MyVegas Double check my math: Mandalay Bay buffet

So in planning for my next trip, I have one reward yet to be used and I'll likely use it for dinner at the Mandalay Bay buffet. There will be three of us eating (me, my wife, daughter) and I have approximately 100,000 LPs. Here are the options available to me:

2-for-1 Dinner Buffet for 9,000 LPs
One Dinner Buffet for 23,000 LPs
Two Dinner Buffets for 92,000 LPs

The way I see it, the 23,000 option makes no sense, because I'll be paying for at least one buffet anyway, so I may as well save the LPs and buy the BOGO option. That means the two options left are use the 2-for-1 voucher and spend only 9,000 LP (and $32 adult + $22 child=$54), or get two free buffets for 92,000 and then only pay for my daughter out of pocket ($22). That second option would mean I'm spending 83,000 LP just to save $32, which seems like a bad return on investment. Therefore, I'm leaning toward the BOGO and saving the other 83,000 LPs for another trip. Does that make sense? Am I missing anything? What would you do?

 

Go for the BOGO. The two free buffets is way overpriced.

 

I believe someone recently confirmed you could do the 32,000 and pay cash for one buffet. The One Dinner Buffet for 23,000 LPs counts as a paid buffet towards the 2 for 1 Dinner Buffet for 9,000 LPs. So you get 3 buffets for the price of one.

Anyone else heard of this?

Edit to add: See this https://www.vegasmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?109158-Mirage-2-for-1-and-1-buffet-and-free-dinner-buffet-at-the-same-time

 

Yeah 2 buffets anywhere is a rip. And anyone thinking about getting 2 premium tickets for Ka soon, they should get them ASAP. They upped Zarkana from 208k to 286k.

To me it sounds like OP goes to Vegas enough where it's worth banking the points if you have eyes on 6 digit awards.

 

The reason for the pricing has to do with the limit of the number of rewards you can use in 30 days. My wife and I are figuring out how to best allocate our LPs for our trip in a few weeks, and will both be hitting out max (3 each). Since we only go about once a year, it makes more sense to buy the two buffet passes at a large markup since the alternative is that they would more than likely go to waste.

 

Yeah, if you have any plans on going back to Vegas anytime resembling soon, then banking LP's makes sense.

On the other hand, my wife and I are going at the end of September, and I'm getting the two-buffet reward for 92k. Why? Because it's unlikely we'll be returning to Vegas until at least 2016. Given the rate of LP devaluation, what's the point of hoping they'll still be worth anything in two years?

 

I'm voting BOGO.
I've compared some of the buffets like you did, one person, two people, two for one... and some of them just don't make sense...
I've even compared other buffets admissions prices compared to how many LPs it takes to buy a free pass, and some just don't add up.

Monte Carlo is $24 admission or 18,500 LPs for One Free Dinner Pass [about 770LPs per dollar]
Mirage Cravings is $31 admission or 32,000 LPs for One Free Dinner Pass [about 1032 LPs per dollar]
Bellagio Buffet is $33 admission or 70,000 LPs for One Free Dinner Pass [about 2121 LPs per dollar]
Aria The Buffet is $35 or 39,000 LPs for One Free Dinner Pass [about 1114 LPs per dollar]
Circus Circus is $18 or 14,000 LPs for One Free Dinner Pass [about 777 LPs per dollar]

Being that they are all MGM properties why wouldn't they have a standard for the amount of LPs that is equivalent to $1?

 

I suspect that the different prices reflect the quality and popularity of the buffets, or MGM's perception of those criteria.

 

That's what I thought too, but if that were the case the LP's per dollar would still be the same. So for instance let's just say the Bellagio was $40 admission and the Mirage buffet was $30, that means the Bellagio is 33% more expensive. So chip-wise if it cost 24K LP's for the Mirage, then it should cost 33% more, or 32K LPs at the Bellagio, but instead its more, like 45 LPs. Just using fake numbers for example.

I wonder if it's that each place gets to choose how much they want to charge and maybe the high end places don't want too many of us riff-raff around!