Review Detail

- from Rick and Lucky Lucy, August, 2007
We took a side trip to the Casino Del Sol a few miles south of Tucson on Pascua Yaqui Indian reservation. They have a great place to dry camp, a huge paved parking lot next to an amphitheater. Many motorhomes and campers were taking advantage of these facilities and the place looked like a used RV lot. However there was plenty of room to spread out.

The casino is quite nice, rivals many of the Las Vegas casinos except a bit smaller. There are plenty of full pay VP machines -- 9/6 JoB, 8/5 Bonus, and NSUD -- in 25 & 50 cent and $5. Oddly we didn't find any full pay in $1. Most were in 3 or 5 play multi-denomination. Unfortunately these machines also have 5, 10, 20 cent short pay games and the bus loads of senior citizens occupy most of the machines playing one nickel at a time. The buses depart around 4:00 PM so frees up the machines at that time.

When we walked in the door I headed straight to the promotion's booth to convert a $50 coupon into a cash voucher (mailed to us based on last year's visit). A host saw the coupon and got his attention, guess they don't send out many $50 coupons. He took a quick look at our play record and asked us if we wanted a comp to their best restaurant. Of course we did and he wrote us an $80 comp for dinner that evening. Said we spent a lot of money there and he was happy to have us back. Well this is off to a good start, haven't even dropped the first nickel yet and already have 50 bucks and a good comp.

We ended up dropping about $600 the first day so guess we paid for the comp after all. Dinner was in Bellissimo Italian restaurant. Lucky Lucy had lamb chops and I had steak and shrimp, both were excellent, probably the best meals we have experienced in Arizona. Even with dessert we didn't use up all the comp so our waitress insisted we take a couple slices of cheesecake to go (also excellent). We had enough leftovers for a good lunch the next day -- big advantage of traveling with your own kitchen.

Day two we beat the senior citizens to the machines and had a pretty good run. I shouldn't be dicing our elderly folks since we are too. ;-) Hey this retirement stuff is great, wish I had started about 20 years sooner. We ended the day about $1100 to the good, most of which came from Lucky Lucy's play on the $5 machines.

Impressed with the previous evening's meal we headed back to the booth to get another Bellissimo comp. The boothling, after checking with a host, wrote it out. Then remembered that Bellissimo was closed on Tuesday night and wrote us out a $50 comp for the Tequila Factory, told us to keep the other one as it was good for a month.

Another excellent meal but the menu items were priced so we couldn't possibly use up all the comp. So we got a couple meals to go and still only came to $38. I got a full slab of baby back ribs and again had enough leftovers for a good lunch the next day.

Day three decided we would head back to Tucson to our son's house but got the idea of bringing son and daughter-in-law back for dinner some evening. Wonder if we can squeeze another Bellissimo comp out of them. No problem, they were happy to do so. (I am beginning to really like this place). We hit the machines for a little play before heading out. Playing a 5-play NSUD I hit a non-deuce royal flush for a thousand bucks. This looked like a great place to check out and hit the road. Lucky Lucy had another go at the $5 machines but lost a couple hundred this round.
Went back to the booth to check for cash back and got $95. We headed out with our fridge full of food, pockets full of cash, and $160 in future comps.