i went to choctaw casino

Every year for the last 5 years we have gone with another couple on a two day pilgrimage to the casinos. For the last four years that has been to the Horseshoe in Shreveport. I always play in the poker tournament.   I loose a few dollars in the slot machines.   We eat and relax and do generally nothing productive. Pretty much heaven. This year we decided to try Choctaw Casino and Resort in Durant, Oklahoma because it is closer and since we never leave the casino grounds we figured it didn’t matter that there weren’t several casinos in the vicinity. I asked around and no one I knew had been there.   We looked online and saw that the website said it looked like this:

Wow! That is in Oklahoma? That looked nice, but we have been fooled before so we checked out the photos from Google street view and it looked like this:

uh-oh. Looks like we might be taking a chance… …but we are GAMBLERS. Hard core gamblers. Gamblers through and through. *cough* Truthfully, we figured if we got up to Choctaw Casino and didn’t look good we could just drive on to Louisiana. When we approached the resort, it started to look promising.   There WAS a tower and we soon identified the building in the Google pic as the old casino that still sits on the new resort grounds. When I saw the pools, I was ready to move in.

The first year we had traveled to Shreveport I had naively packed my swimming suit.   EVERY hotel I had ever gone to in the South had a pool and I figured I could use the casino break.   I spent the first 45 minutes searching the Horseshoe property for the pool only to figure out that they didn’t have one and really wanted you there for gambling purposes only. The Choctaw Casino and Resort has three pools – an indoor pool, an outdoor pool next to the tower hotel and a resort pool with hot tubs, bridge, bar, cabanas and a waterslide.   It is really, really cool. OK, so I was ready to stay…but what about the casino? We parked in the parking structure (it is really odd to see a four story parking structure in the middle of nowhere OK) and headed over to check into the tower hotel. The interior of the casino and hotel is beautiful. I am not a big fan of cheesy casino decor and was surprised to see its design. Stone walls, marble floors, wood trimmed ceilings, glass tile, lighting fixtures that I want to take home with me…

Now there aren’t any fancy Roman naked people statues like there are at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, but there is this really big buffalo.

The casino size is larger than what we had experienced at the Horseshoe, but smaller than WinStar World Casino (the other casino located in OK which is close to DFW). And fancier. We checked into our room and it was nice…and clean.

We headed to the Choctaw Casino to play the slots and it was nice…and clean. In the evening we ate at the 1832 Steakhouse which has the very same drapery treatments that I have in my own house.   I felt at home.   Except the food was WAY better than at my house.   I had the Chicken and Waffles appetizer and the Scallops.   Both were super yummy. The poker room is great.   The dealers were really helpful and friendly.   It was not intimidating at all.   The two weekday tournaments I participated in had around 40 entrants and moved really quickly. We also ate at the Blue Moon Cafe and Butterfield’s Buffet.   Both had really good food – nothing I would consider casino food.   *shudder* Our friends visited the spa and only had good things to say about it as well. So, all in all it was a really fun visit. And by the end of the trip, I was even on friendlier terms with the buffalo.

Thankfully the poker winnings outweighed the slot machine losses and we hope to return to Choctaw Casino soon… Other casino and poker related posts: Holly goes to the World Series of Poker Tournament Academy. Why my husband almost left me in Vegas. Why I should have left my husband in Vegas.