Inside the Winstar World Casino at Thackerville, Oklahoma, we visited the cities of NYC, Vienna, London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Rio, and Beijing.

The entrance to each of the featured cities is marked like this:

We had to keep looking up to see the decor, art, and design features that depict each city. Looking straight ahead resulted in sensory overload from the noise and lights of over 8,400 slot machines.

In addition to the decor, the Winstar has over 20 bars and restaurants that feature cuisine from the various cities. There’s even a Paris bakery and a London Pub with authentic British style fish n chips.

All of the restaurants were busy at mealtime. The Gran Via Buffet had the longest line-up with three long corrals of people waiting to dine. We checked the menus of a few of the restaurants and found the food to be quite pricey. Neither of us likes line-ups, especially when we’re hungry, so we opted for a little fast food Taco place in the New York section. The food was tasty and reasonably priced.

At one point, shortly after we arrived, I thought I had lost hubs. I was walking around in my glory snapping photos, and suddenly he was gone. I’ve never experienced a panic attack before but I’m sure I was close to a full blown one until I found him. I seriously had a lump in my throat, tears in my eyes, and heart palpitations. I knew I could always go to the RV, but we had just arrived so I knew he wouldn’t be heading there and the thought of just sitting there and waiting for who knows how long was unbearable. What if he went to the bathroom and collapsed? How would I ever know? It was the most anxiety-filled ten minutes I ever remember spending.

After the long drive through Texas, we had an enjoyable rest from the road at the Winstar World Casino Resort. We managed to log over 11,000 steps inside the building, so that was another bonus we don’t often experience while we’re RV-ing from point a to point b. We’re happy we stopped to experience “the biggest casino in the world” while it still holds that title. There’s always another waiting in the wings to snatch a “worlds biggest” title away. That said, I don’t think the Winstar plans on giving up the title easily because we saw large cranes in the back working away at some kind of addition.

“The casino played a song of its own—slot machines dinging, chips clacking as the dealer passed them out to the players at the tables, and the chatter of people throwing down money with the hope of hitting it big. It was like a carnival for adults. A person could get lost for days in a place like this.”

Michelle Madow