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Tunica County, Miss. — This sleepy farming community opened its eyes in 1992, when eager patrons lined up to enter the first casino, paying a $10 cover charge. In another decade, it may be rockin' like Las Vegas, wild-eyed all night, every night.
Now it's somewhere in between: a nine-casino gaming mecca planted in the middle of acres and acres of cotton and soybean fields, a 30-minute drive from Memphis.
And that location is not necessarily a bad thing — there's plenty of room to grow, and with a new direct flight from Atlanta on the Pan Am Clipper, the casinos just got closer to another major population center.
Easy access is one reason to visit; deluxe accommodations, fine-dining restaurants, golf and resort amenities are another. Let's lowball the numbers for a third reason:
Vegas: $325 round-trip airfare from Atlanta (one stop, five-hour-plus plane ride or pay a premium for nonstop); $200-plus for two nights in a better casino hotel; $100-plus per ticket for top shows; car rental recommended. Total: $625 for one person, not counting food.
Tunica: $162.30 round-trip airfare from Atlanta (nonstop, 1 1/2-hour plane ride); $130 for two nights in a better casino hotel; about $50 per ticket for top shows; car rental not necessary. Total: $342.30 for one person; with an airfare/hotel package deal, two can go for two nights midweek for $350.
Conveniently close
That's why people who might prefer Las Vegas are willing to take a chance on Tunica, or come back again for a quick getaway.
"Vegas is my city," says Celinda Roberts of Stone Mountain, who visits the desert city three to four times a year. "The hotels all have themes, and there's all this free stuff. You can go up in the Eiffel Tower or take a gondola ride. There's just so much to do."
Some of Tunica's casino resorts are themed, though there's nothing on the over-the-top, can-you-believe-it scale of Vegas. But Vegas isn't as handy, and this is Roberts' second trip to Tunica, both visits "comped" with free airfare and hotel because she's a regular gamer. She's having a good time, winning even, and she didn't have to take much time off from her entrepreneurial business, Suds and Bubbles, handmade bath and body products.
It's the same story for Dean and Debbie Lewis of Albany, who also run their own company, Lewis Tree Service, and don't often take lengthy vacations. They've been to Vegas twice and been regulars at Biloxi casinos for a quick getaway, but they're waiting for the area to recover from hurricane damage before returning.
As Dean puts it: "A friend of mine who goes says you can look out the window and see so much devastation still. And going someplace different is always fun."
They looked at Atlantic City, N.J., but the logistics of getting there seemed too much of a hassle. When Gold Strike Casino Resort offered them two free nights, they hopped on the Clipper for their first visit to Tunica County.
We all were aboard the 8 a.m. July 4 flight to Tunica, along with about 40 others on the 141-seat jet, most of us first-timers. We landed at Tunica Airport, where a $40 million expansion is under way and a new 7,000-foot runway will accommodate commercial jets. In less than 10 minutes, we filed through a temporary baggage claim area, identified our bags, climbed into wheelchair-accessible 24-passenger vans and were zipping toward the casinos.
A greeter aboard the Grand Casino Resort van handed out envelopes, each with a welcome letter, a rewards card that tracks a client's play and gives points toward free stays or other perks, and instructions on how to catch the return shuttle to the airport. As it turned out, important information, but more on that later.
By 9 a.m., the van had dropped us at the Grand's mega-casino, at 140,000 square feet the largest between Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Our bags were taken to one of the Grand's three resort hotels to be delivered to our rooms at check-in. Unlike Las Vegas hotels, where you often walk through the casino to get to your room, hotels in Tunica aren't necessarily attached to the gaming area. Mississippi law requires the casinos to be on the river, and sometimes a hotel is built on that valuable real estate and sometimes it's a short distance away, with the casino running a 24-hour shuttle serving its hotels.
Flight times have improved
Everyone who'd taken the Clipper had time for a full day of gaming before their 4 p.m. check-in, but many of us wanted a nap. With an 8 a.m. departure from Atlanta, some of us were up by 4:30 to be at the airport by 6. The casinos were already on this issue, and problem solved: Planes now leave Atlanta at a more reasonable 11 a.m. With the Central Time change, you're still on the gaming floor at noon.
I wandered through the two-story Grand Casino Resort's gaming area (top floor has a nonsmoking section), ogling its 2,500 slot machines and 81 table games and six restaurants. But I wasn't here to play games, though it was tempting to sit down for just one minute. Right.
Soon I was on a Grand tour with Valerie Morris, regional director of communications and community affairs for Harrah's, which owns three Tunica properties, the Grand Casino Resort, the Horseshoe Casino & Hotel and the Sheraton Casino & Hotel. We saw not just the Harrah's resorts, but all six other casino/hotels.
Unlike Las Vegas, these resorts aren't side by side, in a compact Strip, but spread out over miles. Still, you don't need a rental car — the casinos run free shuttles between properties every 30 minutes.
My favorites from the sampling:
• The Grand's Terrace Hotel, where I stayed, for its plush bed and quiet atmosphere and its mere elevator ride to the Bellissimo spa's fine facials and massages, whirlpool and sauna.
• The Gold Strike and the Grand hotels for their well-appointed rooms and suites and their proximity to their casinos.
• The Sheraton hotel for its boutique hotel feel, an all-suite property with 134 suites with in-room hot tubs, perfect for a romantic escape.
• The Hollywood Casino & Hotel for its Vegas atmosphere, with props from several movies, including the Batmobile and a replica of the Titanic.
• And N'awlins Louisiana Cuisine in the Horseshoe Casino Hotel for chef J. Kelly English's beautifully prepared creations with Cajun and creole flair. Try the "Besh" barbecued shrimp (created by executive consulting chef John Besh, winner of the James Beard Award for best chef in the Southeast Region in 2006), or buttermilk fried rabbit with creole honey mustard for starters. Then proceed to entrees such as grilled bass with crab whipped potatoes and bouillabaisse jus or sugar cane lacquered chicken with crawfish and andouille dressing and apricot. One description on the menu, "paneed veal cutlet with the best crabmeat au gratin in the world," sounds a little overreaching. When you taste it, though, you may change your mind.
If you wanted to do nothing but gaming, dining, relaxing by the pool, a spa treatment and a round of golf, that would easily fill two days.
More to do than meets the eye
But there's more to Tunica County. Claire Pittman, public relations manager for the Tunica Convention & Visitors Bureau, is proud of the newest attractions to sprout in the Delta's fertile soil. The Tunica RiverPark & Museum was named the 2005 travel attraction of the year by the Mississippi Tourism Association. The Tunica National Golf & Tennis Center, opened two years ago, offers an 18-hole public golf course and driving range, plus four indoor clay tennis courts and a 20,000-square-foot clubhouse with restaurant and pro shop. The Tunica Arena & Exposition Center play host to some of the nation's largest equine shows, plus cheerleading competitions and sporting events.
On the horizon — maybe — is what Webster Franklin, the Convention & Visitors Bureau's president and CEO, says could be the development that gives Tunica County the critical mass to become the mid-South's Las Vegas.
We discussed this project, appropriately, over an omelet and grits at the Blue & White Restaurant. It's a former gas station on U.S. 61 that once was the only draw for tourists; they stopped for gas or to fix a flat, then kept going. Now it has a second life as a diner where locals and tourists gather for tasty down-home food.
Myriad World Entertainment & Resorts (www.myriadworldresorts.com) is working on a deal for a $1.9 billion resort with six casinos, an indoor water park, and — get this — a snow park and climate-controlled, fully enclosed, 18-hole golf course and botanical gardens.
It's ambitious, Franklin admits, and some people don't think it will happen. Having seen the growth in Tunica since 1992, though, he's not taking that bet.
Visitors once stayed in Memphis hotels and made day trips to Tunica to the casinos, he notes. Now they stay in one of Tunica's 6,300 hotel rooms/suites and make sightseeing trips to Memphis.
Back at the casinos, Lee and Leatrice Roberts of Atlanta — he at the blackjack table, she at the slots — lost a little, but Lee's not concerned.
"I don't believe in luck. I believe in strategy," says Lee, a Ford Motor Co. millwright who's taking a buyout from the company this year and will "retire" to manage his real estate investments. Staying focused, studying the cards and playing the odds have paid off in the past. Once he won $3,800, and he's a winner five out of seven casino visits, he says.
It's the second visit to Tunica for the couple, who first took the Clipper flight in May. They've had a good time, and if they have a complaint, it's that the shuttles between casinos need to run later than 11 p.m. on weekdays. Lee likes to relax in the afternoon, then hit the blackjack table when the evening crowds start to thin, and stay past midnight. If you're playing at another resort's casino, you have to return to your own resort's casino when the last casino shuttles run or arrange other transportation. Each casino runs shuttles 24 hours to its resort hotels.
Dean and Debbie Lewis second that suggestion on the shuttles. They tried all nine casinos on this trip — she won big at three-card poker while he lost a little at poker and slots — and they wanted to get from place to place a little faster and stay a little later.
On Wednesday night, transportation was more of an issue — they couldn't find out how to catch the Gold Strike shuttle back to the airport Thursday. Afraid they'd miss the flight, they sprang for a $70 cab ride.
And they were still smiling. "We had a ball," Dean says. "We're coming back in August to see Hank Williams Jr. [performing at Bluesville in the Horseshoe Casino]."
"On our casino trips, we've won and we've lost and we've broken even," Debbie adds. "But we've always had a good time."
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