Crown Sydney

Enormous, costly, packed. Your standard resort casino 🙄 brilliant position with heaps of dining and drinking options. Parking is a pain. Noisy and cheerful all round.

This is the sole venue where I’ve done my dough abroad, but it’s a pleasant place sitting right in the CBD. People here tend to be friendly and quick with a laugh, very much the Sydney spirit. Roulette itself was fairly plain, and the floor was mostly given over to that plus Baccarat.

There’s one modest room of tables only — no machine licence here — and you must sign up with Crown before entering. Plenty of punters around us reckoned it wasn’t worth the effort. That said, the Italian dining was superb. After a proper casino? Look elsewhere. After a brilliant meal? Definitely worth it.

Travelled up from Melbourne and stood around close to sixty minutes before I could even join a table. They put you through a lengthy sign-up procedure, and even once that’s done there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get to play. Zero pokies on site, and every table caters to high rollers only. Bears no resemblance to the Melbourne or WA Crowns. Honestly, just go to The Star instead.

Dropped into Crown with my girlfriend hoping for a quick play. Staff explained a membership card was required first — no issue at all. We handed over our IDs and were told to take a seat until called. While sitting there, a pair of customers who showed up well after us got waved straight through to begin their applications. When my name finally came up, that pair was already halfway done. By the time mine was sorted, they’d walked onto the floor. Nearly thirty minutes passed between surrendering my ID and getting the card back. The way they handle the queue is shockingly disorganised. For a venue of this scale and standing, it’s genuinely amateur and not good enough. Killed any desire we had to gamble.