TR: Florida Vacation 2011
Day 2: October 23, 2011
Day 2 - Sunday, October 23.
So after various
amounts of sleep, we awake in the morning, get dressed, and head to the free
hotel breakfast. Ok, the free hotel breakfast consists of a continental
breakfast of bagels, and what we termed the "Little Debbie Buffet"
Just about every kind of Little Debbie snack cake or muffin. Coffee, and juices
were available, but much to my amazement, orange was not one of the juices on
offer. Oh, and no tables either, you grab what you like and take it back to the
room.
Today, we decide to
go to Hard Rock Tampa. Hard Rock, in this case, is a Seminole indian casino. It also meant
having to drive all the way back to Tampa. (Sure the beach front room is nice,
if not exactly practical). The casino is basically across the highway from the
state fairgrounds. Of course, the state fair is not in session. It's a modern
high rise hotel located directly off Exit 6 of I-4.
We had no problems
getting to the casino, had a bit more trouble navigating the confusing parking
garage and headed into the casino. You enter from level three of the garage,
where you can look down at the Seminole's other money maker: the Smoke Shop,
selling tobacco products without the pesky sin taxes, as is their right as a
sovereign Indian nation. Once inside a small lobby greats you with Hard Rock dislays before you ride an escalator down to the gaming
floor. A native indian
craft/gift store is tucked behind the escalator.
It's a casino,
albeit one with a modern look inside. We headed right to the players club to
get cards, and to redeem these coupons for $20 for new players. Gettig signed up is pretty simple, and after signing some
papers, they hand us what appear to be $20 slot payout tickets. The catch is
that you have to have your card in the machine for the voucher to work, and
once inserted you must play through the entire $20 on that machine. No cash
outs until you play the $20 through. Hopefully you nab some winnings from those
$20 in free credits, but not likely.
Out on the gaming
floor, penny machines are hard to find, with two cent machines far more common,
along with nickles on up. Most quarter games take up
to 5 quarters per spin, and you can't really sniff a seat at a table game for
under $25 a hand. Wanda found a nickel Advance to Boardwalk Monopoly machine
where all the bonus rounds are like carnival games, and a wooden rollercoaster
animation plays during the free spins. I so much wanted to like that machine
and I did win about $100 on it, so that isn't bad.
For the most part
though, we didn't care much for the casino. I did find it odd that I was able
to order a Yuengling Lager in the casino. I thought
"No Firewater!" was the rule at Indian reservations. No free alcohol,
for those keeping score.
So we all played
for a few hours, and then we decided to do their Sunday Brunch up in the
buffet. Timing was on our side as we arrived to the buffet right ahead of the
crowd. The way they run their buffet is interesting, they hand you a credit
card size plastic card on you way in, and you pay
your server at the end of the meal. At this buffet they have several different
"buffets" inside one larger buffet. You have your Oriental dim sum
station, your raw bar, your steak bar, salad, bar, italian bar, and the traditional bar. For brunch
there would be breakfast items mixed in. The reason for the
plastic card? Not all items are included in the $15 buffet fee ($20 if
not a slot club member) and are priced ala carte.
They also handle beer the same way. We decided to restrict ourselves to the
items that were included in the base fee, and had more than enough. First stop,
the omlette made to order station, then some
breakfast (bacon/cheese grits!), from there I experimented in the dim sum area,
as well as the pasta bar. Desserts were wonderful, and as I mentioned we all
ate very well.
After eating we
went back to the casino, but didn't stay too long before heading out. We headed
back to the hotel, where I checked out the price of the mini golf place across
the street, and we rested up before taking another walk. For the readers
benefit, I'm not going to detail the walks, pool, hot tub, or beach usage, for
the most part, just consider that as read when I say we spent time at the hotel
We watched Amazing
Race on the TV, then ran up to McDonald's for some Mango smoothies, then
decided to go to bed early as we were planning on going to Universal Studios in
the morning. The park opens at 9am, and GPS tells me I want to be on the road
by 7AM.
Good Night!