urbanSTL

^ 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Once that law is repealed.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!

Just came back and yeah it sure was packed! Good thing we got our cards at the President a couple of weeks ago, they worked here too. There were 3 places to get cards and the lines seemed to meet. Since we already had cards we were able to bypass that line, so we walked around the casino while everyone waited. I was actually fairly impressed. It is on par with most of the Vegas casino's, so if this is your type of thing you will enjoy. I do know that guys will enjoy the server's umm dresses or lack there of.

I thought that the slots maybe a little loose to bring people in, but sadly that was not the case. We also walked around to take a look at the retail spaces and restaurants which are not all finished yet but should be a nice addition when they are. I will be back once everything settles down a little so that I can explore.

MattnSTL wrote:It's perforated aluminum. Now we know for sure.

The hotel isn't done yet, so don't rush to judgment. Wait 'til they take the protective coating off.



We walked around the place 4 or 5 times, got a few drinks, waiting in line for about 20 min. each time, and then left. The whole time I was there, the same people were in line for their MyChoice card, I think they moved about 10 feet per hour.



I peeked in the hotel, it looks incredible - couldn't see the 4-story waterfall though. The casino itself I give a resounding Meh. It's ok, and there are some nice design touches, but they are just touches, definitely not on par with any new Vegas casino. I'd put it on par with the Harrah's - New Orleans, maybe slightly below. That casino is much bigger than Lumiere Place.



The waitresses are pleasing to the eye, on the rare occasion when you see one. They really should have more bars outside the casino itself. There is Aqua - which required a 20 min. wait in line for a drink and the patience of the Dalai Lama; Sleek, which wasn't open; and the Burger Bar, which was apparently closed for a private party or something. The staff definitely needs a few more weeks of intensive training. Nice fireworks display though...



There were thousands of people walking to and from their cars on the Landing, but there didn't seem to be many people in the bars.

Nope better than Harrah's New Orleans. Sure not on par with say the Wynn, but on the same level as alot of the others. It does have better chairs at the slots than most casino's in Las Vegas...same ones the Wynn has. The beverage station was nice, and we saw lots of server's. In fact we even had mutliple ask us if we needed anything. So I am not sure what people were expecting but as someone who frequents Las Vegas often I was impressed with what they are trying to bring to St Louis. I think it was alot better than anything we already have here, and frankly alot better than some of the casino's in Las Vegas. Notice I said some and not all.

I think the glowhawk will look especially good if the NFL Network decides to include some city shots during its broadcast of the Rams game tonight.