BANGOR – Hollywood Slots at Bangor’s first-year anniversary celebration on Saturday nearly doubled the racing casino’s usual weekend attendance.

“We had over 4,200” patrons, said spokeswoman Amy Kenney on Sunday.

“That is a record. It was higher attendance than our average Saturdays have been running,” she said.

According to Kenney, 1,400 to 1,600 patrons go to the company’s interim slots facility each weekday. On weekends, the number typically jumps to 2,500 to 2,700.

The temporary racino, which features 475 slots, eventually will be replaced by a $90 million complex housing up to 1,500 of the gambling machines, slated to open in mid-2008 across Main Street from Bass Park.

General Manager Jon Johnson, who spent Saturday greeting the patrons, said that while staff were mindful of Saturday’s milestone, he was surprised by the number of patrons who also were aware of it.

“This is part of what makes it all worthwhile,” he said, crediting the success the racino has seen after its first year of operations here to efforts of staff at the slots facility, Bangor Raceway and the off-track betting facility housed underneath the racetrack’s grandstand.

The one-year anniversary bash featured cake for everyone, champagne for $1 a glass and, as a nod to the racino’s Tinsel Town theme, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike who arrived and left in a limousine.

The limousine, driven by Rick Briggs, owner of Blue Hill Pyrotechnics and Limousine Service, caused a bit of a stir outside the racino.

Some of the patrons who saw the hired car thought it was carrying country great George Jones, who appeared Saturday night in concert at the Bangor Auditorium.