Reason #1 for being wary of going to Mohegan Sun
(which has nothing to do with Mohegan Sun):

When I was a sophmore in high school, I accompanied my mother to our local church Bingo. I was flattered that my mother wanted me to be a part of her Friday night ritual, but upon arriving I was utterly repulsed by the people and their 30 lucky stuffed animals, the staking of their bingo table claims, their arriving at 4pm for a 7pm start. I couldn’t get the hang of the daubers and felt a little stupid that my mother had to help me with my 12 papers while she adeptly attended her 48 (“Your cousin Sharon can do 56!”). It was such an unpleasant, down-at-the-heels experience that I never went again. It also made me feel very sorry for my mother, since clearly her life at home with her two kids and one husband was so stultifying that she sought intellectual stimulation in trying to cover the outside square for a pot of $100.

Reason #2 for being wary of going to Mohegan Sun
(which also has nothing to do with Mohegan Sun):

A few years ago my boyfriend and I took a fabulous driving vacation around Nova Scotia (2000 miles exactly from the driveway and back) and the overnight ferry proudly touted its all-night “casino.” I suppose it was the combination of the all-you-can-eat buffet and my ever-increasing seasickness, but that casino, ugh, ugh, ugh. Overweight women in velour tracksuits, smoking incessantly and cackling dementedly over “their” slot machine. I played $20 in quarters on, something, and quickly left. (The throwing up came later, in the middle of the night, at which time my boyfriend was deeply, blissfully asleep in our cheapo cabin which necessitated me throwing up all by myself in the public bathroom.)

Trepedatiousness

When an opportunity arrived at the RainyDay offices to check out the Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino, I was not excited. I was assured that the focus of the article was non-gaming activities, and that I wasn’t expected to go into the casino. I acquiesced to the assignment, but warily.

I waried for nothing. Mohegan Sun is a spectacular place, and I enjoyed every single second of my stay there. It’s a great place to go for a weekend getaway, and the casinos are secondary (almost).

Are you sure there are casinos here?

Take a breath, Carolyn, and have a good time, will ya?

We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and left on Monday morning. The whole time, it felt like we were at a tasteful, upscale amusement park for adults. So much to look at! So much to buy! So much to eat and drink! Oh, they have casinos, too? That’s nice…

Take break from all this...resorting

The casinos (there are two) were built in 1996, but the 1,200-room hotel is only three years old. Once at Mohegan Sun, you don’t need to go outside. So if, say, you find yourself at the resort during the worst blizzard to hit the Eastern Seaboard since 1978, not only don’t you care, you don’t even notice!

Blizzard? There's a blizzard outside? There's an outside?

There is complementary valet parking for hotel guests (day-trippers have complementary self-park with free shuttles), and once you walk through the front doors, you know you are somewhere special.

The materials, quality, and craftsmanship of the spaces in the resort are excellent, and give the whole place a feeling of sumptuousness that I wasn’t expecting. The place was way more elegant and stylish than most of its visitors (including us).

There are casinos here, right? I read it on their website…

The hotel normally runs at 90% occupancy (and on the night that the blizzard was in full swing they were at 98% occupancy), but if there were that many people in the resort, I didn’t notice. The public spaces are almost huge, but in a proportional way. It all works.

The casinos and hotel are owned by the Mohegan tribe, who take great pride in their Native Indian heritage. That heritage is displayed throughout the property, and they even offer a self-guided audio/walking tour that tells you about the motifs in the resort and provides a history of the Mohegan tribe. There is definitely an “Indian” feel to it, although it is a very New England/Birch trees/babbling brooks type of Indian; these Indians were here way before John Wayne got to the Great Plains, you know what I’m saying? The whole thing was really, really well done. Real stone work and fused glass lighting, no "pretend" materials.

Check your prescription, Martha, there's a lot to see

This is a lush place. The public spaces are full of water elements: there’s a pond in the hotel lobby that flows into a stream that cascades down a rock face that flows under a bridge, and eventually meets up with the 55-foot waterfall. The sound of all this water is a lovely kind of white noise, and with 30,000 visitors a day, the dampening effect is perfect. Honestly, the size of the place is such that never once did I feel crowded or squished.

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