Visit to Harrah's Lake Tahoe trip report
I recently visited Harrah's Lake Tahoe for 4 nights.
Before I talk about Harrah's and the Tahoe area, I should mention an unfortunate thing which occurred on my drive.
About 20 miles south of Walker, CA (a town fairly close to the CA/NV border on US-395), an adult deer ran in front of my car, but was able to just barely get by. Just as I turned to my wife to point out what happened, I felt a large thud on the front of the car.
I knew exactly what it had to be. I looked out the window, and saw a baby deer tumbling from my car to the left side of the road, coming to a stop there.
I quickly stopped my car and assessed the damage. The animal was dead on impact. My car was damaged, but far less than I had thought it would from such a collision. Airbags did not deploy. Nobody got hurt. Car was still driveable. The damage was mostly on the front bumper, and some various pieces attached there (such as the grills) fell off. We retrieved them from the road, I reattached them, and we kept driving. It will be an insurance claim, and I feel bad about killing the deer, but there was nothing I could do. It jumped right into my car. Also, I later read that 1.2 million people hit deer each year, so I guess this is very common. This was only my second time hitting an animal. The only other time was when I hit a cat in 1992, and it was under very similar circumstances, as one cat had just barely gotten by my car, and a second cat following it ran right into my car. Again, it died on impact.
Anyway, back to Harrah's Tahoe.
They were having a Keith Urban concert that week, so I was informed that I could neither get a suite nor a second room, despite being a Seven Stars and despite having a fairly good play history there.
About 2 hours before arriving, I took one last shot and asked VIP services if they could get me a suite. I was told again that a suite couldn't happen, and that they only had it for the first night of my 4-night stay, and that they have a policy against giving suites under a 1-nigh-and-move situation (claiming that some people refuse to move!)
It was actually important to have the suite, as we had 4 people total, and needed the extra room.
When I arrived at Harrah's, I approached the front desk and pretended like I had never been rejected for the suite request.
"I'm a Seven Stars member, can you check if there are any suites?"
The very nice girl behind the counter went to the back, came back out, and said, "We're working on that for you. If you can wait a few minutes, we should have one for you."
Indeed, they did!
Not sure how this happened, but we got the suite for all 4 nights.
Despite that, I didn't play. This wasn't a gambling trip. Next time I go to Tahoe (I think in January), I will play, provided they don't murder the good VP games they have there. I did verify that the good VP still existed.
I believe that all rooms at Harrah's Tahoe have 2 full bathrooms, which is a nice feature.
The suite was pretty nice, except the layout was stupid, in that the master bathroom was not connected to the bedroom.
The keycards had a chronic problem of not working very well to open the door, and it seemed to be an issue with the door lock and not the key cards themselves. We didn't bother complaining. There were a few other small maintenance issues which we just lived with, and again didn't want to hassle with a maintenance man coming.
The dining situation there isn't all that great.
The cafe (American River) is only open during the day, except on weekends. This is too bad, because it's decent as far as casino cafes go, and it's reasonably priced.
There are several restaurants at Harrah's and the connected CET property Harvey's which are third-party and do not accept RCs. I found that annoying, and in fact only learned this after ordering and believing my RCs could be used. Lame.
There are two high end steakhouses. The one at Harrah's is called Fridays Station, and is on the 18th floor with a nice view. The one at Harvey's is on the casino floor, called Sage Room, and has no view. I found that the prices and selection was better at Sage Room, so we went there. Food was fairly standard by expensive steakhouse standards. Not bad, not memorable. Both places take RCs and comps, so I used two of my $100 celebration dinner vouchers, and used RCs for the remainder.
As is typical with most CET properties, you can get pretty much unlimited bottled waters from both the front desk and VIP front desk. I never took more than 5 at a time from either desk, but I probably ended up taking about 60 of them over the course of the 4-day trip (and used them all!) It was unusually hot (over 90 degrees) and dry (as always) in Tahoe, so water was important, and 4 people will consume them quickly!
They gave us a neat little Seven Stars welcome gift, containing nuts and chocolates.
I had planned to take a boat out on the lake, as I had remembered doing with my dad back in the 1980s. However things have changed a lot in Tahoe since then. The boat rental outfits are all ridiculously overpriced, and some of them seem to be scammers. By "scammers", I mean that there are multiple reports all over the web of many operators falsely claiming damage to the boats, and then hitting people's credit cards for $700 or more. Even the more honest outfits are just downright expensive. It's like $145/hr to rent a boat there, and that's before gas and tax, with a 2-hour minimum. No thanks. To show you how outrageous this is, I just rented a similar boat on Las Vegas' Lake Mead for like $55/hour.
We took various hikes around the Tahoe area, and also visited 2 of the lake's beaches so the kids could play in the water.
The best hike we took was to Eagle Falls / Eagle Lake, which is near Emerald Bay (on the California side, about 30 minutes from the hotel). Reviews online claimed the hike was steep and dangerous, but those were inaccurate and exaggerated. While the hike was uphill most of the way (and downhill on the way back), it was never overly steep or dangerous, and there was a lot of nice scenery along the way, ending with a peaceful and lightly-visited lake.
Parking was a disaster. The normally large lot was filled with people there for the two Keith Urban concerts. One of the time it was completely full, and I had to valet, which I absolutely hate doing.
Anyway, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask me.
