urbanSTL

1. I've bought into the 'glowhawk' term too. Sounds fairly cool, and a lot better than 'combover'.



2. Check out the images from tonight (9:44, 9:58, and 10:13). There's new lights shining on the building in different colors. Pinnacle isn't kidding about lighting up the St. Louis night skyline. I was looking closer at the images and it looks like quite a few are set up on the roof, and more on the other side of the street. Pretty nice IMO.

look at the 11:24pm dec. 18 image....looks like there are lights all over the place. This is going to look awesome in the St. Louis skyline.

I think that most of the "new" lighting is just for the grand opening, it may stick around for a while but I don't think it is permenant.



On a side note check out the 12:51, 1:06, and 1:20 images from last night (18th/19th). I guess the 'glowhawk' can be seen from space, because that looks like a UFO above the EJ Dome.



How many people are going down at 10:00pm tonight to see the official lightup? I wander where the best place to be is so that you can see everything.

Man, those Lumiere Place ads on STLtoday.com are irritating! Of course, there are many other qualities that make that website irritating.



Anyway, I found this in yesterday's article about the casino:

Like many other gamblers in the area, he's eager to see what Pinnacle built for half a billion dollars. And while some point to the downtown location as a potential negative, he doesn't see it that way.



"I go downtown for other stuff, so it doesn't bother me," he said. "I'm sure everybody's going to go out and check it out."

Well, at least the interviewee doesn't see the downtown location as a negative. And, praytell, why exactly would it be a negative? Frankly, I'd say the St. Charles and Maryland Heights casinos are more of "a negative", as it's a long drive, a sometimes stressful drive, and there's not much else to do in either place once I leave the casino.



I think this casino is going to be a great addition to downtown, despite what some pot-stirring P-D reporter thinks. One thing that concerns me though is the bloody ridiculous $500 loss limits that are still in place. With this casino and another one on the way in Lemay soon, why can't the Missouri Legislature get rid of this once and for all?

^ That could be said for any casino anywhere, though. Or, for that matter, Pinnacle's effort to grow the market with Lumiere Place and River City Casino. I got the impression that downtown was a negative for some other reason, but I could be wrong. It seems like the P-D still has as many downtown cynics as it does believers. Oh well.



To me, opening two new casinos in a well-saturated market is a crap shoot in itself, no gambling-related pun intended. That said, I think it's the other casinos in town that have to worry.



At least I won't worry about running into Cousin Eddie downtown, now that Harrah's has a buffet the length of a football field. Yee-haw.

I know Pinnacle comps trips to the Bahamas for the their high rollers. I also know Dan Lee is confident that in the near future MO will get rid of the loss limit, He's betting 500mil on it. Lumiere will be one one of the nicest Pinnacle properties to date but without repealing the loss limit rule, L'Auberge du Lac and Belterra will continue to see the most high rollers. There is only so much "my girlfriend is going to bet for me" that can go on at LP.



Once that law is repealed. I can see LP becoming the central property for Pinnacles high rollers. The proximity to the airport gives it a huge advantage over the 2 casinos listed above.

It would have been something to see what the long term benefits would have been had the region created a single gaming district along the Mississippi in downtown. In lieu of thinking bigger than a single city budget, we could have had something that would compete head-on with Las Vegas and other mega convention destinations.

Lit up nicely for the grand opening tonight.

Wish I would have known about this before, but a TON of fireworks just went off at Lumiere Place. The web cam shows a shot of them going off at 8:51. Sort of scared me for a minute but what a cool idea! I just wish we would have known about it before hand (nothing on their web site about it!) so we could have seen it!

NOOOO!! I'm out of town and want to watch it on the webcam but they have launced a new website and I don't see a link for the cam.



EDIT: Found it! http://www.oxblue.com/pro/open/?webPath ... tlouiscity

To deal with my disappointment (I love fireworks!) I looked around and found a video on the home page of www.kmov.com. So if anyone is interested, you can see the whole thing there!

I think this thing is going to be a much bigger success than anyone imagined, especially the naysayers out in the burbs.



Harrah's is a nice establishment but at the end of the day it's sexy to be in an URBAN area. It's sexy to be downtown and in a casino that is truly one of a kind. Furthermore, with all of our professional sports, NCAA sports (tourneys, etc), bigger conventions, and the like being downtown they will no longer trek all the way out to St. Charles for a bland gaming experience.

So wait..... I watched the kmov link.... why didnt the glowhawk turn on when they flipped the switch.... or even at the end of the fireworks.....???

Well I took the family down to see the fireworks and the 'glowhawk'.....well we saw the fireworks and they were great! But when it came to the glowhawk boy did that suck!



I had heard the fireworks would be about 8:30, well they didn't start till about 8:45 and during them the east corner of the 'glowhawk' did light up momentarly with a color pattern but that was it. When it was all the hole thing lit up once with the color bar pattern then it just went to an orange glow...what a diappointment.



I guess we now know what 500 mill gets you......or doesn't get you.

Daniel Lee, the CEO of Pinnacle mentioned their master plan for the rest of what they own. No details, but they seem committed to developing the rest of the site.

So after my extreame disappointment in the 'glowhawk' tonight I thought of several funnies.... maybe you will like them maybe not.....



Mac Commercial

[Mac] Hi I'm a Mac.

[PC] And I'm a PC.{looking all said}

[Mac] Hey PC what's wrong?

[PC] Oh I was let go today.

[Mac] Why is that?

[PC] Some new IT guy downloaded updates before a big presentation and didn't recheck the drivers.

[Mac] Is that bad?

[PC] Apperently when you just spent 500 million dollars it is.



Obviously now we know something else that doesn't work with Vista.



MasterCard Commercial

Luxury Hotel and Casino - $500 Million

Giant Fireworks Display for Opening Night - Thousands

Forgetting to charge the laptop batteries - Priceless



Well thats good for now.... And just for the record I am a PC guy not a Mac guy.

SkippyThePeanutButterMan wrote:Well I took the family down to see the fireworks and the 'glowhawk'.....well we saw the fireworks and they were great! But when it came to the glowhawk boy did that suck!



I had heard the fireworks would be about 8:30, well they didn't start till about 8:45 and during them the east corner of the 'glowhawk' did light up momentarly with a color pattern but that was it. When it was all the hole thing lit up once with the color bar pattern then it just went to an orange glow...what a diappointment.



I guess we now know what 500 mill gets you......or doesn't get you.

I can't be for certain, but I betcha that light box/arc of light was supposed to light up at the end of the music and fireworks. If so, then the glitch could have been either human error, a technical (technology) error or both. Regardless, it should have worked according to plan - if that was the plan. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt. It's a new technology. It seems they are still working on perfecting the light box anyway.



In time, it'll be a good landmark for St. Louis. It's kind of a landmark already.

It was fully on later. Doubt we'll ever know the actual plan. Maybe it wasn't supposed to turn on, although it probably was.

MattnSTL wrote:It was fully on later. Doubt we'll ever know the actual plan. Maybe it wasn't supposed to turn on, although it probably was.

Yeah, I did see it finally light up, but come on, the testing modes that I saw were more exciting than the orange color that finally came on and is currently still on. I think someone or something happened. Just goes to show ya that all the testing in the world doesn't always mean something will work.

Or the people in control forgot to set autopilot before they went to enjoy the casino.

From watching the KMOV video, I bet the "glowhawk" was supposed to turn on when the mayor flipped the "On" switch on the stage. Then the glowhawk was going to demonstrate all the cool light effects it can do while synchronized to music and fireworks, but something happened, and the glowhawk didn't work at all. Doh!

We just walked in the door after visiting Lumiere. The place was absolutely packed! As I expected, to get into the casino, you had to stand in line to get the Lumiere card (or you couldn't get into the casino part). The lines were soooooooooooo long. Seriously. Neither of us really gamble so we didn't bother doing this -- the lines, though, were packed with people who all seemed to be upbeat about the wait (and it looked like they were going to be waiting quite a while!). We walked around the perimeter of the place to get an overall "feel." The Asia restaurant was open and something on the other side (a buffet looking place?). Also, some of the shopping spaces were either marked with their future tenants or were actually open (i.e. a Lumiere gift shop).



Sort of crazy down there. My husband is not terribly impressed with the whole thing but I like pretty lights so I guess I am more easily amused. We will probably do there at some point for lunch/ dinner. But we were both excited by the huge amount of people milling about. Lots of traffic snarls which made us pretty happy to just be walking down the street!