Circus Circus is a family-friendly resort in the thick of the Vegas Strip. The best slots to play at Circus Circus are a mix of low-cost, high-roller, progressive, and simple video slots.
The best slots to play at Circus Circus are:
- Quick Hit
- Monopoly Hot Shot
- Top Dollar
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
- Megabucks
If you’re visiting Circus Circus, you already know that it’s really built for and designed around entertaining kids and being “family-friendly.” It’s the opposite of what you’d expect at Bellagio, for example, which is decidedly adult-oriented.
You may not know that it also offers hundreds of the best slot games in Las Vegas.
If you’re wondering “Why is Circus Circus so cheap?” it has to do with changes to Las Vegas and the fact that the hotel and casino could use some renovation and updating. That shouldn’t stop you from checking out the slots action at one of Las Vegas’ flagship gambling properties.
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Which Are the Best Slots to Play at Circus Circus?
The 1,400 gaming machines at Circus Circus range from penny slots up to $25-per-credit games for people with deep pockets. Circus Circus is really three casinos in one, with one entire casino (Slots A Fun) dedicated entirely to slot games.
Slots players are big business for Circus Circus. Read my post on how much casinos make in a day for an understanding of why Circus Circus goes out of its way to cater to slots players.
Circus Circus is also known for its large collection of classic coin machines. No other big Vegas Strip casino has coin-operated machines anymore. Circus Circus has dozens of them, with both $0.25 and $1 old-school coin slots in the Main Casino and in Slots A Fun.
Embrace the Classic Slots Energy of the Quick Hit Series
Circus Circus has an old-school Vegas vibe that extends onto the gaming floor. You’ll find tons of Quick Hit games here. These are Bally games that celebrate the classic slot machine symbols and themes but in a modern video slot format.
Dozens of variations exist, but the base game is a 5 reel and 30 pay line slot with a free spins bonus game and a big 5,000x top prize. These are classic-style games, so there’s not much in the way of special features or fancy modern audio or video effects.
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Quick Hit’s bonus feature is a free spins round. Depending on how many triggering scatter symbols you land on active lines, you’ll get between 5 and 20 free spins, sometimes with a win multiplier.
Circus Circus customers don’t play Quick Hit because it’s a fancy modern game. They like the easy pace of play, the simple paytable, and the low cost. You can bet between one penny and $1 per line, and Quick Hit games all have 30 pay lines, so your total betting range is between $0.01 and $30 per spin. However, you can place a max bet as low as $0.30 per spin.
Monopoly Hot Shot
Monopoly is one of the top series in all of slot gaming. Every new Monopoly slot machine game gets wall-to-wall review coverage and slots players flock to find an open spot at the latest iteration of the popular board game slot.
Hot Shot is a huge game. The 75-inch curved UltrHD cabinet with a 4K screen is impossible to miss when you walk by. Hot Shot offers 3 unique mini reel games that lead to progressive jackpots. There is, of course, a feature involving movement around the game’s classic board, and a pick’em feature based on the Community Chest and Free Parking symbols from the game.
This is a 3 reel video slot game with 27 pay lines and a 300-coin max bet. The big draw is the Hot Shot feature. Line up three Hot Shot symbols and the game triggers. It’s really three different spin games played on a smaller 3×3 board. Free spins and multipliers are the rewards.
The game’s Around the Board bonus, in which the player spins to move a token around the Monopoly game board, rewards as much as 900x your triggering bet.
You can only find Monopoly Hot Shot at 6 Vegas casinos at the time of this post, and none of them are on the Strip besides Circus Circus. For the time being, the casino has a leg up for fans of Monopoly gaming who want to give the Hot Shot variant a try.
Game-based slots are at least as popular as slots based on movies and TV shows. Look at the popularity of Jeopardy slot machines for an example. You wouldn’t think a slot game based on a nerdy TV game show would be successful, but you could say the same thing about a slot based on a real estate board game.
Top Dollar
IGT’s Top Dollar is another casino stalwart that’s given a heavy presence at Circus Circus. You’ll find both the 5 reel video slot versions and the classic-style 3 reel high roller versions on the casino floor.
You can find a variety of these games in a few different denominations, from $0.25 in the Main Casino to a few $5/$10 games in Slots A Fun and other spots dotted around the site.
Top Dollar is a simple game that gives players one goal – to activate the bonus round by landing at least one of the game’s logo symbols on an active line. In that bonus round, you’ll get four different offers, one at a time. Your choice – decline an offer in hopes of a better one or take what you’re offered and cut your losses.
Something about the simplistic gameplay and the “pick the best offer” bonus round makes Top Dollar popular in any casino where it’s offered. It’s not common to find an open Top Dollar game at Circus Circus, especially during the busiest times of the year, like during convention season.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is a 5 reel video slot with three rows and 117 pay lines. It’s stuffed with all the modern slot gimmicks you’d expect – stacked wilds, free spins rounds, bonus games, and expanding rows. Plenty of video and audio clips from the movie spike the slot action, which is a nice touch for fans of the movie.
Oddly, Bally didn’t create the Anchorman slot until 2018, more than a decade after the movie the game is based on. You can’t even say that they made the game to coincide with the movie’s sequel since Anchorman 2 came out in 2014. Whatever the reason, Bally didn’t get inspired to make the Will Ferrell film slot game for almost 15 years.
This is the only slot on this list that’s also available to play at online gambling sites and on mobile gambling apps.
You’ll pay a slight premium to play this licensed game – the minimum bet is $0.75 per spin. A max bet requires at least $2.25 per spin.
The game’s many bonuses include:
- Ron’s Giant Free Games
- The Whammy Feature
- Brick’s Weather Wheel
- Brain Fantana’s Sex Panther Pick
They’re all tied together with clips from the movie. And they offer the typical range of multipliers, free spins, and pick’em cash prizes.
Circus Circus Slots Players Love Megabucks for Obvious Reasons
You don’t play Megabucks for special effects, bonus games, or interactive storylines. None of those things exist in this game. Instead, you play to chase that life-changing jackpot. Circus Circus gives slot fans plenty of opportunities to do that.
IGT’s Megabucks is probably the most popular slot game in the world. It’s definitely the most popular in America, thanks to massive progressive jackpots. Megabucks jackpots reset to $10 million, more akin to big lottery draw reset prizes than slot machine games.
You can’t play Megabucks games online. Online gambling fans who want to play these slots have to visit a casino like Circus Circus to get a crack at those huge progressive payouts.
The largest slot machine prize of all-time – $39.7 million – came from a Megabucks game. Circus Circus customers chase those prizes at the Megabucks games on the site’s casino floors.
Megabucks players sacrifice a big chunk of their edge for the right to chase that jackpot. The game averages an RTP of around 87%, significantly lower than the average Vegas slot machine. This makes the game a bit of a chore to play for people who aren’t jackpot-chasers. Volatility is about as high as you’ll ever find in a Vegas slot.
Megabucks games are simple. Coins are set at $1 each, and you can bet between one and three per spin. The game’s biggest prizes are only available from those $3 max bets. You win a progressive payout by landing three Megabucks symbols across your pay line. Your odds are about 1 in 50 million on each spin.
Conclusion
The best slots to play at Circus Circus are available 24 hours a day. The circus-themed setting with lots of extra entertainment options for the whole family is just a bonus.
Heading to Circus Circus and feel overwhelmed by the nearly 1,500 different machines available? Start with the five slots from this post. These give slot games at Circus Circus in 2022 offer something for every different type of slots gambler.
