Taking The Wendover Fun Bus

In this week’s Standard-Examiner column, I wrote about taking the Wendover Fun Bus from the Salt Lake area to Wendover.

The bus itself isn’t the raucous, partying experience that the name might imply.  It’s just a clean, comfortable — and fairly quiet — double-decker LeBus  that takes people from the Wasatch Front to the casinos over the Nevada state line.

In fact, LeBus and Utah Trailways make runs to Wendover every day of the week. The obvious assumption is that once you get  there, you’ll feed the slot machines dollar bills, or drop some bucks at the blackjack tables or on the roulette wheel. So the price of the bus fare ($22) was more than offset by a voucher for Montego Bay’s dinner buffet, and some other freebies.

But we weren’t going to Wendover for gambling (OK, I know the industry likes to refer to it as “gaming.”) My husband, Kim, and I had tickets to see one of our favorite “oldie” bands, Three Dog Night, and we weren’t keen about the long drive through Utah’s west desert. Kim recently had shoulder surgery and needed to sleep in a recliner chair, so he wouldn’t be comfortable staying overnight in a hotel room. And with the current poor air quality along the Wasatch Front, I’d rather contribute as few exhaust fumes as possible. So it seemed that the Wendover Fun Bus was a good option.

And that was BEFORE I found out about the all-you-can-eat crab legs! I discovered that on Friday nights, the Montego Bay’s Oceano Buffet has a Seafood Night, with crab legs, teriyaki-glazed salmon, baked cod, crispy fried shrimp and scallops, and more. The Seafood Buffet is priced at $28, and the voucher covered the cost.

You had me at crab legs.

We caught the bus at 3:30 Friday afternoon in a Woods Cross parking lot near Lorena’s Mexican restaurant. The bus had already picked up people in Ogden, Riverdale, and Clearfield, and made two more stops in downtown Salt Lake and Rose Park. The bus hostess, a friendly middle-aged woman named Branwen, took our $44 fare (it had to be in cash) and passed out bottled water to the 56 or so passengers.  Yep, there’s no smoking or alcohol

allowed on the bus, even though you have to be over age 21 in order to ride.

The trip was pretty tame, with only a few chatterboxes talking with each other and on their cell phones. (We were glad we brought earplugs.)

You couldn’t see much on the drive out, due to murky fog, but  we did catch a beautiful sunset on the Salt Flats. We brought some magazines to pass the time. During the final hour of the trip, Branwen passed out Bingo cards. We played three games, and the winner of the Blackout game got $25 to spend at the casino.

Branwen also passed around a tip bag for the bus driver and herself. The suggested tip was $2 per person.

When we got to the Montego Bay at about 6 p.m., we received the Seafood Buffet vouchers, plus a  $7 voucher for slot machine play, $4 in “lucky bucks” for betting purposes, and a $4 free cocktail. We never used the Lucky Bucks or the cocktail vouchers, so I don’t know how those work out for people.

Since it’s been over 30 years since I’ve visited Wendover, I didn’t know what to expect with their restaurants.  But I was pleasantly surprised by the Oceano buffet, which has an exotic, sea-blue/silver ambience.

The food stations looked clean and well-kept. The snow crab legs had been slit down the middle to make it easier to pull out the succulent meat without wrestling with shell-cracking

At a separate station, you could choose a steak or piece of salmon and a chef would cook it to your specifications.

The salad bar was stocked with crisp iceberg lettuce (sorry, no baby field greens or fresh spinach) and the usual toppings such as sliced mushrooms and chopped broccoli. There was a separate station with mixed salads, such as potato, seafood, broccoli-carrot, pasta, and so on.

If that wasn’t enough, there was a pizza and pasta bar, an Asian wok area with dishes like Szechuan chicken and Kung Pao shrimp, and a carving station with prime rib and turkey. There were simply too many choices to taste them all.

The dessert array was dizzying — brownies, pies, cheesecake, tarts, cookies, cakes. I saved room for a piece of flaky blueberry pie, and half of a crispy molasses cookie recommended by a friend.

Overall, it was on par with some of the better Las Vegas buffets we have visited over the years.

After eating, we had another hour before the concert. We decided to see how long it would take to use up our $7 slot machine credit. It took about five minutes.

It was a comfortable walk to the Peppermill Concert Hall in the crisp, clean air (a welcome relief from both the Wasatch Front’s temperature inversion and the Montego Bay casino’s smoky haze). Three Dog Night was a great romp down our ’70s memory lane. Yeah, they’re older, but so are we. The concert hall has a nice ambience, and it’s small enough that there’s no nosebleed section or bad seat in the house.

It seemed to be about the size of a large high school auditorium. My only complaint is that the Three Dog Night only played about an hour and ten minutes at the most.  We left the concert hall at 10:15, and we had some time to kill before bus left at midnight.

The Montego Bay casino floor was bustling with lots of people hunkered down at their slot machines, and others crowded around the blackjack and roulette tables. We found the TV screens near the sports book area and watched highlights of the night’s NBA games.

The ride home was pretty subdued, except for two gentlemen a few rows away who talked nonstop all the way home. (Again, earplugs to the rescue.) But the supposed horror stories of drunken brawls or people getting sick and vomiting were completely false. There was nothing at all like that. Most people just napped. We arrived back at our Woods Cross stop at 2:30 a.m. Had we driven, we could have been home and asleep in bed long before then. But, we did get to nap on the way home.

For us, the Fun Bus advantages were avoiding the cost and pollution of driving ourselves to the concert, napping on the way home, and a nice seafood dinner.

The disadvantages: The bus takes a lot longer than driving. And if you don’t like gambling (oops, I mean gaming) you will likely get bored.  I’ve heard that some of the other casinos offer local bands and other live entertainment, so that might be an option for things to do. But hello, it’s Wendover, and people go there for gambling…. er…. gaming. Also, the heavy cigarette smoke in the Montego Bay’s casino floor was a major turn-off.  It was a relief to go outside and inhale fresh air.

Would I take the Fun Bus again? Yes, if there’s another good concert in town.

UPDATE:  Since I published this post, I’ve attended another Fun Bus/concert/dinner event at Wendover, and it was even more enjoyable since we knew what to expect. As a bonus, we spent 45 minutes using the $7 slot machine vouchers, turning it into $21 in winnings.

So, there you have it. A night in Wendover on the Fun Bus.