Charisse Gilbert

Review of Christchurch Casino

The new hours mean the casino has lost it's edge o...

The new hours mean the casino has lost it's edge of being the best venue to visit when everything else is closed. On weeknights, midnight closing has resulted in patrons being ejected at 11.45pm, and Friday and Saturday nights, 2am closing so patron cutoff begins at 1.45am precisely.
Any patron who fails to pack up and vacate the instant the "15 minutes til close" announcement is made, receives rude, unfriendly and sometimes very insulting communication nonstop from some of the staff (gaming and security) as they drive patrons out the door. For me, this has resulted in many nights being ruined, which is a huge letdown. I go there as a haven, especially if I have had a bad day. I succeed in breaking out of my funk, get happy, enjoy myself, then am immediately stripped of my joy the second I get approached by certain staff, unfortunately they are senior staff and have trained their people to be just as lacking in care for the happiness of the people they are employed to interact with.
I suffer severe hearing impairment and require hearing aids, this results in me missing the announcement regularly. However despite my repeated attempts to communicate with these staff that I mean no harm, and am happy to go, but please dont be nasty to me and ruin my night, they genuinely don't care and have no interest in being the "best" at their job by developing people skills let alone honouring the casinos motto of giving people a great experience. I would visit at a different time of day, but they are not open when I'm able to go, and if I can get out at night, it's rarely before midnight, so avoiding this clash is very difficult.
Having made multiple attempts to create a rapport with the most belligerent and unfriendly of these staff and those attempts met with more rudeness, unkindness and lack of empathy or any human interaction skills, I have reached the sad conclusion that I must accept that while the Christchurch Casino is still the fun, clean, bright place with great music and a safe environment it always has been, it is no longer THE place to head to before heading home. It's a place to pop in briefly, if that, as I have no interest in spending my hard earns bucks where I'm not treated like a human and my "mistakes" are guaranteed to ruin my night. Why wreck my night when I can go elsewhere and not suffer the rollercoaster, who wants to end their night feeling abused? Not me, that's for sure. Sorry Christchurch Casino, but it looks like you're heading for invisibility very soon.