California Club Rant

[MikeA]

Guess I've got a nit to pick with California Club just off Fremont in Downtown Las Vegas.  We stayed at Las Vegas Club this past week and I played all over that area.  As far as I know, there is only ONE full pay nickel VP machine in all of the downtown area.  It's located in the back of the casino at Main Street Station.  If you take the skywalk from California Club across Main Street over to Main Street Station, when you get off the escalator, walk straight ahead just about as far as you can go before hitting the wall.  There is a bank of probably 12 slant top machines, and over half of them are multi-game, multi-denomination machines.  All of them have 9/6 pay tables for Double Double Bonus except for ONE.  It is 10/6.
 
Anyway, around 1am on Saturday morning (Jan 20) we had just returned from Silverton and I wasn't ready to hit the hay.  I went out the back door of the LVC and crossed Ogdon Street to the California Club.  When I entered the casino, I thought I might as well check out the pay tables and see if they had any full pay machines in low denominations. Of course, to do that, you have to select the game you are interested in and then select the denomination because pay tables often vary on the same game and same machine at different denominations.  I checked one machine on each of several banks and never did find a full pay DDB game.  I took the escalator upstairs with the intent of heading on over to Main Street Station where I knew there was a full pay machine. 
 
When I got to the top of the escalator, I saw several banks of multi-denomination multi-game machines and walked over to the first one I came to and checked it.  I think it was like 6/5 or something horrible.  Anyway, I turned and started walking toward the skywalk to go on over to MSS. 
 
I was STOPPED by two security guards one of which demanded my ID!  I was detained there for at least fifteen minutes while, without any explainations, they ran a check on me!  While one held my ID and glanced up at me every now and then while talking with the security folks back in the offices, the other just glarred at me!  They seemed reluctant to return my ID and let me go.  I kept hearing the term "Negative" coming out of the two-way radio they were communicating on.  When they finally did return my ID, they said that I looked "supicious" walking around punching buttons on machines all over the casino without playing on any of them!
 
I said I was checking pay tables and got nothing but a blank starer from them.  I'm not sure what that was all about.  I mean, I'm 58 years old, white male, was dressed in jeans, tennis shoes and a jean jacket with a black baseball cap.  Not exactly the profile you'd picture for a criminal!
 
Now, had I been playing Blackjack there (HIGHLY UNLIKELY because of the table rules and policies they have there) I might have understood why they'd want a record of me in their back-room book!  But this just seemed like unnecessary harrassment!  Had they stopped me and FIRST asked what I was doing, I wouldn't have been offended, but to conduct their investigation the way they did, well it did not sit well with me.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this.  Probably nothing.  However, I just may duplicate this post on vpFREE and on the Las Vegas Advisor and then write up a complaint to the management and possibly the marketing folks at California Club.

[rascal]

The big question is whether you were, in fact, detained. If you were detained, in the sense of being physically unable to leave, then you need to make a complaint. That was beyond their rights.
 
I imagine they thought you were a scraper, someone looking for TITO tickets or change. Some of the security in LV is way out of line. Some of the guys are very good, very public relations conscious, and some of them are off-duty metro officers who are already tired from their regular jobs.
 
I would definitely complain directly to the CC management and threaten to publicize this incident fully. With some of the casinos that will win you an apology and some comps, but because the CC is so cheap and crappy to begin with, maybe not.
 
The downtown and Fremont Street casinos get a lot more wierdo's than do the strip and suburban casinos. so maybe that helps explan it. All I know is that if that happened to me CC would have a lawsuit on their hands. What a bunch of jerks.

[MikeA]

"Physically Detained"?  As in handcuffs or "back roomed?"  NO.  But I did turn over to them my Driver's Liscense which I could have made a scene over and refused to do.  So, I couldn't leave until they returned my DL.
 
They just caught me by surprise!  I mean, I thought I might have been the 14,000,000th mark to ascend the escalator there or something and was being awarded a $43,000,000.00 door prize!  Never occurred to me that I was a "suspicious character."
 
Now, Rascal, I would never have relinquished my DL had I been playing Blackjack.  I know the score there and everywhere else about being backed-off and banned from table games.  But for doing NOTHING except reading the pay tables on VP machines? 
 
If they had a BJ game worth counting, I'd go back and intentionally get backed off just to get some retaliation!  But their game sucks so badly that you'd have to stake me to get me to play there, therefore I never have!  And, from what I saw of their VP,  about the same can be said of it! 
 
Well, you might be able to find full-pay there on the higher denominations, I wasn't checking those paytables.