Gala Casino Review

You may be familiar with the Gala brand from their many Bingo halls up and running in the UK, but did you know about their casinos? In practically the blink of an eye Gala became one of the leading names in real world casinos when they purchased Ladbrokes five years ago. Now in addition to their very successful Bingo holdings they also have the pleasure of running 30 casinos. Keeping all these balls in the air tells us that they know how to run a game or two, but will it mean anything at all when it comes to their new online casino. Gala may be very good at Bingo, but when it comes to casinos, the jury is still out.

Security at Gala is one thing that we just tend to take for granted. You know with out a doubt that they are a highly reputable company that is focused on their players. For their casino they are trying to attract as wide a swath of players as they possibly can. In their own words they claim that, “Gala Casino is designed to cater for all types of players, be they high-staking hot shots or the average gamer.” What do you think they mean by that?

We really enjoyed the welcome page to the site. Each of your three choices are clearly marked at this point making it very easy to decide when it is you want to go. We had no doubt that the online casino was our final destination so with a simple click we were on our way. The next page gave us a very quick reminder of that old say, “beauty is only skin deep.” You see the actual home page for the casino was an absolute mess. Signs saying things like, “PLAY NOW/ SIGN UP” flashed prominently and then ended up being nothing more than a broken link. It seemed as though almost everything we tried to do had some type of glitch in it. This is not the level of quality that we have come to expect from a company like Gala and it is frankly inexcusable. Gala needs to give this area a complete face lift just to get it working much less to make it great.

The web site is a big part of the greater picture but the most important factor for any online casino is always going to be the games. And we feel that is exactly how things should be. At Gala casino their entire floor is delivered using a non-downloading software package. This is nice for getting a quick game in as well as for those users who access the site from several different locations. We were disappointed with the number of game choices and the fact that Craps is not offered at all. Most of the other big casino favorites are present and accounted for. The game play is okay but it is very graphically basic. There are also no options for players to customize their screen or experience to their own personal preference. The most disturbing thing that we ran across was that even with the stripped down look the games still took a very long time to load. This does not speak well for Gala casino.

It seems as though no matter what a site claims we nearly always have trouble getting things to work properly on a Mac. Gala casino was no exception to this very frustrating rule. Based on their own claims we were hoping for a smooth transition from PC to Mac but we weren’t that lucky. To be perfectly clear the only way that we finally got things up and running was to let go of our pride and call customer support. The agent proved to be very helpful and knowledgeable on all counts and did get us up and running. While it is great that things did work in the end, is it really worth it if it takes all that time. Most people would simply give up and take their business else where. Gala has the foundation laid in this area to be ahead of the pack. They need to take the time to follow through if they ever want anyone to notice or care.

In the promotions department Gala is currently running a new player Welcome bonus. It is a nice touch but it needs a bit more bling to it to really knock our socks off. We think that given time this area will become much more interesting as Gala becomes more familiar with their new market. As we stated earlier our experience with customer support was very positive. You will find that they are ready and waiting to help in any way that they can and they can be reached by phone or e-mail any time you want. Players need to take note that the phone support is not free so take that into account before you start dialing.

We know that this site has some serious problems in both design and usability, all the links don’t even work after all. But they also show some really great potential. Gala is a very big player in the UK casino game and there is no way that they will settle for something like this. Right now they are trailing behind the completion, but the race isn’t over just yet. Check back in a little while and just see the ground that they have made up. You might just be surprised enough to go check things out for yourself.