Caesars Entertainment’s 2012 Great Race or How I ruined my ADT in 55 days
Caesars Entertainment (CZR) is holding its Great Race Contest again this year. The requirements have changed from last year. You now must put 25 Tier points on your Total Rewards card at a location instead of the 1 point required last year. The grouping of different casinos to obtain a “Checkpoint” has changed a bit and values for each location now vary from one to three Check Points.
Six Check Points will give you 10,000 Bonus Credits (worth $100 in comps), Eight Check Points and you will receive 25,000 Bonus Credits (worth $250 in comps). Eleven Check Points and you receive 50,000 Bonus Credits (worth $500 in comps). The most you can receive is $750 in comps for Fifteen Check Points. So if a couple travels together on the race they could receive up to $1500 in comps.
Last year you simply played 1 tier point on your Total Rewards card ($5 coin-in for slots or $10 for video poker coin-in) and you’ve got that location. This year you need 25 tier points or $125 coin-in for slots and $250 coin-in for video poker.
I really had no intention of playing this year as we are cutting back on our traveling due to family concerns. We did book a comp’ed flight to Harrah’s Laughlin, NV at the first of the race. Then our granddaughter had a soccer tournament in Kansas City. Those two would give us five checkpoints; one more and we could score $100 in comps. We received an offer for a trip to Atlantic City, NJ so we booked the late September trip to gain $100 in comps. We would only need eight more checkpoints (about four casinos) for the full amount. Tunica is worth three, Biloxi two, New Orleans two, and Bossier City would give us the maximum checkpoints and comps.
We flew to Laughlin/Bullhead City on a Casino’s International, Inc. charter flight to score our first checkpoints. Before our Granddaughters soccer tournament we drove from Kansas City, Ks to North Kansas City, Mo. to collect our Missouri checkpoints. At both Laughlin and Kansas City we needed to opt-in at the Total Rewards desk before playing. The Total Rewards desk looked at our ID’s and swiped our cards for us. We were getting excited about a round-robin driving trip and planned our trip to Tunica-Biloxi-New Orleans-Bossier City. Our overnight stops would be Tunica and New Orleans and so we left home on Sunday the 26th of July and had a great time at the Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in Tunica. That night we checked the weather and it was looking like Tropical Storm Isaac might be trying to grab those four Checkpoints from Biloxi and New Orleans. After watching the cars evacuating from the area on TV we decided to head back home and abort our mission.
The storm increased to a hurricane and the casinos were closed. We were back home Monday watching the Weather Channel happy with the decision we had made.
I rebooked the trip two weeks later and travelled the 1470 miles collecting all the checkpoints along the way.
All that was left to do was to catch another Casino’s International flight out of Oklahoma City to Atlantic City, opt in at the Total Rewards desk, and earn 25 tier points.
If you’re interested in flight to specific Caesars properties check out the new website Total Rewards Air. They don’t fly to all locations but prices are low and service is great for the locations they service.
Check out the pages for each stop along the way for details. Our first stop was Laughlin, NV.