 A locals casino with a small hotel, the Cannery is a clean, blue-collar kind of place with a seriously lame theme: canneries and 40s pinup girls. Too much canning for our tastes, though, and too much phony nostalgia.
    
Room Quality: Don't worry, you won't be kept awake all night by the sounds of machinery packaging fruit. The cannery theme doesn't extend very far into the hotel section. In fact, no theme really extends, unless you consider moderate hotel a theme. You get a clean, average room with either two doubles or one queen, a sitting chair, flat-panel TV and amenities like a hairdryer and ironing board. The bathroom is not luxurious (meaning tub/shower combo and no fancy jacuzzi jets).
Service Quality: Check-in is okay because of the hotel's small size, but still slower than it should be. Overall services are limited, and this is not a good hotel for business travelers. But what's this? coin-operated washers on the premises? Now that's fancy!
What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: Shampoo/conditioner and lotion. They want you clean, soft and nothing more.
Clientele: Locals locals and more locals, mostly blue collar.
How's the Pool? About what you'd expect from a 200-room hotel. Decent, better than a Motel 6 and larger with an abstract shape, but nothing like the decadence of the Strip properties. There are a few palm trees on its edges and a little hot tub, at least.
Table Games: Play blackjack, craps, roulette, Pai Gow, 3-5-7 Card Poker. Roulette is double-zero, blackjack has mediocre to poor rules. It's standard stuff spread over 21 total tables.
Bet Minimums: $5 for everything across the board, except during really slow times. Craps has fabulous 100x odds. Roulette is usually with $1 chips and a $5 minimum.
Machines: Lots and lots of video slots at the nickel level. Plenty of the new games are in their around-1300 slot inventory. Machines go up to $5. The video poker selection is decent, and there are a few full-pay machines, so look around carefully.
Cocktails? Decent cocktail service will get the long-term player a nice little buzz to soothe his bruised wallet.
Who Gets Comps? The slot club pays back decent. Tables may score you a coffee shop comp for $15 play if you are polite (not us) and let the pit boss know you're playing when you sit down.
Cannery Row Buffet: A medium-sized buffet with the usual selection of American, Chinese, Italian and Mexican. The price is a bit high compared to the Station Casinos. Expect to pay $8 to $12, with the Thursday Night Seafood Special going for more.
Casa Cocina: A small Mexican restaurant that will be busy on weekend nights. Food is pretty standard, as is the decor. Stop us if you've heard this one before.
Victory's Cafe: A fairly small coffee shop with average prices. It's a nice, but noisy, room, open on the casino so you can enjoy your nachos while watching the exciting action of people losing at the slots. The Victory in the name is a nostalgia for WWII and there's lots of Rosie the Riveter-style decorations. What, Grenada's not good enough for these folks?
Vino's Ristorante: What they are going for here is an old-school family Italian joint like Buca di Beppo also attempts. That means traditional American-style Italian that is heavy on red sauces, garlic bread and retro vibes. There is also a deli attached if you want a meatball sandwich or a sub.
Waverly's: Here's the fancy joint, with real traditional steaks and seafood. It seems like the kind of place us blue-collar folks would go for special occasions: good, hearty meals, with nice but unpretentious service and dark paneling.
The Club: It's an indoor/outdoor dance hall/club that serves as a space for concerts and special events (like closed circuit sports or the Super Bowl). Nice room, the outside opens onto the pool which is very appealing in summer. That is, unless we're lounging in our inflatable dragons in the pool. Then it will be extremely unappealing.
Galaxy Movie Theaters: State of the art theaters do all they can to make the movies palatable.
Pin-up Lounge: There are live lounge acts in the bars. Pin-ups is in the center and they have a disappointing selection of pin-up girl posters hanging way overhead. Don't worry, it's tasteful. It's supposed to make us wish it were 1946 all over again and all those horny GIs had just returned.
Number of TVs: Thirteen TVs with two big screens. The room is large and there aren't enough TVs to go around.
Number of Seats: About 130. That's enough for 130 regular folks or 60 morbidly obese ones. The seats are almost all below average, but 90 for race have individual TVs.
How Many Betting Windows? Eleven, with electronic scoreboards. They take bets on horse racing, and they also take wagers on Arena Football. Does somoene actually pay attention to that?
Free Drinks? Yes, if you can snag a cocktail waitress or somehow finagle one from the bar. Good luck, though, since this is off the beaten path.
Snack Bar? Java Coast serves pastries, coffee and a few other items for the hungry and wicked. Or just hungry.
Minimum Wager: $5 sports.
Other Notes: The Cannery is probably not the best place to see the big games. It's not comfy and it's too big for its amenities.
Number of Tables: Eleven tables, and a ton of space for them. Half or fewer are usually in use, unless it's tourney time.
Comfort of Chairs: The chairs are below average, but what's more comfortable is the waiting area with the leather sofa. That's why we'd come all the way out here.
Closed Room or Open to Casino? It's open to the hallway and it is its own space. Being down a hall, the poker room is not exactlly easy to find.
Game Spreads and Limits: $2-$4 and $3-$6 Hold 'em in limit and $1-$2 no-limit flavors.
Beginner Games or Classes? They dealers and brush will be happy to give you a few pointers when it's slow, but we don't know of a class here.
How Crowded is the Room? Not crowded. The room is not geared toward serious players. Don't expect to wait. It certainly isn't worth a wait longer than that.
Comps? It's a dollar an hour, plus a bunch of potential freerolls and jackpots that are geared toward the local. If you play a lot of poker in Vegas, then the local stuff is a good deal. If you're only in for a couple days, they aren't worth much.
How Good Are the Players? Locals, locals and more locals. This is where the folks from the neighborhood come to shoot the breeze and play a little. Not good players, but they can be pretty tight.
What Else Do I Need to Know? This is vastly better than the old poker room, but still not worth going way out of your way for, unless you got a hankering to play the locals. One nice thing is the $3 max rake (plus a dollar for the jackpots).
|
Like me
Follow me
