Lucky #13 Anniversary Trip - 7/28 to 7/31

My wife and I just got back from our 13th anniversary trip to Vegas. This was our first-time visiting Vegas together and our first times in Vegas as adults (we both went as teenagers with our families). These message boards were extremely helpful to us when planning our trip, so I wanted to return the favor to other first-timers and post some reports/reviews of our experiences. This first report is going to post some of the highlights & lowlights of our trip. I'll try to post some longer reports of the entire experience later on. Although this is titled for our 13th anniversary, it could also be called "The good, the kitsch, and the m'eh" as that would pretty much summarize our experiences.

The good:
Presidential car service – I reserved a town car to take us to the MB rather than take a cab and it was completely worth it. Our driver, Adam, was waiting for us as we got off our plane and the bags made it to claim quickly. We were off our plane and out of the airport within 15 minutes. At our request, Adam took us to a local liquor store to pick up some supplies for our trip. Even with this stop, we were at the MB within 40 minutes of our flight landing.

Carrot Top – Just plain funny. Got tix day of show through MGM online for 33% discounted rate after attempting to get a good deal from the MB concierge who could only offer us full-price seats. Great seats in the front row, but this is a small theatre, so doubt that any seats were bad. But the front row were only $8 more than sitting further back in the theatre, so worth it. His opening act was weak, but he came out and was funny from the beginning. I don’t usually like prop humor, but really enjoyed his show (perhaps it was the beer or four I had before the show). My wife’s face was hurting from laughing so hard. Some slow parts in the show, but overall, it was well worth the ticket price.

Eiffel Tower Restaurant – Absolutely the best dinner we’ve ever had. My wife and I came to Vegas to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary and chose the Eiffel Tower Restaurant as our “anniversary” dinner. I called the hotel months ago and made the reservation but was informed that they could not guarantee a window table for us; however, she would put in the request. During a search for reviews of the restaurant, I found the GM’s contact info and contacted him to see if he could help confirm a window table reservation for us – explaining to him that this would be an anniversary dinner and the receptionist we spoke with said she could not guarantee a window table. He responded promptly and said that he’d make a note for a window table for us and I was happy with that given other reviews saying that he followed through on his word. I have to say; however, that he didn’t just follow through on his word, but rather he (Lyle) went above and beyond for us and the chef and staff at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant made our night spectacular. It began with being taken to the best table in the house – the corner table overlooking the Bellagio fountains – which was decorated with rose petals. Our server came over and proceeded to ask us if we had special glasses for the occasion to which I only had a befuddled look on my face. However, my wife says yes and he comes back holding our silver flutes from our wedding 13 years ago. Apparently, my wife had contacted the restaurant and asked them if they could arrange to have our glasses ready if she mailed them out. Not only did they have them ready for us, but they also provided us complimentary champagne to toast our special occasion. If this had been the extent of the considerations we received during the dinner, we would have been thrilled; however, this was only the beginning. A short time later, our server brought us amuse-bouche, followed by a tasting tray (compliments of Chef David). While waiting for our entrees to arrive, we were approached by the photographer who stated that the GM (Lyle) wished to provide us a photo and she would come back later when the fountains were flowing to take the shot. After taking the photos, we were treated to the best entrees we’ve had in a long time (I had rack of lamb; my wife had rabbit). Figuring our night was over (we were STUFFED), our server then brought out the complimentary dessert dish to celebrate our occasion. All in all, the service at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant was top-notch from beginning to end. My wife kept saying throughout the evening that she was on “cloud nine” and the experience was “over-the-top”. I cannot thank Lyle, Chef David, and the staff of the restaurant enough! Mille foi merci!

Comped drinks – I was expecting the casino servers/bartenders to be a little slow to provide comped drinks when gambling. But we were happily surprised to find that they kept the drinks flowing while we played slots, video poker, and blackjack.

The kitsch:
A Little White Wedding Chapel – This place was pretty much exactly what we expected (and hoped for) when planning our vow renewal. We wanted a kitschy Vegas wedding experience and this place didn’t disappoint. We made a reservation for their “Cherubs’ Chariot” drive-thru package in a pink Cadillac. When we got to Vegas we called them to provide them with our room # and a driver was sent our way to pick us up in the limo for our ceremony. Our driver, Lorenzo, was 100% professional and a great guy. We enjoyed our conversations with him to and from the ceremony. When we got to the chapel, it couldn’t have been more perfect (i.e., kitschy). This is not the place to go for an elegant wedding – but it’s perfect for that classic Vegas-wedding experience. Although we didn’t pay the fee to have Elvis officiate our ceremony, we lucked out with having him do it for us as he had 2 other “Elvis” ceremonies bookending ours and it was more convenient for him to stay in costume rather than change. Although the Elvis costume was all for fun, he was really a great officiator and provided heartfelt (and humorous) vows which even got my wife crying. Taking into consideration the great pics we had taken (included in the price of the package), it was an absolutely perfect, kitschy experience. If you’re looking for a truly fun environment and want that classic Vegas experience, this is a great option.

The m’eh:
Mandalay Bay (customer service, leak, wifi, kids) – Gotta say I was a bit disappointed with the Mandalay Bay. We went into it expecting to be further away from the action which would require us to walk or cab it to other destinations on the strip. But we were OK with that inconvenience in exchange for great customer service, nice accommodations, and enjoying the pool. Unfortunately, the MB didn’t live up to these expectations.
First, the customer service disappointment. Right upon check-in we waited in line for about 40 minutes. We weren’t upset with the wait as it’s to be expected on a Sunday, so when we finally got up to the front desk representative, we were in good spirits. But, just our luck, as soon as we get up to the desk, the rep’s computer freezes and we stand there for about 5-10 minutes waiting for her to get it back up-and-running. Through that time we were still in good spirits and blew it off, even cracking jokes with her that it’s probably my fault since I have bad luck with computers and I bet if I walk away it’ll come back and start working with no problem. But the rep didn’t seem to be in a great mood so we didn’t try to crack any more jokes with her while she fixed the problem. Once it was back up and running, I handed her my ID & AMEX with a $20 bill sandwiched between hoping to maximize our room view. Once she saw the $ she acted offended and pushed it across the counter towards my wife stating that “you can’t ice cream sandwich me – we don’t do that here” – something that I know is blatantly false given that I’ve read posts about successful $20 sandwiches at the MB (often for an upgrade to a suite at THEhotel). Although disappointed, I wasn’t going to push for it, so I just left the $ on the counter. She then asked what type of upgrade we might be interested in and we told her all we really wanted the best strip view (i.e., highest floor) we could get – which wasn’t even that big of an upgrade since we had already booked a strip view room. She proceeded to offer us an upgrade to a suite at THEhotel – for a $40 upgrade fee. When I declined, saying that we wanted to stay in the MB tower since the strip views were better there as we could look directly up the strip rather than from being back off the strip a bit at THEhotel, she argued with me to tell me that the view from THEhotel was better. I politely denied the upgrade again (since I didn’t feel like paying $40 to upgrade to a room that I could have gotten for the same price as the strip view MB room when I originally booked our reservation). We ended up with a high-floor MB strip view room, so she may have hooked us up with a higher floor than what we may have originally received, but I was a bit disappointed with the service at check-in. It wasn’t as much that the $20 sandwich didn’t work, rather it was the impersonal service and the “offended” attitude that we received which disappointed us. Regardless, we figured that she was having a bad day and that any future interactions we had were be more to expectation. Unfortunately, that was not the case as every time we had to call the front desk (for a persistent leak in our bathroom – which I’ll mention later) and our check-out experience was very “just-the-facts” impersonal. And given the fact that we dealt with a leak in our bathroom for 3 days, I expected at least some sort of room or food credit to be offered upon checkout but we were offered nothing other than a “thank you” for letting them know of the problem.
Speaking of the leak, here’s our second quibble with the MB. We noticed upon return to our room one morning that there was a large puddle of water around the base of the toilet. We called down to the front desk to let them know and they promptly sent up an engineer to address the problem. He said the toilet was a bit loose and tightened it up. We’re thinking “problem solved” and went on with our day. On the way back to the room later that afternoon we noticed that the wallpaper in the hallway by our room was peeled up from the bottom suggesting water damage. I went into the room to check if the leak was back and was happy to see that there was no puddle, so we assumed that the leak was fixed and the wallpaper issue was unrelated. However, the next morning we again noticed the leak in the bathroom and this time, it was larger and spilling water out into the main bathroom area. We again called the front desk to report the leak again and they said they’d send someone up. We left the room before the engineer came up, but assume that s/he did as the leak was not present when we came back later that day. Coincidentally, we noticed on the way back that day that the wallpaper in the hallway had peeled a bit more and there was crumbled drywall on the floor, but didn’t think much of it especially since the leak appeared to be resolved once we got to the room. However, on our last morning, I noticed after my wife got out of the shower that the leak was back again – and bigger than before now covering a significant portion of the floor in the bathroom. Putting 2+2 together, I began to think that the leak may be coming from pipes in the wall when the shower is running. We didn’t call down to the front desk at that time as we were getting ready to check out, so I just waited to tell the clerk about the continuing problem at that time. Although she was thankful for us pointing out the problem, I was disappointed that they did nothing to compensate us for the inconvenience through some sort of food or room credit (especially since I’m a Mlife member and we earned a significant amount of points in our few day stay at the hotel).
And onto our third complaint about the MB – the wifi. Wifi service in the room was absolutely horrendous. We ended up using our phones for all of our web searches as there was too much competition for the bandwith in the hotel. When a page finally did load, it loaded quickly, but it was very slow in sending the requests and often timed out. We only had our phones and iPad so we couldn’t check the wired service to see if that was better.
And finally, the most disappointing thing was the huge # of kids/families at the pool. We booked the MB because we wanted to enjoy the beach/lazy river/pool experience. Although we expected some kids/families we didn’t expect “Disney in the Desert”. Don’t get me wrong, we are comfortable around kids (as we have 2 of our own), but we did not expect so many kids/families at the MB beach and the inability to find a single open lounge chair at 11:30 in the morning. We were hoping for a more “adult” experience without needing to spend the $ to go into the “toptional” Moorea Beach Club but that wasn’t possible. We did get up another morning and get down to the beach at 8:30 which was better, but the ratio of families/kids to couples was still very high at that time – just with lower total #s.

Burger Bar – Perhaps the worst $15 burgers I’ve ever had. The meat was undercooked (ordered medium, got rare; wife ordered medium well, got medium) and underwhelming. Onion rings were amongst the worst I’ve ever had. Was disappointed with this place given the recommendation we received from our driver and the fact that it’s a Hubert Keller restaurant

So that's the short-short review of our trip. All in all, we had a great time and were pleasantly surprised that our hangovers were minimal/nonexistent given the amount we imbibed while there. For our next trip we'll likely look to go with a couple of friends and stay in something more in the central part of the strip and more adult friendly. We're thinking the Cosmo, Mirage, or MGM for our next trip.

 

Day 1 (Part 1) - First-class experience - until reception at MB

Day 1:
To preface this trip report, let me be clear that my wife and I are not huge gamblers and don’t usually splurge on our trips. In fact, in 13 years of marriage we have only been on 5 vacations including this most recent trip and our honeymoon. And even when we went on those trips we weren’t “big spenders”. However, our fiscal situation has changed recently with both of us having professional jobs with good pay so we thought we’d take a stab at some luxuries that we normally wouldn’t do.

We got up at 4:00 AM for our 6:00 AM flight from SEA. When we arrived at the airport around 5:00 AM, I was shocked to see all of the activity and the lines for check-in and TSA. I had no idea that SEA would be so busy on an early Sunday morning, but luckily we checked in the day before so we could avoid the check-in line and go directly to the bag drop. We had expected to check 2 bags for our trip, but we, unfortunately, had to bring a third checked bag as we realized the night before that we overpacked a bit and our main bag was over the 50-lb weight limit. Plus, we wanted to bring a coffee maker with us as the MB doesn’t have in-room coffee. So we had to check an unexpected third bag which I expected to be charged for (damn, $20 in the red before I even hit the first slot machine). However, as I was reaching for my wallet to pay for the bag, my wife tells the clerk that we should get 4 bags checked free since we had first class tickets – and then looks to me and says “surprise”. Turns out she had upgraded our tickets to first-class when she checked in the day before as a nice way to kick off the trip.

(btw – this is the first of a few “surprises” that we both pulled on each other throughout the trip – turns out I’m not the only romantic one in our relationship).

Pleasantly surprised, I gladly handed over our third bag and headed over to the TSA line expecting a long wait given that the airport was busy. However, when rounding the corner I recalled that there was a separate first-class passenger line and we breezed right through security with only needing to wait long enough to pop off our shoes/belt and empty our pockets. The Alaska first-class experience was great – free drinks (of which my wife decided to get an early start and pounded a couple of mimosas before we got off the plane in Vegas) and a nice breakfast.

Upon our arrival at the new T3 at McCarran (nice & clean – significant improvement over T1), we headed out and made our way to baggage claim where our driver, Adam from Presidential) was waiting for us. My wife looked over to me and asked “what you’d do?” (see? – she’s not the only one who can have surprises on our trip) Adam was a treat – very professional and friendly. He grabbed our bags for us and we were on our way to the hotel – with a quick stop over at a liquor store for some supplies.

[As an aside, I highly recommend car service to your hotel if you’re looking to pick up supplies on the way. Although a cab would have been cheaper (and likely easy to catch that early in the day – we arrived at 8:18 AM), the cost of making the cabbie wait while you shop for supplies makes the splurge cost-effective.]

With beer, water, & wine in tow, we made our way to the Mandalay Bay and arrived around 9:00 AM. After checking our bags with the bellman, we decided to wander around the resort before attempting to check-in (big mistake – we should have gone to the front desk to see if we could have taken care of things earlier). After a while of wandering around the casino and checking out what the MB had to offer, we headed over towards the Shoppes at Mandalay Place (where we fell victim to a timeshare pitch for free show tix – aaaaaggghhhhh) and the Luxor with a stop on the way back through at Ri Ra for breakfast.

The food at Ri Ra was pretty good – my wife had the brisket omelet and I had the traditional Irish breakfast – but the best part was relaxing in the AM with a nice pint of Guinness. Our server had a thick Irish accent which came across as pretentious and fake and left us with the feeling that the pub was trying to hard to be authentic (apologies if it's a real accent). Overall though, it was a decent breakfast for the price (~$15/each) and was nice to get some traditional breakfast food like black pudding and grilled tomatoes. From there, we headed back to the MB and dropped a little coin into the (unfriendly) slots and then went to check in.

[Note: the unfriendly slot theme is kind of prevalent in our trip - we lost more than we won, but guess that's what Vegas is all about]

The lobby was extremely busy with lines for check-in and check-out wrapping back towards the elevators. Although the line was long, we managed get through it in about 40 minutes. After a less-than-friendly check-in experience (read my initial post on our experiences at Mandalay Bay), we headed up to the room to freshen up and figure out our plan of attack for the day.

(more to come…..)

 

Great read so far!

 

Sounds like a pretty cool experience at ET restaurant. It's nice to near about folks going out of their way to provide to notch service.

Sorry about MB, though...guess you can't win 'em all.

Looking forward to the rest.

 

eiffel tower restaurant

Do you remember who your servers were at the restaurant, we've have Allyson and JP, both are amazing and make the dinner a wonderful experience

 

Enjoying the trip report and loved the Eiffel Tower Restaurant report.

 

You didn't really think that it would be easy to find chairs by the pool at 11:30 did you?

Also FYI: A concierge is useful in getting tickets to sold out shows or getting better seats than you can get but they will probably never get you discounted tickets.

 

john1516inny - I'm not sure what our server's name was so I didn't include it in the initial review. I believe his name was John (coincidence). I'll ask my wife if she recalls.

 

Actually, we thought we should be able to find one somewhere given the reviews we read online (which suggested that as long as you're down by noon you should be able to get something) and the discussions we had with others in the elevator the day before who said they had been there for 4 days so far and didn't have any trouble getting chairs.

 

Day 1 (Part 2): Vow renewal & ginger-haired comic

[OK, so here’s a little more of the backstory. As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I planned this trip to coincide with our wedding anniversary. We only had a few days to take off and now that we live on the west coast, we didn’t want to take the time to fly back across the country to the Caribbean where we spent our honeymoon. And although Cabo was our first choice to get back to the beach, we didn’t want to be that far away from our two young kids. So although Vegas wasn’t our first choice, we quickly embraced the idea of a turning this trip into kitschy Vegas wedding experience to celebrate our anniversary. So, we intended the rest of our Day 1 trip to give us that classic/kitschy Vegas feel. Now back to the report.]

So after checking in to our room at the MB, we headed up and got refreshed (and had a few drinks from our supplies after a bellman brought up our gear). We had a limo scheduled to pick us up around 4:30 to take us to our vow renewal, so we had a few hours to kill while we pre-gamed for the ceremony. Throughout the day we were discussing whether we wanted to go see a show in the evening or take a trip through some of the old-school Vegas institutions to get that classic Vegas experience (e.g., downtown casinos, the Peppermill, Flamingo, Tropicana). Although we heard great things about the Cirque shows, the only show we really cared to see while in Vegas was Carrot Top and since we had dinner plans on Monday and Carrot Top didn’t perform on Tuesday (our last night in town), we realized our only chance to see him was Sunday night after our ceremony. We spent a bit of time going back and forth between living up the classic Vegas or going to see Carrot Top (two diametrically opposed options, huh?), but eventually came to the decision to see the titian-coiffed prop comic since it would allow us to stop by the room on the way back from our ceremony. So we began to look into ticket options for the show.

Since we had wifi in the room, I pulled out the iPad and started to search for tix. What a nightmare – the wifi was horrendously slow and rarely loaded any page. Thinking it was a problem with the iPad, I pulled out my phone – and then my wife’s phone – but regardless of the device, when searching on wifi they were frustrating paperweights. I finally gave up and grabbed my phone to search through the cell service and came across a 33% discount through MGM online for the night’s shows. Thinking that perhaps the concierge could provide some better service (and maybe a better deal), I called down to the desk to inquire about tix. Color me disappointed as he only offered me available tix at the full ticket price and even after stating that I saw some discounted ones through the MGM site, he mentioned that it was all he could do. So I hung up the phone and immediately went on my cell browser to book the discounted tix. With only a few hours to spare before our limo pick-up, we rushed over to the Luxor to pick up the show tix at will call and play a few slots (again, unfriendly to us). [yes, it was a few hours, but my wife needed almost every second when we got back to get ready for the night out]

Around 4:00, we headed down to the lobby to meet our driver (with a quick detour to the slots on the way through – still unfriendly). A Little White Wedding Chapel sent over their car and Lorenzo picked us up. I don’t know why I expected a bit less in regards to the limo and service, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a very nice, late model limo and a very professional driver. Although I was hoping to take a trip down the strip to see some sights, we hopped on the highway to keep to the schedule. Upon arrival to the chapel, it was pretty much exactly what we expected. This is not the place where you go for your high-end, elegant wedding experience, but it was precisely what we wanted for this trip (after all, we had the elegant wedding 13 years earlier). Since I wrote a bit about the vow renewal earlier, I don’t want to reiterate much here. Suffice it to say that we had a great time with this ceremony and it was perfect for what we wanted. We didn’t get a chance to check out the pictures until we returned home as we didn’t bring a laptop with us. But upon viewing them when we returned to SEA we were very pleased with the quality – top notch photography – made me wish I had tipped him a bit more than I did. Overall, this (along with our anniversary dinner at the Eiffel Tower) was one of the top moments on our trip. Anyway – back to the report…

Originally we had planned to have our limo driver drop us off at the Peppermill on the way back down the strip so we could experience the kitsch of the Fireside Lounge. But given that we had tix to Carrot Top at 8:30, we wanted to eat locally back at MB and have enough time to ensure we would make the show. Prior to our trip we purchased a Restaurant.com voucher to Crossroads at the House of Blues for $50 credit when spending $100 on food/drinks, so given we were in a drinking mood and needed a quick bite, we opted for dinner at Crossroads. While waiting for our table, we spent a few minutes playing the slots, but luckily were called into our table quickly since the slots still weren’t overly friendly to us. Dinner at the Crossroads was a mixed bag. Our server was very attentive and served us quickly given we had to rush to make our 8:30 show. We ordered the shrimp & cornbread appetizer which was really good. I also had a glass of moonshine which was pretty good and reasonably priced for Vegas ($9). Our entrees weren’t quite as good though. My wife’s meatloaf was drenched in gravy which was a bit overwhelming and my swordfish, although flavored well, was a bit overcooked and dried out. Between the appetizer and entrees, we were only at about $50, so we had to make up the balance of our $100 minimum with drinks – which we weren’t upset about at all. Overall, our experience at the Crossroads was enjoyable. The décor was very much our speed (my wife LOVES sugar skulls and other latin/gothic inspired spaces), the service was very good, and the food was adequate – especially given the voucher we had.

From dinner we headed over to the Luxor to see Carrot Top perform (with a stop by the concession stand to grab some beers for the long show). This is a nice small theatre and although we had front row seats, I doubt that any seat in the theatre would be a bad one. His opening act (don’t recall his name, but believe he was a local radio DJ) was pretty crass and not all that funny. But thankfully, he only performed a short set (~10-15 minutes) and then Carrot Top took the stage. What a great show! He had us laughing from the beginning and the best part of his show is that you can tell he’s really having fun with it. He’s extremely high-energy and self-deprecating which makes it all the more funny when he tries out material that bombs miserably. Really, the best part of his performance is that you feel like you’re sitting in the theatre WITH him, not just there to WATCH him. I don’t want to say too much about his show as it might spoil it for some of you thinking of going, but all I will say is that if you’re on the south end of the strip, I highly recommend you take 2 hours out of your evening and go see this show. In the high-ticket price LV show market, this is a great bang-for-your-buck.

After Carrot Top we were in the mood to drink some more (it was only 10:30), so we grabbed some beers at the “beer n go” in the Luxor and headed for the tram to Excalibur. After a couple of drinks while enjoying the view on the walkway between Excalibur and NYNY, we decided to head into NYNY to see what other trouble we could get in. First stop was Coyote Ugly, but upon hearing the “club” music emanating from the doors and finding out there was a $20 cover, we opted to keep wandering around to see if something else would catch our fancy. For the entire time preparing for this trip, my wife kept saying that she wanted to ride the roller coaster at NYNY, so I suggested that we go ride it at night for a different experience. She was all for it, so we headed up to the arcade and over to the coaster. Bear in mind in 14 years of being together, we never went on a roller coaster together before, so I had no idea how she would react to it (a little foreshadowing here, perhaps?). Given that it was on her list of things to do in Vegas, I figured she loved riding on coasters, but I quickly learned while waiting in line that she was scared sh!+less. I convinced her that since we’re dropping $18 each to take this trip, we might as well sit in the front row. She took a bit of convincing, but eventually agreed and we hopped in after a short wait. What an adventure the next couple of minutes was! Halfway up the ramp my wife kept asking to get off the ride and then started screaming as soon as we approached the summit. But halfway down – when expecting to hear her scream how she wanted to get off – she yells out “this is awesome!” But that feeling of awesomeness was short-lived as we approached the top of the next hill and she saw the second (and largest) drop in front of her. From that point forward the screams were intense and non-stop all the way through the remainder of the ride. Once we stopped she nearly barreled me over to get off the ride and after a quick stop to see the ride pictures, she began to calm down and admit that she was really glad to go on the ride (although she has yet to admit that sitting in the front car was a good idea). [Note: as you may expect, we didn’t purchase either of the ride pictures of us as I don’t think the look of terror on her face in the pictures would be a good memento of our trip.]

After riding the coaster, we headed back down to the casino floor to search for our next watering hole. We enjoyed a few beers at the piano bar in Times Square, but were still looking for that “right” rock feel, so we grabbed a couple drinks for the road and headed over to Dick’s Last Resort at the Excalibur as we heard this might be a good spot for some live music and a raucous crowd. There was a band on stage when we got to Dick’s, but the crowd was really light (perhaps 10 people inside the place at 12:30 AM). We were disappointed as we had heard some good things about the place, but now realize everyone we heard these from suggested going early in the evening and not later at night. Lesson for next trip, I suppose. Anyway, we grabbed a couple drinks and watched the band for a few minutes, but the light crowd wasn’t really what we were looking for, so we decided to head back over to the MB to see if any of the bars on the way had a bit more action.

We had taken the tram from Luxor over to Excalibur earlier in the evening, but it was now too late and we needed to hoof it back down to the MB. Although it doesn’t look that far when out on the strip (nor does it feel that far when riding in the tram), you really notice how far of a walk it is when it’s 1:00 AM, you’ve had a few drinks, and you’re on a mission to get back. On our way back through Luxor we noticed that the casino seemed to be emptying out and the bar was a bit quiet. Perhaps this feeling of “closing time” combined with all of the shops at Mandalay Place being locked up contributed to it, but we began to feel the effects of a long day (I remind you, we had gotten up at 4:00 AM to get to the airport) and a few (too many?) drinks and decided to head straight up to the room to enjoy the strip view and have a nightcap rather than go searching for another bar. All in all, it was a great first day in Vegas – first-class, vow renewal, Carrot Top, and roller coaster – not a bad start to the trip…even with the unfriendly slots.

[More to come on Day 2 – pool, anniversary dinner, and maybe some luck changing at the slots?]

 

Ok - waiting for day 2!!

 

Don't know the people in ri ra who served you but I'm from Dublin and the accents I heard were real. Galway and mayo if I remember correctly