with a few reels among their inventory. The video poker selection is almost overwhelming and there are very few--if any--full-pay machines around.
Cocktails? Decent service. Since it caters more to locals, the drink service is not as swift as downtown, which caters to folks who drink as hard as they gamble.
Who Gets Comps? The slot club is fair once you are on the mailing list, but point redemption is pretty stingy. The plus is the frequent double, triple and quintuple point days. If you sit down to a $10 table, ask the pit boss to rate you. At $50 you're nuts for playing here, but you'll probably get a future free room for a couple hours play. Joining the slot club virtually guarantees some very nice mailings for room and food discounts.
Bougainvillea Cafe: The coffee shop is no place for gourmet dining, but it is okay for greasy American late-night specials like eggs, bacon and pancakes for a few bucks. There is also a smattering of Asian dishes. The room is sort of nice looking, with actual fake bouganvillea's dangling from the ceiling beams.
Terrible's Buffet: There's a different cuisine featured every night and they emphasize "authentic" but it isn't really any more authentic than any other buffet's foreign foods. The good news is the reasonable prices, plus there are sometimes-available 2-for-1 coupons in the freebie magazines. Food is average on a good day, and usually worse than most other buffets.
Lounge: They have a nice lounge that features acts that the hotel calls Terrible's Entertainment. That name would be accurate if they struck the apostrophe and "s." Expect small combos specializing in the soft hits of the 70s and 80s. There's a sign hanging above the lounge that actually says "Terrible's Entertainment," which we find pretty funny. We think it's for people who see a lounge band and say, "What the hell is going on here?!"
Number of TVs: Twenty-two sets, none of which are big.
Number of Seats: Forty seats are for both sports and race bettors. None are reserved, and all getting pretty worn out. Race seats have a desktop while sports seats just have a small writing area off to the side.
How Many Betting Windows? Five windows serve the eager gambler. They are backed up with electronic signboards.
Free Drinks? Yes, the waitresses will wander in and offer you booze.
Snack Bar? Nope. Sorry, but there truly was nothing we could do about it. They wouldn't let us bring in an ice box full of homemade egg salad sandwiches.
Minimum Wager: $5 sports bets and $2 race bets.
Other Notes: The sports book was nice a few years ago, but very little has been done to keep it looking nice. So, these days it's getting long in the tooth.
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