It's a busy travel day at the Guilford Rest Area, and tourists all seem to have the same reason for stopping.
"Probably one of the best rest areas I have ever been to in the country," said Tim Donahue from Lester, Massachusetts.
"We enjoy stopping here because it is a beautiful rest stop. Probably one of the most beautiful in the country," said John McGuire from Torrington, Connecticut.
"Any time we come up to this area I love this rest stop. It's just beautiful here," said Dave Ranan from Amherst, Massachusetts.
Under the post and beam construction, and amidst the local art work on display, there's a new attraction — A Vermont Lottery WinStation.
Playing the Vermont Lottery does not get much easier. You simply take out your cash, put it in the machine, pick your game, and out pops your ticket. If you don't have any cash, the ATM is right here.
Finding players like John McGuire is easy. "If it's here. Since it is here, now I probably will when we stop. It's great. Hopefully I win something and support the State of Vermont," he said.
McGuire scratches a quick ticket on his way north from Connecticut. He ends up the proud winner of two dollars — enough to make up the ticket's purchase price.
Other travelers are enticed by the machine — looking to get a little cash in hand.
"I don't usually play lotto," Dave Ranan said "But I saw it and said, what the heck, I might as well give it a whirl." Ranan says he recently voted against casino gambling in his home state of Massachusetts. "I think you are just playing against peoples addictions," he said.
Another family at the rest area opts not to play. "It is a little shocking to see it, to be honest with you. I kind of like that Vermont prides itself on making money other ways," Tim Donahue said.
There are currently 100 WinStations at various locations around the state, with profits going to the Vermont Education Fund.
"I don't think it impacts on the beauty of the rest stop and I really don't think it says anything bad about Vermont. You pick up a few bucks and it will help. That's what I think. But anyway, I won two bucks, thanks to everyone in Vermont and good luck," John McGuire said.
Good luck to those looking for a good deal.
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... and you'll never hear the machine call you a "bum" as you're walking away from it.
John McGuire didn't win anything.He just got his $2 back.That isn't winning,no matter what the lottery thinks and says.
Let's hope for those in Vermont the machines work better than the ones in Illinois....well, some of them.....
We have two in our town, one is at a hucks convenience store and works fine.....the other is in a grocery store and is basically a high tech scratcher machine and does little else. It's suppossed to accept playslips bit it doesn't, and it's suppossed to let you check tickets, lotto games and scrathcers, but most days when you try to it just says, "Invalid Transaction."
Did They hold you at gun point & make you sign those loan documents at the evil Bank ?
it just says, "Invalid Transaction."
... just like when you try to cash their checks.
There's another idea that will never hatch and see the light of day in Tennessee.
Makes too much sense.
Too convenient.
Players might like it.
No way for clerks to screw things up.
So all in all, it's just a bad fit for Tennessee.
If there's one thing we don't like down here, it's doing things differently than we always have.
Too risky.
Just the thought of it takes us out of our comfort zone.
So just leave us alone please.
Thanks ever so much.
New Hampshire puts WinStations in some of its rest areas, and the last time I was coming back north from Connecticut, I thought that Vermont should get in on the action as well. I wonder if someone from the NH Lottery (or Intralot) mentioned this to Vermont's representative at the Tri-State meetings.
Personally, I think it's a great idea. It's great for people from out of state who forgot to buy their Powerball or Mega Millions ticket at home. Between that and the new Lucky For Life game coming out in the spring, I think it'll get a lot of people from Massachusetts and Connecticut to play. If the Vermont Lottery had thought of this sooner, perhaps they wouldn't have felt the need to close all but a handful of rest areas.
From experience, the WinStations work quite well. I've used my existing playslips in the machine and only had to re-mark one box on all of the ones I used, and that's pretty good considering the new playslips that Vermont uses; you need only mark an X in the box instead of filling it in like most other machines because their regular terminals use a camera to scan them instead of an old-school reader.
Checking tickets is a breeze; scan once to check, twice to redeem for credit. I'm not sure if they work with scratch tickets; New Hampshire's WinStations do but I've never tried checking a Vermont scratch ticket.
The only major peeve I really have is that the quick-pick buttons for PB/MM/HL only give tickets with Power Play/Megaplier/Sizzler active, at least as of last week. (I'm not sure if this changed when the PB price hike kicked in.) If you want them without, you have to use a playslip. Vermont tends to really push the extras because they know they probably won't get a jackpot winner anytime soon, but they do get the occasional 5+0 winner.
Makes sense for the lottery to force the multiplier option on people. Any option that a lottery offers is because the odds are in their favor.
We have had these machines for years in PA ................ never used one though ! Too many pretty girls work at the store where I purchase my tickets !
chops,
Well, Illinois didn't waste anytime in changing the prices on the buttons on the Powerplay, however the machine in the one store still doesn't take playslips. So now you can play Powerball + Powerplay for $3, $9, $15, or $30 worth but still can't play a playslip.