Saturday, August 14, 1999
There's something that always upsets me about oversleeping on the first day of your vacation. It's like you start your trip short and there's no way to ever catch up. Due to some last minute running around and Dan's obsessive need for $2.50 coffee, we didn't get on the freeway until almost 11am. Luckily, I had a psychic moment and got on a freeway we usually don't take and saved us a lot of time due to a traffic accident.
We took our normal route from Silicon Valley - 101 south to 152 east to I-5 south to 46 east to 99 south to 58 east to I-15 north. Boring highway desert hell. From what we learned on our trip in December, I was well stocked with books on tape to make the drive a bit shorter. Two stops along the way - Kettleman City's Carl's Junior for lunch and an Arco on Weedpatch Highway outside of Bakersfield for gas and we arrived in Primm at about 7pm.
We had an excellent offer from Main Street Station for three free nights, but we needed a Saturday stay somewhere. The rates are just outrageous in the summertime for a Saturday in Las Vegas, so I figured we'd consider some other options.
We looked at going through Yosemite and staying in Lee Vining, Mammoth Lakes or Bishop, but couldn't find a good rate. The best we found was a $49 rate at Whiskey Pete's in Primm.
We'd stopped in Primm so Dan could ride the Desperado at Buffalo Bill's on our December 1998 trip. The place seemed nicer than we had expected, so we felt comfortable with our plans to spend one night there. How bad could it be, right? Famous last words!
Our first sign that bad things were coming was the fact that as we pulled our car up to the valet, everyone kept asking if we had reservations in a surly tone. "Don't bother to take out your bags if you don't have a reservation?" "Do you have a reservation, because we're sold out." "Are you sure you confirmed your reservation!?" YES!! Just park the damned car and get our bags. I've got the reservation right here.
The check-in line was HUGE. Much like our stay at Tropicana in June 1998. Let me put it this way, the cocktail waitress came by at one point to offer drinks as people were starting to turn to dust waiting in the line.
After about 30 minutes we made it to the front of the line. I was a little concerned after watching the endless parade of the Toothless Geriatric Trailer Trash Biker Brigade through the casino. We got up to the desk, and I gave my name to a woman with a moustache who never even looked up from her computer and never stopped shouting something at another desk clerk. I shouted over the casino noise (why do they have those machines turned up so loud by the check in anyway?) "Can we get something with a view please?" The clerk grunted, but I wasn't sure if it was at me or someone else as she never acknowledged my presence.
She asked for my credit card and ran it through a machine and walked away for several minutes mumbling something about a sold out sign. When she came back, she handed me two key cards gestured towards the casino said something about "around the buffet up to the fourth floor" and walked away.
Dan and I ventured out and found the buffet. Around the side of the buffet (which was nearly empty, despite a huge line to get in) was a ramp with a sign that said "rooms 1somethingsomething to 495" with an arrow. We walked until we found something that resembled an elevator. We got on, pushed the "4" and rode up.
We got off the elevator and started walking down the hall. We walked. And we walked. And we walked. And we walked. I'm pretty sure we were about 2/3rds of the way to Las Vegas when we saw the end of the hallway and our room, #493, second from the end.
I opened the door and went inside. I didn't expect Bellagio, but the green, matted carpet was a surprise. But that's okay. Dan immediately started saying "It's only for one night.. it's only for one night" over and over so I didn't start to freak. It wasn't too bad. It was fairly clean and it was a bed. I walked over to the window and threw back the curtains to find our view.. of a giant dirt mound. (Later I was told it's called a mountain in the desert. You look at the picture and tell me that's not a dirt mound.)
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To add insult to injury, there wasn't any soap or shampoos on the counter in the bathroom. I usually have my own shampoo, but it seemed odd not to have it. Instead, bolted to the wall was a "Body Soap and Shampoo" dispenser in the shower and on the bathroom mirror. Unfortunately, the one in the shower was either empty, or not working so you had to hop in and out of the shower if you wanted soap or shampoo. Very irritating.
After a few minutes of being mad about the interpretation of "room with a view" at the front desk, I decided to call down and try to get another room with a better view and hopefully in the same area code as the casino. I was told (I think by the woman with the moustache) that there were no more non-smoking rooms. Calling again, and asking for a smoking room, I was told there were no more smoking rooms either. We were stuck. Okay, fine. I just adjusted my plans and decided not to gamble at Whiskey Pete's during our stay.
Dan was starving to death, so we headed down to find something to eat. We put on our hiking boots and found the coffee shop. It was practically empty, but like the buffet, had a HUGE line of people. There was a VIP line, but we weren't gambling, so we didn't qualify. The sign did indicate that truckers were VIP's, but we figured that Dan's new Toyota Tacoma didn't qualify, so we were stuck in the line.
There was one very slow and very confused girl seating people. I don't see what's so complicated about it. You find an empty table, put people in it, find another empty table, etc. I did it for a living about a million years ago, but apparently it was too much for this one girl to handle.
We finally got seated, but there was not a waiter/waitress to be found. The people at a table near us grabbed some person in a uniform and asked for ketchup. Her response was to take the ketchup off of our table and give it to them. We laughed about it, but inside I was grumbling more than a little bit. Instead of getting upset, I grabbed my copy of Video Poker Player (that arrived in the mail as we were leaving town!) and read it with Dan.
Dinner was pretty good. Dan had a California Burger (which is a hamburger with avocado on it) and I had a club sandwich. The club had turkey and bacon, but it also had thin sliced ham on it too. It was pretty good. Apparently, Dan was hungrier than he thought because he ate his huge burger and pile of fries along with a quarter of my sandwich and most of my fries. Our total came to $13.73 for the dinner and tip.
We signed up for the slot club and took the monorail over through Primm Valley and to Buffalo Bill's. Dan wanted to ride the Desperado again at night. Despite my plan not to gamble, I had to have something to do, so I decided to run just $20 through a deuces wild machine. That didn't last long, so I went over to the Odyssey, Multi-Draw Poker machines and put in another $20. I was only going to play 1 coin per line, despite the risk of getting the royal without max coins in (like I did on the same type of machine at Atlantis in Reno in February 1999).
After about 5 hands, I got 4 deuces for 200 coins. I got really excited and hit "play max coins" (20 coins) on accident. I got dealt 2 deuces and picked up another 2 on one line for another 1000 coins!
I continued to play for a little while longer, playing my 1300 credits down to about 1100 when Dan arrived. I played them down further to 800 coins (plus about $5 in quarters from Dan's machine) and cashed out. At the cage they shorted me $0.75. I wasn't going to make a big deal about it, but I mentioned that I knew how many coins I had and that I was short. The cashier shrugged and waved the next person in line up to the window. Very nice. NOT!
[Dan:]
After hours driving though the barren Mojave Desert, recognizable shapes arise. If it's dark, you see the lights. The shapes and lights materialize into buildings as more details take form. A tram passing over the freeway; cars in parking lots; a yellow ribbon snaking its way up and down one of the buildings becomes a roller coaster track. This is Primm, Nevada, a resort built as close to Los Angeles as the laws of California and Nevada will allow.There are three resorts in Primm. The oldest, Whiskey Pete's sits on the north side of the freeway. It lacks a well-defined theme. The name and some of the décor suggest the Wild West, but there is also a bit of medieval castle architecture. It's only unique attraction is the actual bullet-ridden car that gangsters Bonnie & Clyde were riding in as they were shot to death. It sits in an alcove behind some slot machines near the registration desk. There is a display of newspaper clippings and other information on the infamous duo. The newest addition is actual shirt Clyde was wearing as he bled to death in the nearby car. As long as we're being morbid, the shirt contains only faint bloodstains, indicating that someone did wash it after the local mortician removed it.
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Across the freeway from Whiskey Pete's is a newer casino/hotel called Primm Valley Resort. It is positioned to be the classiest of the three resorts - sort of a Golden Nugget Jr. 40 miles off the strip.
Next door to Primm Valley Resort toward Las Vegas is Buffalo Bill's. Desperado, a huge steel roller coaster that towers above and encircles the hotel, dwarfs a pair of red barn-like towers. The decor inside the casino is a consistent Wild West theme, with fake cactus gun-toting mannequin outlaws, concessions in old-west storefronts.
Monorail trams connect all three resorts. While you do have to walk the length of the Primm Valley Casino to get from the Whiskey Pete tram to the Buffalo Bill tram and back, it does beat walking outside on those 105F afternoons.
While Sonya tried her luck at the video poker in the casino, I headed toward Desperado for my second ride. My first ride on Desperado was on the cold Christmas morning in 1998. This time, I would do the ride at night. I boarded a car near the rear of the train, taking a right-hand seat.
The track leads out of the casino and climbs alongside the shorter of the two towers. From my seat on the right side of the car, I was soon looking down on the roof of the nearby tower into the pool area. Shortly before car I was in reached the summit, the weight of the cars in front pulled my car over the top, dropping into a terrifying plunge 225 feet into the darkness below. The second and third drops were almost as good, my fright compounded by the convex contour of the drops that made it difficult for us in the back to see where the track was going, if indeed the train was still on the tracks. There were also a few moments of negative G, where your butt lifts slightly off the seat and you feel as if you'll be launched into the big desert sky. As the train makes its final turn into the building, it still carries enough speed to create the illusion of only 3 inches of clearance between the top of the opening and the top of your head.
I don't consider myself a serious coaster enthusiast, but I did find some coaster lovers' web sites that listed Desperado among the top 5 steel roller coasters in the United States. (Sonya - You can find pictures of Desperado on in our December Trip Report or here on the Miscellaneous Photos Page-look at the bottom of the page.)
Other non-gaming attractions at Buffalo Bill's include a log flume ride with toy guns you can shoot infrared bullets at various targets alongside the ride. At the end of the ride, your score is displayed. A sign said this system was out of order, but it was functional when we rode the ride last Christmas. WARNING - one of the mannequin targets armed with a water pistol shoots back, so this is recommended for warm weather.
I am not a golfer, but I did notice posters for Primm Valley's golf courses, "designed by Tom Fasio." (Sonya - My father informs me that Tom Fasio is probably one of the top five golf course architects in the world. He did Shadow Creek for Steve Wynn.) One of these is about 2-3 miles inside California, built by bulldozers on a dry lakebed.
I haven't said much about the casinos themselves, as they offer pretty much the same games that are found in Las Vegas and other gaming areas. But there is one game in Primm that is not available in Las Vegas.
At one time, the site selling the most California Lottery tickets was at the lonely desert crossroads known as Baker, California. The reason? When the lottery reached upwards of $30 million or more, it offered a larger payoff than could be found in Vegas, and wannabe winners from Vegas journeyed across the desert by the busload to buy tickets. The management at Primm tired of seeing all that gaming money leaving the state, and set up their own Lotto store, just a few feet inside California.
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About half the Primm Lotto mini-mart is dedicated to Lotto sales. One inside wall of the building is well stocked with forms. Next to this is an area with roped off lines leading to about 6 Lotto terminals. On the Sunday morning I visited, a steady stream of people flowed through, buying their chances at the $56 million Lotto drawing to be held the following Wednesday. By the way, the 5 quick picks I bought at Primm contained only a single matching number.
If you are flying into Las Vegas, I recommend Primm only if you like roller coasters enough to drive 80 miles round trip for a good coaster ride; if you have a fascination with Bonnie & Clyde; or if you can't resist a shot at the California Lotto jackpot. (If the current Megabucks progressive jackpot is higher, stick with Megabucks - the odds are better). If you are driving in from Southern California, go ahead and stop at Primm if any of these things interest you. I really can't recommend staying at Primm unless you must visit Vegas during a holiday or other busy time when Vegas hotel rates rise above your budget.
That was the end of my night at Primm. We went back to our room and went to
sleep at about 12:30am. I woke up in the middle of the night to a loud party
in the room next door. I looked at my watch to find it was only 1:30am. I just
turned up the Air conditioner fan to drown out the noise and went back to sleep.
I woke up a few times during the night and they were still going strong when
we woke up the next morning.
