Most Luxurious Casinos in Minnesota

Minnesota is known as the “land of 10,000 lakes”, but don’t you worry, it also has casinos (although, not 10,000 of them, because that would be ridiculous. Can you imagine?). 

Gambling was popular in the state even before the 1800s, when it was officially banned, but no one really paid any attention to those laws. 

Finally, in the 1980s, Minnesota was the first state to agree to casinos being allowed to open on tribal lands, and as they say, the rest is history.

Today, Minnesota still only has tribal casinos, no commercial casinos, but there are 38 of them in total, although some are quite small establishments. They’re scattered throughout the state, but there are more towards the north-west, where most of the reservations are.

The gambling industry supports just over 31,000 jobs, which is a smaller number than in some other states, but it’s still significant enough to mention. The economic impact of the industry is estimated to be around $4.7 billion, while gross gaming revenue was reported to be $1.51 billion in 2016, when the American Gaming Association last reported the stat. 

Assessing which casinos in MN are the most luxurious isn’t exactly an easy task. We decided to do it the way of the people - we went to TripAdvisor and looked for specific keywords like “fancy”, “luxurious”, and “comfort”, and based on mentions of those words, we were able to rank these casinos: 

• Running Aces Casino, Hotel & Racetrack
• Treasure Island Resort & Casino
• Black Bear Casino
• Grand Casino Mille Lacs
• Grand Casino Hinckley
• Shooting Star Casino
• Jackpot Junction Casino
• Mystic Lake Casino
• Northern Lights Casino
• Fond-du-Luth Casino

There were slightly less options here than in some of the other states we looked at, but never fear, there was still quite a range of results on our Luxury Scale.

Right at the top is Grand Casino Mille Lacs, which got 13.85%. 60 out of 130 reviews were either a four or five star, which sounds pretty promising, and 14 people used the word “comfortable.” 

A review from as recently as March 2024 said “Check in and check out so easy. Love the newly remodeled room. Very clean and nice new mattresses on the beds. The bathroom also updated very nice.”

That’s exactly the type of thing we like to hear about a luxurious casino.

Next up is Black Bear Casino which got 10.53%, as 18 out of 171 reviews mentioned one of our keywords. One person even said it was “impressive” while another described it as “fancy.”

One happy guest said “Didn't need anything though as there was a pillow top mattress. I usually wake up super early too and we slept in until 9:00 a.m. which was unheard of for us. It was that comfortable and quiet”. That sounds great, but we’re not sure the photos on TripAdvisor match the shining reviews - they look a little sad.

Not too far behind Black Bear is Treasure Island Resort & Casino, which got 9.78%. No, this isn’t the TI in Vegas with the giant pirate ship, but fear not, mateys, it does come with a Caribbean theme, although it’s nowhere near the sea (it’s just outside Minneapolis).

One review said “We enjoyed a short mini-vacation to celebrate 50 years of marriage. We were upgraded to a suite and it was clean and comfortable”, and that’s good enough for us.

At the other end of the scale, we’re sad to report that Fond-du-Luth Casino came bottom of the list, with just 3.41% and only three poor humans out of 88 mentioning “comfort” or “comfortable.” 

We were intrigued, so we went off to find the reviews in question, and turns out at least one of those said “There is a parking garage next to it though it looks a bit sketchy for my comfort zone.” Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Faring slightly better, with 5.42% was Grand Casino Hinckley. Although no one called it “luxurious” or “magnificent”, there were 11 mentions of “comfortable” in 240 reviews, so it can’t be that bad, right? Right?? 

Well, according to one reviewer, it can, in fact, be that bad - “Rooms are disgusting”. Okay then, we’ll take your word for it. 

Methodology 

Casinos.com utilized Tripadvisor reviews to do an in-depth analysis of phrases associated with luxury to determine the most luxurious casinos in the state of Minnesota. We calculated the percentage of luxury-rated mentions in the total Tripadvisor reviews.

Keywords tracked: luxury, luxurious, magnificent, delightful, comfort, comfortable, impressive, pleasure, indulge, extravagant, fancy, exclusive, satisfied

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