MSS & Suncoast 12/20-25

This was a different trip for us. Well, we still lost, so that part isn’t different! We regularly double book hotels to get the free play. Well this trip we were booked at 3 places. MSS, Four Queens and Suncoast. We moved to Suncoast for our last two nights.. More on Suncoast later.

We checked in on SWA exactly 24 hrs ahead of time and still ended up with B33 & B36. That kind of sucked, but we did discover if you are in row 17, that is the first drink order taken by the rear FA.

We arrived on Friday on time at 12:45 PM and as usual from Milwaukee, it was a full flight. The hotel limo driver was waiting at the bottom of the escalator. Luggage came off quickly and we were unpacked in the suite and at the Boar’s Head 1 hr after touchdown. A nice touch by the limo driver...he had chilled Coronas in the bar rail and said help yourself. That got him an extra $5 tip on top of the normal $20.

Shortly after, VMBer Turtleman looked us up at the bar and we had a couple of drinks, strictly for medicinal purposes. He was pretty sick and it was their last night in town.

The gambling started out very cold and I was doing so bad on DDB that I switched to JOB to slow down the losses. Of course you know what happened on the very first hand in JOB. I hold a pair of aces and end up with four aces with the kicker!@##%. My wife always claims it wouldn’t have happened if I was still on DDB. That advice is of little comfort to me. Since I got $125 for the 4oak, I switched back to DDB. A few hands later, I hit this:



That brought me back to +$700. Little did I know, it would be my second and last 4oak for Friday night. The misery continued on Sat with again only two quads. My royal-less streak continues. It has now been 3 years and 9 months since I hit one and that is around 19 trips to LV. Not a teaser, you won’t find a picture of one in this report. Next chance Feb 5th.

By the way when I started playing DDB for $1, the progressive was at $4,444.44 (the only reason I remember) when I quit Sunday night, it was only at $4,461.

I went to see my host to make reservations at the Redwood for Sat night, only to find out they are closed for two weeks for some kind of annual deep cleaning. We ended up at Pasta Pirate. Nothing wrong with that and the food was good, but Saturday night is a Redwood tradition for us. At PP, we started with escargot ($8) and I had the filet and lobster ($20) and my wife had the penne Diana ($13). More losing after dinner, so we wandered Fremont St.

A little progress has been made on the bier garden at Plaza since last month, but still not open. Once it is, I just don’t see the attraction of sitting there. The stage at the end of Fremont blocks any people watching, plus they built walls on the patio, which would seem to block any view of Main Street. IMO, the Plaza has screwed up again.

Bangers was not open and it sure looked like they have a bit of work to do if they are going to make the grand opening on the 27th.

We did go see the new container park area during the day and it is an interesting concept. You sure can’t tell that those are old shipping containers. Side note…our bartender friend at the Cal said her husband sold them all of the containers. Useless trivia I know.








Normal Sat night on Fremont. Yes, there are panhandlers and costume characters but none of that bothers us. The zipline was not operating. I don’t know if it hasn’t opened yet, or because of the high winds? I think they did a nice job of decorating the tower.

Sundays we usually walk over to Four Queens and go upstairs to Chicago Brewing Co to watch the Packers and have some food, even though it is not a comp there. The forecast for Green Bay was heavy snow so of course I bet the under. End result…very little snow and the game total was 69. Loser! I had a little luck on VP in the bar, nothing to write home about, but we arrived at 9:30 AM and didn’t leave until our Packer game ended at ~5 PM and I was ahead. Not so for my wife, her losing continued.

The match deal at Four Queens is a great bargain. With your food and beverage total between $20 & $50 at Chi Brewing, Four Queens will place that amount of free play on your player’s card, plus a $10 match play. Since our drinks are comped while playing, we actually order more food than normal, just to hit the $20 mark. Plus, I took my $10 match play to a BJ table and hit a BJ on my only hand. Uneventful balance of Sunday and we just meandered our way back to MSS to lose some more.

The Packers w/o Aaron Rodgers just are a bad team, but if they beat the Bears on Sunday, they will still win the division. I have already been notified I got picked in the lottery for the home playoff game if they win the game on Sunday. I don’t feel like freezing my ass off in January for a 8-7-1 team at Lambeau, so if they win on Sunday and if somebody wants playoff tickets to Lambeau, PM me. I’ll sell them for face value. Sec 121, row 28, seats 1 & 2. They are actually good seats on the 40 yard line. $125 for each. They host the wildcard game either Jan 4th or 5th, if they beat Da Bears.



Now for the different part…after reading VMBer “gambler’s”’ report of how a few hours at Suncoast got them offers for $300 in Free Play and $300 in food credits ($100 per day), I became interested. Gambler and spouse play similar to us. $1 VP for the guys and quarters for the ladies. I called Suncoast and asked for the email of a host, any host. Well, the first one given to me kicked back my email. I called and confirmed the spelling and asked for another email address.

I emailed that host, gave him my B Connected card # and asked what he could do for us upfront? I gave him an approximation of what kind of play he could expect from us and said at MSS, we get a suite, limo and the Gold Card for all our meals. I went on that we were looking for a change of pace and wanted to split our trip between 3 nights at MSS & 2 at Suncoast. I also mentioned we heard the suites at SC were so much nicer than MSS (hint, hint).

I’m guessing what follows in the offer is him hoping to get us to stay there in the future. My reluctance is at Suncoast w/o a car, you are pretty much stuck there. I don’t know about the future. It’s no secret I like my adult beverages in Vegas, so a rental is out of the question. The WAX is an easy option for $1 (over age 60) each way to downtown, if we did make a change. Rampart casino is about a half mile walk, but not really impressed with that place.

We did discover that there is a 5 mile walking trail next door that runs along Angel Park golf course and you can access it off the Suncoast property. We do enjoy a morning walk. Our norm is to walk from MSS east on Fremont until the area gets a little sketchy, usually a few blocks past ElCo.


The host got back to me the same day and I must say that is refreshing change from my host at MSS. He offered to upgrade us to a one bedroom suite and when I inquired about free play and food, he said he could only do the $35 I had in my mailer for FP. The mailers started coming after I took the WAX from MSS to SC back in March, when on a solo trip and I spent about 2 hours there on VP. Food was the “charge it” to the room and we’ll see at the end. OK, fair enough. He also said he’d like to have lunch with us one of those days. Now that is something gamblers like Shifter, VegasBJ or UKfantic etc get, not us. I’ve had the same host for over a dozen years at MSS and the subject of dining together has never come up. We probably don’t want it to anyway.

A little explanation…when we lived in Vegas, we split our gambling time between MSS & SC and we really enjoyed SC in spite of never winning a significant jackpot. I don’t know how far they back they look at play, but except for the 2 hours mentioned back in March, we haven’t played there since early, 2010 when we moved back to WI. The two night offer mailers just started coming a few months ago.

I read that SC has a free airport shuttle and inquired if it would be running at 6 AM on Christmas morning. No, it doesn’t start until 8 AM, but then the host said he would arrange a ride for us at 6 AM to the airport. Very nice!

Now here is where a couple of people in VMB sent PMs and said I had a lot of chutzpah after I told them what I did. I emailed again and asked he could arrange a ride from MSS to SC for us. I said if not, no biggie, we would take the WAX. He got back to me and said we are all set with a 9 AM ride to SC. I wasn’t really sure what “ride” meant, but OK.

Someone joked maybe he’ll send us $4 to take the WAX.

So, Monday morning rolls around and there is a Suncoast security van waiting for us at MSS. Kind of funny to see the armed security guy driving the van. The suite wasn’t ready, so we checked the bags at the bell desk and started gambling. They said try back around 11. I told the host he could expect about $10,000 in coin-in per day with us playing on the same card. Me, $1 & my wife quarters. In the end it turned into about 26,000 for the two days.

DDB is 9/6, BP is 8/6 at both quarter and dollars on the bartops, but there is no JOB, at least at the bartops.

Suncoast does have resort fee that includes WiFi, but the fee is waived on a comped room. We did get a slower speed Wifi which was fine for checking mail. You can purchase a faster speed if needed.

11:30 I went back to check on the room and holy crap, what a suite!! I am in the camp of the how much time do you spend in the room in Vegas, but this blew me away. 4 flat screens, 6 telephones, including 2 in the bathroom!
Wet bar

















There is a little business center desk behind that half-wall partition.



We were in an even numbered room facing south, so we didn’t have a view of the golf course.

Just a fyi, at the liquor/gift shop, you can pay with B Connected points, so I bought a couple of bottles of wine for the room. Also on Tuesdays if you are over 50 (I think) you earn 7x points all day long on the B Connected card. I cashed in some points for play but still am over two million because of that. They do make it way too easy to access cash from your account right at the machines.:evillaugh

More useless info. The cocktail waitresses were all excited about a raffle they were holding for the employees at Suncoast. They apparently changed out all the flat screens in all the ~400 rooms, plus the bar areas and they were having a raffle for the employees to win a used flat screen. $35 to enter for them. A couple of them at the bar I was sitting at won and were really excited.

At checkout the food we charged to the room was just over $100. The host also comped us $70 for a dinner on Xmas Eve. You can charge to your room at Tgi Fridays, also. All the food charges were taken care of.

Coming home the ride arranged was the Suncoast limo waiting for us at 6 AM on Christmas morning. I didn’t factor in the lack of traffic on Xmas morning, so we got to the airport too early. I have never seen the I-15 that empty.

Anyway, found a bar in the C terminal that opened at 6:30 AM.

Most everything else was closed. Either because of the holiday, or it was too damn early?

Our flight was non-stop to Milwaukee, but then this flight continued on to Ft Lauderdale and then San Juan. Man that makes for a long day of flying! We did Early Boarding and got A17 & 18. I wasted $25 on that one. There were only 49 people on the flight! Everybody could have their own row on the 737. Big tailwind and we made it to MKE in 3:15.

Got back to the off-site parking lot ($6 per day) and had to dig the car out of the snow. Then, here is what the patio looked like back home.




On SWA if you are flying on holidays they buy you a drink. Well on this flight, every drink was free. They didn’t make any announcement, but they never collected for our 3 drinks each. It was a very relaxing flight back! We finally got around to seeing Hangover 3, Bachelorette & Rumor Has It, on our dvd player. I don't buy them, I just get the Netflix dvds and dub them to a flash drive to watch.

They were OK and it does make the time pass quickly.

The trip was 5 nights, normally we do four and between MSS & SC we put $60,000+ coin-in. I'll be very curious if that play changes our offers from SC for either Feb or April. I'd be willing to take the WAX out there in Feb from the airport if we got a suite again and then just take the WAX downtown once or twice to see family that is coming to town in Feb.

Hope I didn't bore you!

 

I forgot about this. On our flight from MKE to LAS we walk up to the TSA podium together and TSA checks her ID and says she was selected for pre-screen. She goes into another line and gets to leave her shoes on and doesn't even have to take the liquids out. Metal detector and that's it.

Now he looks and my ticket and tells me I have to do the normal. I ask how did she get that and the answer is that it is randomly chosen by the airline. In this case SWA. Coming back, we both had the normal, shoes off etc

 

Enjoyable report, Joe!

 

great trip report and wish you had broken that royal drought.

Boy. Playoff tickets at face value for a Packers Game???
It would be tempting to think about canceling in my Vegas weekend Jan 10th for a Lambeau field weekend instead.. Love staying at the Tundra Lodge when weve gone to Lambeau. Let's see what happens Sunday....

 

Great review Joe. That's is some suite. When we move out there in 24 months the SC will be our home base. I love that place, too.

I believe this month (I think I saw signage) that it's 7X tue, 7X wed, 7x thurs (VP) and 11X thurs (video/reel slots), so you may be in for more than you think.

 

Hey Joe ... nice report ... sorry to hear of more losses, and no Royals.

Nice pictures of your suite at the SunCoast. We always try to get a "golf view" room on the 5th floor ... looks right out on the golf course, and straight over at the Rampart.

SunCoast surprised us a year ago, and sent us a 4-night free offer, which we were allowed to use over the Super Bowl weekend ... plus $100 in free-play, and $100 in dining credits. We still aren't sure why we got that offer, but we jumped on it for the 2013 Super Bowl trip.

You mentioned above that the SunCoast had 9/6 DDB, and "8/6 BP" .

Do you really mean "8/5 Bonus Poker", or do you really mean "9/6 Bonus Deluxe" ? Because ... I have never seen 8/6 Bonus Poker ... ????

Thanks for the report .... GO BEARS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Buddha"

 

Now that, my friend, is just the kind of useful information I come here for. Two more weeks and l I can put this helpful tidbit to use.

 

Buddha, you are correct. It was 8/5 BP and I even screwed up what game I was playing and how much I won. I switched to BP, got the aces and won $400, that is why I switched back to DDB, I had some funds. I'm easily confused. I'm so used to switching to JOB at MSS when things are going badly. This was actually my very first time playing BP.

 

You get a lot of bang for your buck at Suncoast. I wish it was close to something else, but then again if it was, it wouldn't have to work so hard like it does now.
Thanks for the report.

 

Nice report Joe. Awesome room at Suncoast. Wife and I will have to look for the walking trail next time we are there. I hope you get 3 or 4 royals next trip. It's usually feast or famine.

 

The Rampart is reasonably close to the SunCoast, and is a very beautiful property. They have lots of full-pay VP, a nice diner / coffee-shop, and a delicious buffet. We always set aside at least one day for the Rampart ... and ... this coming year (2014) they have coupons in the ACG book.

In addition to the Rampart, the Red Rock is just a short drive away.

 

I figured it was a typo, but if it wasn't, I would be more tempted to book a trip there. :evillaugh

And no 9/6 Boner Deluxe at the bar Joe? I think I can hear BeeeJay and Flusher crying over this...:evillaugh It's 99.61% when using 9/6 JoB strategy. And if you treat inside straights like you would in DDB, that covers a lot of the differences.

Me and you need to find a Royal though!!

Thanks for sharing!

 

Wishing you that Royal come Feb.

Nice suite!

Always enjoy your reports.

 

Curious about the Packers lottery system for playoff tix? How does that work,I thought season tix holders accounted for every seat already?
But nice report and makes me want to try out the Suncoast.

 

Ummmm... you did not include a Kelli report... you know how I like you guys to keep up with my favorite [STRIKE]dream-girl-Fantasy[/STRIKE] I mean... MSS bartender , right?

Damn, now I will have to depend on an update from Flusher... I will be lucky if he remembers anything through his Absolute infused haze.

Shit!

 

Enjoyed your trip report, Joe. Hopefully you'll end your royal flush drought in Feb.

I was able to see the Suncoast rooms this past March since my friend and his wife were staying there. I like this place and is considering staying for a couple of nights in the future. He had a view of the golf course and it was really nice. The room was awesome.

Heading out there in late Feb. early March. It can't come soon enough....

 

Unless things have changed recently there is plenty of 9/6 Bonus Deluxe at the bars.

 

Playoff tickets are optional for the season ticket holders. The Lambeau 6 game ticket holders have first choice. Whatever is left then goes into a drawing for us Gold package holders.

The Gold package is 2 reg season & one preseason game each year. This goes back to the days when the Pack played 3 games in Milwaukee at County Stadium. We've had that package since 1981.

Our norm each year is to give away the pre-season game to one of my wife's nieces, attend one reg season and usually sell the other on eBay.

When they played in MKE we never missed a game, but now it's a 90 mile drive to Lambeau and since I like drinking, we also get a hotel for the night. Once a year is enough for the Lambeau experience. The 60" at home is just fine!

 

Sorry Squid, she is still there and nice as ever. Jose, the bartender who hates cold, was off playing in the snow at Park City, UT for an entire week!

 

""" Got back to the off-site parking lot ($6 per day) and had to dig the car out of the snow. Then, here is what the patio looked like back home. """"

Joe, Execu-park is $8 a day and the car is cleaned off and heated up when you get there. You just give them a call when you get your luggage.