Recently I spent an entire weekend at Turning Stone Casino in Oneida. I go to the casino all the time, but I hadn’t spent more than a day there since 2001, when I was there in an official capacity and before I started playing poker as much as I play now.


front of casino

I decided to go there for two reasons. One, I needed a break from home because I had spent 18 months at home with my mother without going away anywhere and I needed to clear my mind. Two, Turning Stone is massive now, unlike the last time I stayed there, and I only really knew about the area around the poker room and not much else. I wanted some time to explore the entire facility to see what I’ve been missing. This is a different kind of blog post for me as it’s strongly image laden; I hope you enjoy the change.

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The area I started in an area I never paid attention to before, which is outside of the doors between the original hotel and the casino, had this cool fountain that was surrounded with a bunch of floral arrangements and an area where they had little statues of different types of animals under some trees. It was sculpted very nicely and I never would have seen it from the street while driving by heading toward the garage.

I ended up exploring mainly the inside of the casino during the early part of the afternoon and that was exciting enough because they had areas I never knew existed. What I actually already knew about was the big show room and the big room that they have a major concerts. In the time since they have built an area for jazz, and area for rock concerts, and an area for country. All of those places combined are known as Exit 33, which you can access from a different direction on the outside. Here’s a few of those shots:

Later on I decided to go out of the entrance where I pulled my car in for valet parking and take a more extended walk, with initial intention of walking around the outside of the entire casino. That didn’t happen, but I walked a lot and I got to see where the outside entrance to the second floor, where one would go for the major concerts was, as well as the driving range for one of the golf courses. I also saw the Dome from the furthest distance I ever needed to, but I’ve been in the dome for a convention and I knew they used to hold boxing matches in there, so I didn’t need to see that again.

As I walked along however I finally saw the lodge for the first time and I decided to take a quick stop in there. It is absolutely beautiful. Here are a few more shots:

The Lodge

The Lodge

The truth of the matter is it turning stone is much more than what most people would consider as just a casino. They have tons of restaurants, a bunch of entertainment venues, a couple of spas, and a lot of serene places where if you just need a break you can sit down and relax. If you live close enough you can just drive there and walk around and not spend any money and have a very relaxing day.

I’m closing with an image and a short video. The image is of the casino room without a single game going on. I never thought I’d see anything like this… ever… but it was Sunday morning and I guess too many people partied the night before.

The final thing I’m sharing is there was some kind of promotion going on involving baseball. They had a “living status”, which was the coolest thing. Here’s a small piece of that:

More with the living statue guy

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How did I do? My final poker of session Saturday night set me up so that I was going home down $9. That’s probably not accurate because I spent some money on dessert, I paid for one of my meals with cash and I bought a few bottles of water from the waitress over the course of two days. So it’s possible I came home ahead slightly; why quibble? lol

That’s all I’ve got. If you follow me on Instagram I shared a lot more pictures of everything I saw. I hope you enjoyed this look at some of the extra features of Turning Stone Casino!