Casino Del Sol

- from Rick and Lucky Lucy, August, 2007
We took a side trip to the Casino Del Sol a few miles south of Tucson on Pascua Yaqui Indian reservation. They have a great place to dry camp, a huge paved parking lot next to an amphitheater. Many motorhomes and campers were taking advantage of these facilities and the place looked like a used RV lot. However there was plenty of room to spread out.

The casino is quite nice, rivals many of the Las Vegas casinos except a bit smaller. There are plenty of full pay VP machines -- 9/6 JoB, 8/5 Bonus, and NSUD -- in 25 & 50 cent and $5. Oddly we didn't find any full pay in $1. Most were in 3 or 5 play multi-denomination. Unfortunately these machines also have 5, 10, 20 cent short pay games and the bus loads of senior citizens occupy most of the machines playing one nickel at a time. The buses depart around 4:00 PM so frees up the machines at that time.

When we walked in the door I headed straight to the promotion's booth to convert a $50 coupon into a cash voucher (mailed to us based on last year's visit). A host saw the coupon and got his attention, guess they don't send out many $50 coupons. He took a quick look at our play record and asked us if we wanted a comp to their best restaurant. Of course we did and he wrote us an $80 comp for dinner that evening. Said we spent a lot of money there and he was happy to have us back. Well this is off to a good start, haven't even dropped the first nickel yet and already have 50 bucks and a good comp.

We ended up dropping about $600 the first day so guess we paid for the comp after all. Dinner was in Bellissimo Italian restaurant. Lucky Lucy had lamb chops and I had steak and shrimp, both were excellent, probably the best meals we have experienced in Arizona. Even with dessert we didn't use up all the comp so our waitress insisted we take a couple slices of cheesecake to go (also excellent). We had enough leftovers for a good lunch the next day -- big advantage of traveling with your own kitchen.

Day two we beat the senior citizens to the machines and had a pretty good run. I shouldn't be dicing our elderly folks since we are too. ;-) Hey this retirement stuff is great, wish I had started about 20 years sooner. We ended the day about $1100 to the good, most of which came from Lucky Lucy's play on the $5 machines.

Impressed with the previous evening's meal we headed back to the booth to get another Bellissimo comp. The boothling, after checking with a host, wrote it out. Then remembered that Bellissimo was closed on Tuesday night and wrote us out a $50 comp for the Tequila Factory, told us to keep the other one as it was good for a month.

Another excellent meal but the menu items were priced so we couldn't possibly use up all the comp. So we got a couple meals to go and still only came to $38. I got a full slab of baby back ribs and again had enough leftovers for a good lunch the next day.

Day three decided we would head back to Tucson to our son's house but got the idea of bringing son and daughter-in-law back for dinner some evening. Wonder if we can squeeze another Bellissimo comp out of them. No problem, they were happy to do so. (I am beginning to really like this place). We hit the machines for a little play before heading out. Playing a 5-play NSUD I hit a non-deuce royal flush for a thousand bucks. This looked like a great place to check out and hit the road. Lucky Lucy had another go at the $5 machines but lost a couple hundred this round.
Went back to the booth to check for cash back and got $95. We headed out with our fridge full of food, pockets full of cash, and $160 in future comps.

Great place to overnight, or to use as a home base when touring the area.
Parking is in sections E,F & G. ( unless something is going on at the theatre).
Casino provides on site garbage bins, and security does do regular rounds.
Parking is disorganized compared to other casinos we stayed at. Here you park anyway you want.
As a reminder be considerate of your fellow rver and please do not run your generator more than a couple hours at a time.
Great casino, lot of slot machines, remember to sign up for your player club card.

I started my journey in Tucson and found myself at Casino Del Sol. The energy there is really nice. Staff at the hotel are extremely accommodating. There is a pool and a spa (massage etc) if you are tempted to treat yourself. The grounds are proudly taken care of (I am especially fond of Gary aka Speedy - he really loves his job and is almost like the welcoming concierge for us driving folks) and the RV crowd had all kinds of people from all over the world. I made some good travel friends there. The food is top notch! I really loved the diner style restaurant. I had an old diner traditional item "Open Faced Turkey Sandwich" and it was the best! Tender meat and the vegetable was sautéed zucchini and squash. There are no dumps that I could find that were convenient. It would be amazing if they created one and charged a fee because there are so many rvers coming through! Some stay a night, some longer. I will always cherish my memories of parking lot camping there.

Positives: It is a brand new RV Park with: a hot tub, laundry, bathrooms, two gas grills under a covered picnic area with multiple picnic tables. They are finishing the process of fencing in the park. You have to use a gate key to enter the park because each entrance exit is controlled. A security guard drives around the park 24/7 in a truck. You have access to a clean gas station right next to the park. There is a bus stop right next to the park. They obviously have a casino, hotel, golf course, and many restaurants. Close access to anything in Tucson. The lots are wide and long.

Negatives: They have no clue how to manage a park and they do not treat RVers like we should be treated. They utilize a reservation service. However, once you arrive you have to deal with gas station attendants who are about as helpful as a the person cooking fries at McDonald’s. We stayed for a month and wanted to extend our stay a few more days. My wife and I had no problem if we needed to move to a different site.

They would not give us the site for those extra days at the monthly rate and were going to charge us the daily rate. We still had two more days before the end of our stay. First, the gas station attendant agreed it was a reasonable request. However, she had no clue how to process the computer work. I had to sit and wait for her between dealing with people in line to get gas. She actually made me call the reservation service. Next, the reservation service had no clue how to do it and I was put on hold. I was then told I would have to pay the daily rate because their computer system did not allow this. I was given the supervisor at the reservation service who put me on hold again and then forcefully tried to state this was their position and I could pay it or go elsewhere.

Now, I have time invested in this and have been treated horribly. The supervisor realized how upset I was and asked if I wanted to speak with her supervisor. Which, upset me even more because I have now invested an hour in this whole thing and am not even speaking with the supervisor yet. I hung up after saying that we would instead go to a different park.

The manager of the RV park was never seen anywhere. I had to go to the hotel to find out who the supervisor of the RV manager was so that I could leave a complaint. I received a call the next day by someone who who told me she would see to my complaint. Then we got an electronic bill for the extra days we originally wanted to stay, but never finished because their customer service was horrible. Now my blood is boiling. I called the reservation service and demanded that they not charge my card as I had talked about with the supervisor of the RV park manager. Her response was that she would print out the information and give it to her boss.

Sure enough, we were charged on our credit card. I called and demanded an answer for this by the end of the day. She promised to get back to me. Two hours later, I went to the gas station (one hour before the close of business) and found out that person I was talking to had gone home for the night. No one had a clue what I was talking about. I went back to the hotel and demanded to speak with a supervisor and have this corrected. I was told I could speak with someone the next day.

At this point I asked the hotel supervisor if she thought I was being treated properly. I asked to sit in the lobby until treated properly. I said she could kick me out, but that I was not going anywhere until this was resolved properly. Two hours later, they called the police and asked for me to be removed. The police agreed that I had not done anything wrong. I even told the police that I told the hotel supervisor that I would leave once they kicked me out, but that I was staying there until someone corrected this.

Is it a good park? I hope they actually correct their problems. However, they need to have a person of hospitality greeting RVers and handling requests. The current RV manager was never seen over the entire month and failed miserably.

We've stayed here twice in 2014. Great spot to park your RV. We stayed a couple of nights, but it looked like a lot of the RV's were here for a week or more. There were close to 50 RV's in the lot when we were here. Park at the back of the lot behind the open air concert hall. We signed up at the players club and got a free brunch. Excellent! Our favorite casino to date.