Last month, I posted my first edition of my casino “reviews” or whatever you’d like to call them. This month I’ll continue with a pair of facilities on the western side of the state (albeit quite separated).
-GUN LAKE CASINO-
Gun Lake is a place that I feel somewhat conflicted on. On one hand, from a video poker perspective, the games kinda suck. There are bad video poker paytables here everywhere except some of the bartops. I haven’t stared at the tables too much but I think they may actually pay 3:2 for blackjack and minimum bets are pretty normative for this region ($25 on weekends, maybe $10-15 on a weekday?). On the other side, Gun Lake is radically improving itself. Their dining spaces are nice, they actually have an open buffet, and they are adding a really fantastic high rise hotel tower and pool. The gaming floor is spacious and the whole place is attractive to be in. Free gifts to players are pretty easily obtainable: we signed up for a card and easily hit the 200 point level required to take home a bathmat set that the cats love even more than us. That said, we may like the facility enough to try our hand at losing money in return for rooms/food once the hotel is done.
As for Gun Lake itself, it’s a fairly decently sized lake in the interior of Michigan about a half hour or so south of Grand Rapids. A state park exists there and you can fish, camp, boat, go to the beach, etc. There were once two mini golf courses on the same stretch of road 10 minutes away, now there are none. The owner of one facility is looking to do some work on the space so sayeth local documents, and they own a rather nice looking restaurant known as Thirsty Buddy which suggests they might actually have the capital to do it.
-LITTLE RIVER CASINO RESORT-
I really haven’t talked about casino interior design to this point, but I feel like that’s an important factor in the overall “do I like this place” thing. Gun Lake, for example, I just said sucks in terms of the actual potential to win but is nice enough that we ignore this and still aspire to visit. These are all Native casinos I’ve reviewed to date, and Little River is as well, but significant differences remain. I tend to think of native casinos as often having a pronounced basis of theme in their tribe and history. There are often things that are relatable about tribes at this latitude, and so it is perhaps my lack of conscious awareness which leads me to see some design choices and color palettes at a place like Firekeepers being reminiscent of the casinos I spent the most time in when I was younger - Connecticut’s enormous Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Soaring Eagle certainly has some comparable things, but I’d actually compare the overall aesthetic more to off-strip casinos in Vegas. Gun Lake’s modernity makes it more like a small strip property or Circa. And then you have Little River.
Two casinos in Michigan try harder than the others to provide a sense of nature while indoors, and it perhaps unsurprising that both are in naturally attractive places. Manistee is the home for Little River, and it is a Lake Michigan town full of resort homes, great shopping, good, reasonable dining, and beautiful beaches. Little River is inland some distance but offers a combination of great indoor and outdoor spaces. Chief among these is a an indoor garden with a pond that also offers doors to exterior space outside. The vibe here is less “Stations Casinos” and more “Bellagio Conservatory”. Not many regional casinos can offer such things.
Video poker paytables here are so-so to bad again, though this place has the odd distinction of being the only casino in Michigan that I’ve seen offer a payout on a sequential royal flush. A normal royal flush pays 4000 credits at 5 credits bet: $1,000 if you bet $1.25 in quarters. A sequential royal, meanwhile, pays 10000 credits at a 5 credit bet: that would be $2500 if the cards show up in the hand as 10-J-Q-K-A suited. It helps the payback for sure but not enough to merit being shown on VPFree2 as having “good video poker.” Slots are pretty much all new and modern, and there’s tables too I guess but again, I am not yet willing to return to blackjack without significant effort in getting my skills right.
To me, Little River is one of the best resorts that happens to also be a casino in the state. It also intentionally makes itself challenging to book into by requiring phone reservations. That tells me their principle guests are players, which means there’s something there that people are liking. Whether it’s the sound of running water as you hit the deal button or the popcorn cart handing out free bags of freshly popped snacks, Little River is a gem that is just a smidge too far for a Friday night stay most weeks.