Silver Reef Casino review

This is a review of one of the  hotels on the busy cross-border corridor between Vancouver and Seattle. This is an extremely popular route for Canadians on day- and overnight shopping trips to Washington State. During 2011 Canadians made 44 million visits to the US and spent about C$16.5 billion, of which at least 5 million visits occurred across the BC border with WA. We start with the Silver Reef Casino and Spa in Ferndale, WA.

This casino hotel is about 15 minutes from the Canadian border just off the I5 and is in a relatively isolated spot. We arrived at about 4pm and by then the parking lot was already filled to the brim with day visitors to the casino. Reception and check-in was adequate, but lacked a touch of warmth and a welcoming atmosphere. The room on the 4th floor was huge non-smoking room with a comfortable king bed, large flat-screen TV, bathroom and separate basin area. Amenities included free wifi, a coffee-maker and ice bucket(unfortunately the plastic bag in the ice-bucket was too small, making it impossible to gather ice in a sanitary way). The casino is large, but incredibly smoky – if smoking is allowed (and most patrons were smoking like chimneys), surely there should be sufficient ventilators to properly extract smoke and replace the stale air? We stopped for a couple of beers at a pub during happy hour, but the Budweiser tasted watered down and hardly worth the $2. Supper was at the La Cantina Mexican restaurant, probably the biggest disappointment of the stay – the sampler of three Salsas was tasteless and I had to send back the chicken lime taquitos due to a very strange taste.b Its replacement, the quesadillas with asadero cheese, sour cream, guacamole, pico de gallo and lime crema, was simply bland. The Queso Fundito, a pot of melted cheese and white sauce, chorizo and poblano chile, was good. The next morning we had a complimentary continental breakfast with eggs, waffles, fruit etc, but it would have been nice to have had some bacon or sausages added for free. Checkout was efficient and the staff friendly and we received a free newspaper. What impressed me was the security car driving back and forth the whole night in between the rows of cars, presumably to ensure safe parking and a safe visitor environment. Would we go back? Probably at some time, as we generally had a pleasant visit, but to be honest, the Skaggit Valley and Snohomish Casino probably offer equal if not better value for roughly the same price.