Gulf South reopened casino trip reports

Some of the 15 Louisiana commercial casinos opened this morning at 8:00 AM local time, the earliest allowable by law. Boomtown (Penn National), in Jefferson Parish, is one of four New Orleans area casinos and the only one to open today. Treasure Chest, (Boyd) the other Jefferson Parish casino eligible to open today, will open on Wednesday.

The two casinos inside the New Orleans city limits are Fair Grounds, (Churchill Downs) and Harrah's. (Caesars Ent.) The cunt hag Hillary Clinton/Gretchen Whitmer-type mayor of New Orleans is not allowing either one to open yet despite both having the gaming commission's ok. Caesars is absolutely up in arms about it too, as Harrah's New Orleans is the highest grossing wholly owned property of theirs in the entire United States. (Both Rincon and Cherokee gross more, but Caesars only manages those properties.) From the looks of things it will be at least June 5th before either of those can open, and it may be much later.

I should note that outside of the tiny town of Deadwood, SD, Louisiana is the first state to allow its commercial non-tribal casinos to reopen.

The casinos are limited to 25% of stated fire marshal capacity, and 50% of available gaming positions. All employees are required to wear masks, but patrons are not.

At any rate, I showed up about 11:00 this morning. Only the main entrance to the pavilion was open and valet parking was closed. In the pavilion, only the grab-and-go snack bar was open. There's also a buffet, an Asian restaurant and a steakhouse in "normal times."

There were about 15 people in line to get in at that point. If you were an Owners Club or Elite member, (the highest two mychoice players club tiers) you went to the front of the line.

It took me about 7-8 minutes to get to the front. There I had to verbally answer three questions about whether I was feeling sick, whether I had been exposed to anyone with COVID-19, and whether I had traveled to any high-risk areas in the previous 14 days. Masks were offered to anyone who wanted one. My temperature was then taken. I clocked in at a cool 97.0F and in I went.

As I assume will be the standard everywhere, only every other machine was operational. The table games were confined to one pit only. 1 blackjack table with 3 seats, 5 baccarat tables with 4 seats, and one roulette table with 4 seats. Poker room was closed. the lone blackjack table was $50 minimum and if you wanted to play you had to sign up on a poker room-style list and listen for your name when your seat opened up. Same deal with roulette. $10 minimum I think. Several baccarat seats were open but I assume the same would apply if those filled up. $25 minimum on those.

There was a decent crowd inside but I don't think it was anywhere near 25% of capacity. I think there was only a line due to the length of time it took to "process" each person going in.

As I suspected would be the case, all these new "health and safety" initiatives promised by these casino corporations proved to be mostly talk. I would estimate mask usage by the patrons at 55-60%, and more patrons had their masks down around their necks than actually had them on. Glove usage by patrons was under 10% as well. There was zero attempt by any staff member to enforce any kind of social distancing, and not once in almost 4 hours did I see any cleaning crews wiping down machines, table game chairs, etc. The only plexiglass barriers I saw installed were at the front entrance security podium where patrons were processed in.Table games, the cage/players club, and the snack bar were wide open. Chips were freely exchanged at the tables and only 2 of the 7 dealers had gloves on.

Bottom line: it was very clear to me that the casino was only doing the very bare minimum required by the state in order to reopen. If you're the least bit worried about catching the rona, I wouldn't plan on visiting anytime soon.

I'll have Treasure Chest and Biloxi trip reports in the near future.