Plaza Royal

 

Plaza Royal Casino Review

Luxury and tropical holidays are the themes of Plaza Royal Casino, a new site in the Aspire Global family, a big group of casino sites based in Malta.

The design of this site is familiar if you’ve looked at any other Aspire sites (though you may not know you have, as we’ll explain), and in fact, doesn’t break the mould in casino design terms in the 2020s.

The splash page features a rolling list of winners down the right-hand side, with prizes over £1,000 ticking by to encourage you to play.

The bulk of the page is devoted to games though. Plaza Royal has a couple of hundred slots at least, and as a new site will continue to add them as time goes on. They are tiled across the front page, mixed in with other popular titles from the site’s selection of table games and other styles of online casino game.

You can select three casino styles: the standard site, the live casino site, and a scratchcards site, an unusual option as these games aren’t really all that popular.

Aspire Global are listed at the UK Gambling Commission as AG Communications Ltd, based in Sliema, Malta. Malta used to be best known in the UK as a reliably sunny holiday destination, and for its historic significance in the Crusader era and during World War II, but now it is surely of most importance to the UK as the centre of the European online casino industry.

Aspire has 85 domain names to their credit, although a fair few of these are inactive. Most are listed as white label sites. A white label site is something like a franchise. The parent company, Aspire in this case, has all the tech and expertise to set up multiple casino sites, but it leases or sells the sites to operators who make some of the decisions about branding, marketing, game selection and so on, and the pair carve up the money between them. This is a completely legitimate and very popular business model, but it does mean that a lot of casino sites aren’t quite as independent as you might believe them to be.

Whatever your opinion on the white label model, and most players probably care, very little, Plaza Royal is a good-looking new addition to the UK casino market, but should it be the destination of choice for your online gambling cash?

Let’s have a deeper dive.

Pros and Cons of Plaza Royal Casino

If there’s a perfect casino site we haven’t found it yet. Like you, all casino sites have their positive and negative attributes.

Here’s the good for Plaza Royal Casino.

Pros:

1 – Licensed, legal, and legitimate

While we were finding out all about the other sites that Aspire is behind we were also making sure that the site is safe for you to use.

A UK Gambling Commission licence is a must-have for any site that operates legally with UK customers.

Aspire has one, with those 85 domain names, and there are no sanctions recorded against the company despite its huge number of brands. This is obviously a business that does the right thing when it comes to legal niceties.

2 – Highly secure site

Plaza Royal also tell you a fair bit about their security policies at the site. This includes 128-bit SSL encryption with a firewall. Payments are all handled by Aspire, who are registered online in only the UK, Malta, and Sweden.

3 – Lots of popular games

Naturally, we’ll cover this in full later on, but as soon as you arrive at Plaza Royal you see great titles like Eye of Horus, Gonzo’s Quest, Bonanza, and Fire Joker looking out at you.

It might not match some of the biggest sites for the sheer number of titles yet, but Plaza Royal, has quality in what it does offer. Dig deeper to find even more big hit games beyond the front page.

4 – Big Live casino

Everyone wants live casino these days. The trend might seem baffling in some ways: we’ve created amazing tech to deliver simulations, and now we use an internet link to simply film and experience the same experience we could have in a real life casino!

Plaza Royal is well up on this trend, with a huge selection of games from Evolution Games topping off a really big and good looking live casino facility. Blackjack, roulette, game shows, baccarat, sic bo, and a Salon Prive for all you high rollers out there – pull back the curtain and check it out.

5 – Customer care

A promise is a promise, and not something you can always rely on, but Plaza Royal make big promises for their customer care, using Aspire’s trade-marked Customers are Really Everything CARE branding to base their customer service on. It’s certainly easy to find help at the site and you’re never more than a couple of clicks away from a chat window or the email form.

Cons:

Sadly, into every life a little rain must fall, here’s what’s drizzly and grey at sunny Plaza Royal.

1 – Same old look and feel

The white-label model is obviously a success for a lot of casino businesses, but does it deliver the best for customers? We’re not so sure. You don’t have to spend much time around the casino business to start spotting the signs: sites that look similar, welcome offers with exactly the same terms and conditions, and more mean you click on what you think is a new site to find an old familiar friend with a new costume on.

Sure, you can rely on Aspire sites like Plaza Royal to deliver a great experience and you’ll be safe as houses here, but it’s nice to be surprised every once in a while.

2 – Listings that go on and on

It’s not always easy to find your way around a casino site and listing the games in a lot of different ways makes it easy to find titles you want to play. There is no thematic or developer listing at Plaza Royal, which are both preview features that make a lot of difference when it comes to finding the games you want to play. We’d like to see Aspire introduce these simple tweaks.

Plaza Royal Casino Games and Software

Games at Plaza Royal are scattered all over the front page, with a listing of the most popular titles across all styles and genres.

Digging in a bit deeper brings up some different priorities.

Slots

Slots are the bread and butter of the online casino business. Most sites have hundreds, with more and more sites now listing four-figure totals of slots alone. With between 200 and 300 titles, Plaza Royal has a way to go to match those titles, but they have a big selection presented in a number of ways.

On the front page are listed the most popular games. For slots, excluding other styles of games, this list opens with:

Creatures of the Night, Golden Osiris, Book of Dead, Fire Joker, Dragons of the North, Gonzo’s Quest, Twin Spin, Riches of Midgard Land and Expand, Wolf Riches and Frozen Gems.

Featured games at Plaza Royal starts up with: Spic Riches, Starburst, Fire Joker, Bonanza, Rise of Merlin, Doom of Dead, Legacy of Dead, Eye of Horus, Spin n Hit, Temple of Iris, and Ice Joker.

Leading the list of new titles, you’ll find the likes of: New Year Riches, Divine Fortune Megaways, Pyramid King, 24k Dragon, Holiday Spirits, Super Lion, Rise of Athena, Twin Spin Megaways, and Disco Diamonds.

Jackpot games at Plaza Royal include: Grand Spinn Superpot, Imperial Riches, Super Fast Hot Hot, Super Lucky Reels, Lucky Lady, Redeem the Dream, Super Lion, Vegas Night Life, Temple of Wealth, Beast of Wealth, and Jackpot Fortunes.

Table Games at Plaza Royal Casino

Casino games are listed as table games at Plaza Royal Casino.

There you’ll find both live and simulator games. First, we’ll look at the simulators, listing the live games in our separate Live Casino section later on.

Roulette

Among the roulette titles at Plaza Royal Casino are:

Roulette Lounge, European Roulette, Classic Roulette, Turbo Roulette, Sapphire Roulette Global, 3D European Roulette, Roulette Pro, European Roulette VIP, 10p Roulette, and American Roulette.

Blackjack

Everyone loves blackjack, which rewards strategy and thinking ahead more than any other casino game.

Check out: Vegas Strip Blackjack, Blackjack Single Hand VIP, Blackjack Multihand VIP, Blackjack Solo, Vegas Single Deck Blackjack, Blackjack Single Hand, Vegas Downtown Blackjack, European Blackjack, BJ Royal Pair, Blackjack Classic, Classic Blackjack, and more.

Video Poker

There are poker table games at Royal Plaza, including Joker Poker, and more, but no separate Video Poker section to the site.

Scratchcards

It’s unusual to see scratchcards so strongly featured as they are at Plaza Royal, so we’ll take a look at the top titles here. They open on:

King of Clubs Queen of Diamonds, Egyptian Oasis, Slapshot, Blackjack Doubler, VIP Gold, Hit the Bank, Piñata, Wizard of All, and Cash Rumble x10.

Bonuses at Plaza Royal Casino

Bonuses need to be understood to be properly assessed. The first thing to remember about bonuses is that they are designed by the casino site and that means that they are there to benefit the casino site above all else. Make that your guiding principle as you check out the small print on any welcome or other bonus you are offered.

Welcome Bonus at Plaza Royal Casino

As welcome bonuses go, the Plaza Royal offering is quite a low key. The headline offer is:

Up to £50 and 100 extra spins.

In order to claim your bonus, you need to register an account, deposit, and then you can collect your bonus.

It’s in the small print that the fun really starts though. Let’s have a look for you.

The minimum qualifying deposit is £10.

And then things get a little confusing because we think Plaza Royal have left up the terms and conditions for an old offer in some places on the site. This is bad.

The terms no longer match the headline offer.

What’s published in the small print is for a three-part deposit offer with a first deposit bonus of 100% worth up to £50 with 20 free spins on Starburst.

The second deposit bonus is worth 50% up to a maximum of £75. The minimum deposit for this stage is £20.

The third deposit bonus is of 50% on deposits and the site says you can collect up to £75. Again, the minimum deposit is £20.

The first deposit triggers the 100 free spins with 20 arriving on each of the four subsequent days, with spins on Finn and the Swirly Spin, Book of Dead, VIP Black, and Aloha! Cluster Pays!

What can we say? It’s lax and loose of sites to do this, and it’s not the first time we’ve seen this. The terms that we can pass on to you as definitely applying are a 35-times wagering requirement on the deposit bonus. This means that you must deposit and play with 35-times the bonus before you can withdraw any money from the bonus, that means at least £750 by our reckoning.

Spins vanish within one day and are valued as a bonus with the same 35-times wagering requirement on them.

The maximum winnings with the bonus might be £100 or they might be £500 – both are included in the two sets of terms listed when you click on the bonus to read more.

There are a load of other quite standard terms and conditions that limit the style of play a player can use his or her bonus for, including limits on bet sizes. There’s a big list of weightings on games too.

The whole thing is confusing and we can only pass on what we see, including the fact that a single box on the site’s front page tells us simultaneously both that the minimum deposit for a welcome bonus is £10 and that the minimum deposit for a welcome bonus is £20.

Our guess is that the terms for a number of offers have been left up uncorrected, and that you get up to £50 and 100 spins in one go in return for deposits over £10, with a 35-times wagering requirement on everything, but who knows.

Other Promotions at Plaza Royal Casino

The welcome bonus was the only promotion we found on our visit to Plaza Royal. However, the site’s terms and conditions confirm that such offers do exist, and, as is the case at most casino sites, they include bonuses for making deposits, including bonus money gifts, free spins, and cash back.

Loyalty Schemes and VIP

There are reward points at Plaza Royal as a loyalty reward. We cannot find any further details of this scheme. Most sites operate loyalty schemes that simply reward players by paying back a tiny fraction of the amount they deposit in bonus points. These points can be collected and used to earn your way up a tiered schedule of rewards that usually include things like better deposit offers, faster withdrawals, access to new levels in the live casino and so on.

At the top of most loyalty schemes is the VIP club. VIP clubs are usually operated by invitation only. These are levels of reward kept back for the highest spenders at a casino site and they may include tangible rewards like days out and personal account managers.

These schemes are a good example of how casino bonuses work. They are designed to make a player want to spend more time and more money at a site because the more time and money a player spends at a site the more money they will lose (this is all but a mathematical certainty) and the more profit the site will make.

Please be aware of this when you consider whether or not you want to accept a bonus.

Plaza Royal Live Casino

Live casinos are where the smart players are heading these days. Before you join them, a couple of words of warning. Live casino games are often slightly more expensive than simulated games or slots. These games use live staff to deliver the game so they cannot be run for free: this increased cost means that betting levels often start slightly higher and that it is all-but-impossible to play these games on a demo mode. So if you want to play live games try a computer version first to be sure that you know the rules.

We also like to remind our players that real people demand real respect. Treat casino staff as you would like to be treated yourself, please. While being polite you should be realistic, and don’t make gambling decisions based on how you feel about a member of staff.

At Plaza Royal, there are dozens and dozens of games, based largely on Evolution Gaming titles. Evolution Gaming are the biggest suppliers of live casino games in the world, and they have studios in Europe and now in America.

The games include:

Blackjack in all variants, including party games, presented games, high-speed games, infinite games, free bet blackjack, VIP games and salon prive games.

Roulette games include French, American, and European rule variants. There is also a selection of live language options, including Norwegian, German, and Danish. You can play double ball, high speed, instant, and auto games as well as VIP and salon prive games.

Game shows are a growing part of the live casino market. At Plaza Royal you can play the Lightning series of games based on casino classics, as well as Monopoly, Mega Ball lottery games, Dream Catcher, Top Card, and Crazy Time. You can also bet on football with the Football Studio game.

Baccarat and sic bo games are listed together and both are given an East Asian, Macau theme. There are rule variants that include Dragon Tiger, and high-speed games.

Live poker at Plaza Royal includes casino hold ’em, Caribbean Stud, Texas Hold’em, three card poker, and side bet city.

Plaza Royal Mobile Casino and App

Mobile games are delivered via a mobile web site on Plaza Royal, there is no download and no app.

Banking

You can deposit with:

Visa, bank transfer, Trustly, Skrill, Skrill 1-tap, Neteller, Much Better, ecoPayz, PayPal, Rapid Transfer, Giropay, interact, AstroPay Card, Euteller, eps, CashtoCode, and Paysafecard.

All deposits are instant.

In UK £ you can withdraw to: Visa (0 to 6 days),   skrill (0 to 2 days), Neteller (0 – 2 days), PayPal (0 to 2 days), Astro Pay Card (3 days).

Customer Support

Customer support is via the CARE system used by all Aspire sites. You can click on help at any time and you’ll get a chat window and email option, there is no phone line.

You can also browse a big selection of FAQs, which should answer most of your questions.

The Final Verdict

Sorry to go on about this, but the big issue for us here is the mess up over bonus terms. Bonuses are the main draw at any casino site and we see it as our duty to explain them properly to customers. We feel we haven’t been able to here because of some sort of glitch, we hope Royal Plaza sort this out as soon as possible because otherwise, they’ve got a great little site.

The bonus we think you can get isn’t the biggest, but the terms are decent (we think), and the site is well laid out and easy to use. Plus they’ve got a good selection of games and a really excellent live casino set-up.

A couple of tweaks here and there and the basics – good banking options including PayPal, Aspire’s usual virtues, and more – could be improved to make this a really great site. Check it out for yourself and see what you think.