Others made a beeline for the 15 restaurants and lounges, slurping local oysters at the oyster bar, sipping cocktails at the Mystique Asian Restaurant & Lounge, and attacking crab legs at the buffet. Thousands of patrons streamed past the flower-encrusted carousel in the lobby to the 210,000-square-foot casino. Sunday, company executives and employees cut the ribbon for Encore and let loose a colorful blast of fireworks, while Frank Sinatra crooned through the loudspeakers. Sunday’s grand opening marked a new chapter for a region founded, in part, by John Winthrop, who warned in 1630 against being seduced by “our pleasures and proffitts’’ - a place once known for banning objectionable novels and plays and where less than 40 years ago most stores could not open on Sundays.
EVERETT - Greater Boston entered the casino era on Sunday with bursts of fireworks and a crush of patrons trading hundred-dollar bills for chips at the roulette wheel, eyeing their cards at the Texas hold ’em poker table, and pushing cash into whirring, glowing slot machines.Įncore Boston Harbor, the $2.6 billion hotel and casino on the Mystic River, is now open 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
