Can You Guess the 'Dirtiest' Casino in Alberta?

“Grimy,” “greasy,” and “smelly”—these are the types of words that absolutely make our skin crawl when we see them in reviews of casino destinations. Who wants to play a slot machine that’s covered in someone else’s spilled drink? Who wants to check into a hotel and have to remove suspicious-looking hairs from the shower? Not us, that’s for sure.

If—like us—you’re a bit of a germaphobe, we’ve got you covered. We spent a whole lot of time analyzing which Alberta casinos are the cleanest and which ones you might want to avoid. Or at the very least, make sure you have a full bottle of hand sanitizer in your bag when you visit. 

We ranked the casinos by searching Tripadvisor for mentions of keywords like the ones we’ve mentioned above. 

Here’s our final ranking of Alberta casinos we investigated:

When it comes to poor hygiene, Grey Eagle Resort and Casino topped the charts. And just to be clear, that’s a bad thing. This casino got a rating of 14.36%, based on our dirty words coming up 29 times. 

Said one review, “When you walk into the building, you are immediately hit with the overwhelming smell of smoke. This is supposedly a non-smoking facility so why was it so smoky?” Good question. Another review said, “The air was thick and most slot machines and tables had dirty ashtrays lying around.” 

Cowboys Casino placed second on the Dirty Scale, but with a much lower score of 7.69%. But with just six keyword mentions, how awful can it really be, right? Right?! Well, we found one particular review quite entertaining, if nothing else. 

“I grew up in Arizona and I cowboyed in Montana for 5 years so I should know what western nightlife should look like,” it began. Okay, continue, “This ain't it! Dirty casino with lots of folks dressed like it was a meat market. Also, inside, there was a $35 charge to see "the band," which turned out to be a B-rated rap artist.” 

Also cracking the top three was Starlight Casino, which got a rating of 7.55%. But with just four keyword mentions, there’s not a huge difference between this casino and a few of the locations lower down on our list. Nevertheless, at least one review mentioned the terms "dirty," "greasy," and "dusty." 

So, were any Alberta casinos actually clean? You can let out a big sigh of relief because the answer is yes. A few casinos scored really low on the dirt scale.

Century Downs Racetrack and Casino got only one mention of one of our keywords in 73 reviews, so the overall score was 1.37%. “It is a relatively new casino and is very clean. Service was very good also,” said one review. In fact, several other commenters also called out how clean the gaming area is.

While Pure Casino Lethbridge got seven keyword mentions, they were across 300 reviews, so the casino’s score was only 3%, and although one review mentioned how the food is “nothing earth-shaking… typically greasy, old-café style,” others were impressed with the cleanliness of the casino.

“I was very impressed with the people who were cleaning, as they seemed to be on top of it; when someone left a machine, they were there to clean.”

Methodology 

Casinos.com utilized Tripadvisor reviews to do an in-depth analysis of phrases associated with being dirty to determine the Alberta casino that is the 'cleanest' and 'dirtiest.' We calculated the percentage of dirt-related mentions in the total Tripadvisor reviews. Casinos.com do not claim for any casino to be cleaner or dirtier than other.

Keywords tracked: dirty, unclean, unhygienic, filthy, filth, messy, stained, greasy, dusty, grimy, foul, smelly

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