Review of Harrah's Lake Tahoe
Spent a few days at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. I'm not going to post a long trip report, because this visit wasn't nearly as eventful or interesting as my Rincon trip.
I did not ski because my ankle is injured (plus the snow was no good anyway).
The Room
My room was of the "Executive" category, but I believe that's just a standard room with a view. I had a pretty nice view of the snow-capped mountains and the lake. You're not right on the lake, so you see buildings and the street in between, but it's still pretty nice.
The room itself is fairly large, and most notably, it has two full bathrooms! Every single room at Harrah's Lake Tahoe is like this. I believe Bill Harrah had some weird obsession with doing that, though other Harrah's properties are not like this.
Furniture looked a bit old but in good condition. Room was clean. Overall I found the room to be comfortable.
The Food
Unfortunately, the food options at Harrah's (and next door Harvey's) were surprisingly sparse.
I never thought I would say this, but I missed the restaurant selection at the Rincon!
First off, Harrah's has no coffee shop open after 2:30pm during the week! This includes Sunday.
Room service shuts down at midnight. All other restaurants at Harrah's and Harvey's close at 8 or 9pm from Sunday-Thursday, and a bit later on weekends.
The last thing open is the small food court, which has a mediocre Asian fast food place, a mediocre Italian fast food place, and Fatburger. Fatburger is open the latest (until 1:00am), but they inexplicably shut down 15 minutes early on Sunday night. They weren't supposed to do that, and when I came down there shortly after 12:45, it was all cleaned up and the workers almost ready to leave. I ended up having to walk outside while it was snowing to order take-out food from a bar down the street.
I did not bother trying their version of fine dining here, so I can't comment on that.
Honestly, it was pretty surprising how few choices for food I had on non-weekend days, and how there was no food at all (except Starbucks) after 1:00am.
The Casino
Saturday night the casino was LOUD. They had some obnoxious DJ playing super-loud '80s and '90s music, and singing over parts of the songs (which was really awful). This wasn't karaoke or anything. The guy just sang over parts of the songs to create a party atmosphere or something. You could not get away from the noise if you wanted to play in the casino. It carried everywhere.
In general, the casino was buys and had a Vegas-like atmosphere on Saturday night.
When I came down on Sunday afternoon, it was like a different place. It was quiet, empty, and almost depressingly dead. Same thing on Monday. I saw most of the blackjack dealers standing around doing nothing.
I had a hard time locating the 3/5 Play Jacks or Better games. I knew where they were supposed to be, but the machines weren't showing them as existing. Finally I realized why I wasn't able to find them. When scrolling through the menu, the Jacks or Better games are simply listed as "Three Play" and "Five Play", instead of "Three Play Jacks or Better".
They are willing to turn off machines for up to 2 hours for Diamond members, and up to 4 hours for Seven Stars. This was annoying for me on Monday, as two machine hogs basically held them for the whole day. I had to play outside the high limit room, which isn't as quiet (but at least identical machines existed elsewhere, which was the most important).
Overall, the casino isn't very large, and it's not too hard to find things.
For some reason, they had TONS of slot attendants, and they were mostly from the Philippines. At other properties, it's sometimes difficult to get a slot attendant (Rincon especially seems to have this issue), but Harrah's Tahoe had them all over the place. That was nice.
Harrah's Tahoe does not have as frequent promotions as Harrah's Rincon does. If you are going to come on Wednesdays, you might be interested in the multiplier days which occur twice per month:
First Wednesday of each month, "Super Multiplier Day": https://www.caesars.com/harrahs-taho...r#.VREbFvnF97s
One other designated Wednesday each month: "Video Poker Multiplier Day": https://www.caesars.com/harrahs-taho...r#.VREamPnF97s
Parking
Harrah's Lake Tahoe has something sorely missing from most of today's hotels: Temporary registration parking!
This used to exist everywhere, but most hotels have done away with it.
Unfortunately, they are also lacking something that just about every CET property has: A self-park garage!
If you want to self-park, you have to do it outside. Pretty bad for a place where it snows.
Seven Stars Basket
All Seven Stars guests get a nice basket of stuff. This includes a bottle of cabernet, a box of Brie cheese (non-refrigerated), a box of water crackers, two bottles of Evian, a box of Biscotti chocloate, a bag of chocolate malt balls, a bag of honey mustard pretzels, and a milk chocolate truffle bar.
I will come back here in the summer when it's warm enough for "summery" type activities.
I came at a bad time of year, as the skiing is lousy (and I can't do it anyway right now), and it's too cold to do summer type outdoors activities.
