Mid-Michigan Dining

• 6800 E. Soaring Eagle Boulevard
• Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858
• (989) 775-5777
• Website

Leaving Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mt. Pleasant

When my parents come to town, I pretty much expect going to a casino.  I don’t expect it when J’s parents come, but we were in Midland and needed something else to do up that way, so I suggested Soaring Eagle.  I had been there once before with my parents, aunt, brother, and sister-in-law.  My parents loved it calling it one of the nicest casino’s they’ve ever been to.  My brother hated it.  He tried turning $20 into $80 so he could pay for a hotel room back in Lansing.  Instead, he lost $80 in about fifteen minutes and pouted the rest of the night.

Soaring Eagle Casino is on the edge of Mt. Pleasant off of Leaton Road.  The whole property is beautiful.  In Illinois, all the casino’s are built around old riverboat casinos, so they don’t look anything like the Indian casino’s in Michigan.  There’s an abundance of parking.  We found a spot in a lot that was a little bit of a walk from the entrance.  After a big BBQ lunch, I needed it.

The inside is just gorgeous.  When you walk in, you almost come in right on the gaming floor.  The thing that has surprised me both times is that there’s not really a single entrance to the gaming floor that is watched by a security guard checking ID’s.  Again, at the casino’s in Illinois, if you’re under 40, they’ll take your id, put it on a scanner then make you look in to a camera so they have it on file.  There’s only one way in and one way out.  I’ve been surprised both times that we walked onto the gaming floor without talking to or being stopped by anyone.  Hell, we even got stopped twice in Windsor.

The entrance to the casino at Soaring Eagle in Mt. Pleasant

My parents only play slots so that’s all I really know and J’s parents aren’t really gamblers so we went all the way to the back of the floor…which seems like a mile long….to find the penny and nickle slots.  Those machines confuse the hell out of me.  I never know if I win until the screen lights up.  I think it takes some of the fun out of it.  I’d rather play the machines that only have one or three payout lines and they’re straight across.  J put five bucks in a penny slot and at one point was up to almost $35, but cashing out and going home isn’t much fun.  She played for a good half hour on that initial five bucks she put in. 

I, on the other hand, put my five bucks in a quarter machine and I was done in five minutes.  I was one symbol away from a $500 payday…my heart skipped a beat for a second until that third symbol didn’t come up.

I noticed some cool things on this trip that I didn’t notice on our first trip.  The first was computerized black jack and poker tables.  You still sat and played against other players, but there was no dealer.  It was a video machine. It was neat, but also kind of weird. Why would you want to play there and not with a dealer.  Another cool idea was having self serve fountain pops in the middle of the gaming floor.  Like most other casinos, non-alcoholic drinks were free, so instead of waiting for a server, you could go get your own. 

The main drawback was the obvious.  It was hard to breathe.  I’m not going to rant about smoking because I knew when I walked in that it was going to be smokey.  It doesn’t bother me too much, but J and her mom really noticed it.  Like I said before, if I was going to gamble just because I like to gamble, I’d be driving to Canada, but I do really like Soaring Eagle (and yes, I know Soaring Eagle would not be part of a statewide smoking ban).

In summation, Soaring Eagle is really a great casino.  They’ve got games for everyone.  My family tends to stick to the smaller slot machines.  For them, it’s about playing, not so much winning.  Winning is nice, but most profits get sunk back into the machines, so having and abundance of penny and nickle slots is nice.  If table games are more your thing, there’s plenty of them too.  Soaring Eagle is the only casino I’ve been to in Michigan, so I can’t compare to them, but compared to the casinos I’ve been in Illinois, Soaring Eagle is amazing.