Most Luxurious Casinos in California

_{Taking the top spot on our list, Parkwest Bicycle Casino stood out as the most luxurious casino in California. (Image: Matt Gush)}

If you’re looking for a luxurious casino experience in the west of America, you’re probably going to head straight to Nevada, right? LA is great and all, but personally, we’ve never seen any slot machines on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nope, no poker on Rodeo Drive either. 

But strap yourself in, as there are over 80 casinos in the state of California, and we visited a selection of them (virtually) to see which is the most luxurious.

Many different forms of gambling are legal in California, including commercial casinos, horse racing, card rooms, and charitable gaming. California is actually the state with the most tribal casinos, 87 of them to be exact.

Gambling became legal in California in 1988, so there hasn’t been a lot of time for those casinos to get established. The industry operates over 70,000 total slot machines, and employs a massive 184,000 people. 

So, as we said, we went on a bit of a mission to find out which is the most luxurious casino in California. We did this by combing through Tripadvisor reviews, looking for words like "luxury,"  "delightful," and "comfortable,"  and depending on how many times those words appeared, each casino received a rating on our patented Casinos.com Luxury Scale.

At a glance, these are the casinos we looked at, ranked:

Following is a full list of casinos we considered:

• Harrah's Lake Tahoe Casino
• Harveys Lake Tahoe Casino
• Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Lake Tahoe
• Crystal Bay Club Casino
• MontBleu Casino
• Catalina Island Casino
• Pechanga Casino
• Harrah's Resort Southern California
• Rolling Hills Casino and Resort
• Red Hawk Casino
• Harrah's Northern California
• Fantasy Springs Resort Casino
• Yaamava' Resort & Casino
• Agua Caliente Resort Casino Spa Rancho Mirage
• Black Oak Casino Resort
• Viejas Casino
• Sycuan Casino
• Morongo Casino Resort & Spa
• Barona Resort & Casino
• Graton Resort & Casino
• Pala Casino
• Valley View Casino & Hotel
• Feather Falls Casino
• Casino at Jackson Rancheria Casino Resort
• Chumash Casino
• Spotlight 29 Casino
• Lucky 7 Casino & Hotel
• Thunder Valley Casino
• Gold Country Casino
• Cache Creek Casino Resort
• Parkwest Bicycle Casino
• Win-River Casino
• Agua Caliente Casino Palm Springs
• Soboba Casino Resort
• Jamul Casino
• Paiute Palace Casino

The most luxurious casino in California is officially the Parkwest Bicycle Casino, which got 17.52% on the scale. To put that into perspective, it’s twice as much as the winner in some of the other states we looked at. 

This casino had a high proportion of people mentioning the word "comfortable.”. 

One review we particularly liked said, “Very reasonably priced, the rooms are spacious and the beds are very comfortable. For an extra $10, you can get a very delicious breakfast with hot and cold foods/drinks.” 

Did you read that? $10? In LA? Unheard of! Although the review was from 2018, it might be a little more expensive now.

Onto the next one, we have Lucky 7 Casino & Hotel with 14.08%. 

It’s a small casino in Smith River, CA, with just 300 slot machines, but the reviews are all along the same lines: “Clean, quiet, comfortable rooms with an excellent in-house restaurant plus the casino.” That’s really all there is to it.

Rounding out the top three is Catalina Island Casino in Avalon, with a rating of 8.87%. 

A massive 37 people called this "magnificent,"  so we were really keen to see what those reviews were about. Most of them refer to the building, with one review calling out, “The building and all of the paintings and architecture are absolutely magnificent.”. 

That sounds pretty luxurious to us. 

At the bottom of the list, we’re sorry to report that Harrah's Northern California only got 1.95% on our scale, and absolutely no one called it luxurious. 

_{Harrah’s Northern California looks undeniably luxe to us, even though it ultimately received no luxury-related mentions from reviewers. (Image: Courtesy of Harrah’s Northern California)}

In fact, one review said, “There’s literally nothing good to say about this casino,"  and we think that’s pretty telling.

Trying pretty hard to attain a bottom slot was Jamul Casino, which got just 2.0%. We laughed out loud at the review that said, “This place is so tight that it makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like a philanthropist.” 

But hey, there was one person who said it was comfortable, so that has to count for something, right?

Methodology 

Casinos.com utilized Tripadvisor reviews to do an in-depth analysis of phrases associated with luxury to determine the most luxurious casinos in the state of California. We calculated the percentage of luxury-rated mentions in the total Tripadvisor reviews.

Keywords tracked: luxury, luxurious, magnificent, delightful, comfort, comfortable, impressive, pleasure, indulge, extravagant, fancy, exclusive, satisfied

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