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    Wednesday, January 21, 2009

    Trip Report Black Hawk 1/18/09

    Black Hawk Colorado Sunday January 18th, 2009

    Planning:

    The goal for today is to play the Happy Days game. I found, by surfing casino websites, that the game was listed at Bullwhackers Casino so I will start my day there. No mailer or coupons to spend this month so I'm free to visit wherever I want.

    Actual:

    I didn’t get much sleep, as always, spent most of the night tossing and turning or dreaming of winning big. I wish my dreams would come true….

    I finally got out of bed at 6 am. As I written a lot lately on my blog, a new law will go into effect on July 1st 2009 that will not only increase the gambling limits for Colorado but also allow the casinos to become a 24 hour operation. Now with this new law the question for me will be, when I'm tossing and turning all night waiting to get up in the morning and go to the casino, will I now just get up and go at 4 am when I can’t wait anymore? Guess we will see. I do plan on going up July 1st just to see how many people are there at 3 AM. I'm betting the hotel occupancy skyrockets.

    I tiptoe around the house for awhile wasting time but finally head out about 645. It’s only a 30-40 minute drive but I wanted to save time for getting gas, going to the bank, and getting some pre-dawn photos of the sunrise on the mountains.

    The drive was uneventful and I did get a few shoots of the mountains. (will post later) I arrived in Black Hawk around 740. I was the second car to be parked in the Bullwhackers parking lot. The other driver was reading the paper in her car. Since the Casino’s don’t open till 8am the doors are locked which is just funny to me.

    I walked around and took pictures of some of the buildings and sculptures that are scattered throughout the town and just wasted some time. There were a couple other people doing the same thing or hanging out in the bus shelter because there is one heat lamp in there. It was maybe in the 30 outside.

    At 8 am I joined a group of maybe 10 people waiting for security to open the door to Bullwhackers. These people were pro’s and ran to either the players club or their favorite machines. I immediately saw the Fonze staring at me from the other side of the casino so I headed right over and sat down for my first game of the day.

    The Cunningham’s Go Wild. I liked seeing the familiar characters and some of the symbols were classic looking phones and dress, along with Mr. And Mrs. Cunningham and Jonni. I experience the first bonus when you get a Go Wild symbol it rotates through all the symbols stopping on one random one and makes all the matching symbols wild. It had some good pays and some bad ones but was kind of fun. The second bonus was a random bonus activated by game play. Giving you a high multiplier if you play faster between 2 x and 4x. I got this bonus the first time while looking at the pay menu. It was funny, I was sitting there trying to figure out how to get into the bonus and boom, I'm in the bonus. I wish that happened every time. The Fonze gets on and does a little speech and then a icon on the top box lights up with different levels of the free spin bonus. The icons are records and range in free spins valued from Vinyl 7 spins to Diamond 51 spins. During my play I got 2 Vinyl bonuses and 1 Platinum 21 spins. The game itself was fun and I walked away up a few bucks but I never was able to matchup 3 face characters. I was wondering if they had sound bits of the characters or anything. Have to play again next time.

    Just on the other side of the bank of machines I found the other Happy Days game, Richie’s Big Night. This one is themed toward a date night for Richie, Mouth, and Pottsie. This one also offered the random free spin bonus but had a locket bonus. When you get 3 or more lockets you select one to get a bonus point award. I got 1 Vinyl bonus and 3 locket bonuses. 1 of the locket bonuses I got while in the vinyl bonus and it did pay out more because I was in the bonus. Of the two machines I like the Go Wild version better as I'm not a fan of pick box bonuses.

    I walked away and found Monopoly Up ,Up, and Away. I’ve never made it to the bonus on this one before and was finally able to get in this time. On the top box I got the Fireworks bonus. Nothing else going but it was fun to finally get into the bonus.

    From here I found Indiana Jones and the Well of Souls. This one has a mystery bonus also that says you it can activate anytime for 15 seconds after a spin but I couldn’t find a countdown clock anywhere on my screen or top box? Never got in the bonus and I was the only one playing on the bank of machines so I had no one to compare things too. Lost quickly and ran.

    Bullwhackers has 3 floors and at this point I had played everything I wanted to play on the 2nd (main) floor so I went to the basement and found a Village People Party game. Noda.

    Moved over to Deal or No Deal The Show. I did my normal and forgot which button to push for repeat bet, so I pushed the max bet button and of course didn’t hit anything. Do it every time. One the minimum bid I did get into the bonus and was given a double award, so top prize 10000 credits. Picked case 10 as always, it my wife and I’s anniversary date, September 10th. 1st pick 10000, there goes that one. Went a couple rounds. 1st offer 1748, 2nd offer 1724 knocked out the 6000, 3rd offer 2234. Still have the 1000, 2000, 4000, and 8000 with bottom 130. I'm chicken, took the deal. I'm not sure If I would like the option of knowing what was in my case or not. I think it would be cool if it was small but I would be pissed if it was the big one. Owe well.

    At the end of the bank was a The Game of Life Getting Paid game I had wanted to try and someone had just left so I cashed out and headed down. Few seconds later I was leaving.

    I played everything I wanted to play here so I left and crossed the street to Fitzgerald’s. I like how they have added a new building that is very nice and airy. I sat down at Dean Martin’s Wild Party and played for a while. Supposedly there is 3 ways to get into the bonus round. None of which I found but the game is highly volatile. You can go forever without a win and then hit something for a few hundred credits , this continued for a while and I decided to try another Dean machine along the bank. Still no bonus and I was done. Not sure how I feel about the line structure. Seems if you don’t get matching symbols in the first 2 boxes it doesn’t nothing and when you do finally match it pays off pretty good. I guess it’s just a waiting game that I don’t have the patience for.

    Walked around the new area some and didn’t find anything that was calling to me, so I heading into the old building and found a couple Star Trek Games. I had seen this game while on a trip to Oregon but it was so busy I wasn’t able to play. One thing that I can’t seem to understand is this game has the ability to track you progress along a journey in the game. Giving you the option to pass multiple levels and do different mission along the way. It doesn’t change the payout but just makes it feel more like a computer game than a slot machine. This would be fine if it didn’t take so long to log onto the machine to keep up with your progress. So every time someone is finally do with a machine it’s another few minutes till they are done login their progress and move on. It’s just a little annoying for those who are waiting to play. Of course I do nothing on the machine and don’t waste mine or anyone else’s time to make a profile and track the progress of me getting nowhere.

    I moved on to Monopoly Jackpot Station and hit 3 bonus symbols within the first few spins. I was give 2 rolls of the dice. 1st roll of 4,3 for seven spaces and landed on chance which gave me 3 spins and then a 6 giving me another 4 spins. Lots of 10x multiples, no full line wilds and got a minimal payout but it’s always fun to play that bonus and it can be a big payer.

    I then went upstairs in the old building and found a Super Jackpot Party machine. I got into the bonus once but chose the wrong corner to start. I always just choose a section and pick from there instead of jumping all over the board, just my style. 1st pick credits, second pick multiplier, 3rd pick pooper, 4th pick poker, party hat saver, credits, and I'm out. Moving on.

    Getting nervously close to the end of my bank roll so I continued down the mountain to The Gilpin Hotel/Casino. I sat down on Invaders from Planet Moolah. I really like this game, it’s just a fun game. I’m not a real fan of collapsing wins and with this one to get to the bonus round you have to have 4 collapsing wins in a row. I would get 3 but couldn’t get that 4th one and then after a spin the little meter thing at the bottom of the screen filled up to 7 free spins and began the bonus round. I didn’t know that there was a mystery bonus. Didn’t win much but it was a nice surprise.

    Next I bellied up to Wizard of Oz, hoping for some lucky from Glenda, Dorthy, or for a flying monkey to come out my……machine. Well no visits from any of said characters and I'm down to my last five.

    Walked around for a little bit to find that last machine calling my name. I settled on Monopoly Grand Hotel. Must have been calling someone else because it didn’t like me.

    So that’s a wrap. Total playing time around 2 hours. Machines played 15. Not bad and had a fun time doing it.

    Final Observations:

    When I arrived there was 10 or so people waiting to get in and I was the second car in the lot. When I left just after 10 am there were maybe 15 cars in the lot. The lot is normally pretty full by this time of the day. I had not paid much attention but it hit me that the casinos were very empty. I guess the economy really is taking a bite out of the gaming industry.

    I will be back next month on Sunday Feb 22nd, the day after my 29th birthday. Till then……..

    J

    PS. Post picture soon