TR: 2/20-23 Spontaneous trip! Notes & rants, mostly PICS!

Background
I was just in Vegas last month and have next trip planned for the first weekend in May with my old college buddy. This trip happened by complete accident. I had planned on going to Phoenix for the weekend to collect some casino chips to add to my collection and relax. Getting caught in rush hour Boca/Ft Lauderdale traffic, I missed my flight out Friday night of FLL.. first time I've ever missed a flight. I pulled over at the FLL exit as my flight to PHX departed and pondered, do I just go back home and do nothing this weekend? Wait, Spirit always has an 8:30pm flight to LAS! I hopped onto the Southwest app and and changed my flight from PHX>FLL Monday to LAS>FLL for free. Hopped on TR website and only free nights I had were at the Linq, so I grabbed a reservation, then got one of 2 seats left on the Spirit flight. Parked at the airport and couldn't believe by random bad luck that scrapped my original plans I'd be heading back to my favorite city.

Friday 2/20
- Got in easy, no line at Linq checkin.

- I usually stay at Cosmo, PHo, Flamingo or Ballys. I was very impressed with the Linq. The rooms were updated and clean, love the dispensers in the shower. Downside = no provided toiletries like lotion. The A/C was probably the best I've had in Vegas, the room would get ice cold if I wanted it to. Loved that.







- I spent a lot of time this trip at both the Catalyst bar by the sportsbook at the Linq and the TAG bar. Both are great (or were, I'll get to that). The bartenders are great, the vibe great, all CET bars seem to now have multiple All Star machines among their other machines.

- Wandered the neighboring properties losing money at VP and craps. Love how fairly narrow the Linq is. Out one side is Harrah's, out the other is Flamingo/Margaritaville. Right outside the door leading to Margaritaville is the crosswalk over to the Forum entrance of Caesers to get to their sportsbook bar (my favorite, although I'll post my gripes later).





- All Star machine location bottom right with 8/5 JOB double STP @ Flamingo.



- 2 pics for Buckeyestud (aka C) who I wil be meeting in Vegas in May. His favorite craps table and a blurb I saw on ESPN while playing at Flamingo about one of the days we'll be there.

 

Nice TR so far. Looking forward to the rest!
I also like the Linq area. Have been to Brooklyn Bowl a few times. Have to take time just to enjoy the area and atmosphere..
Do the Linq Hotel elevators move faster than they used to???

 

Didn't notice any issues with elevators compared to anywhere else like Flamingo..

 

Saturday 2/21
- Started the day doing my favorite thing: grabbed all the sportsbetting sheets for the day and sat down at a bartop (Catalyst) to drink some baileys/coffee and plan my bets for the day. Put down 5 $20 2 team parlays then headed to Caesers.

- Wow. Trig was right (as read in the VP thread sticky): BP @ Caesers bartops is 30/6/5 now and DDB is 7/5. WTF. This has been a change since 6 weeks ago when I was here. I later found Planet Hollywood downgraded all of their bartop VP as well. This really makes the 2 All Star machines stick out as the only machines I want to play at Caesers book bar since the 8/5 JOB DSTP is multiple % better. Hit a quick quad at Triple Double Bonus



- Had lunch at the new Forum foodcourt.. ripoff. The asian wok place, $12 for a little plate of chicken, $5 water. Then had to get a cash advance (since I only had a minimal Phoenix bankroll with me and only a credit card). Such a ripoff here as well, $1000+65 fee, plus Chase charged me $50 on their end. Over 10% in fees but I needed money to gamble.

- Blurry quad at the Caesers book with multiplier. One parlay came through to cover all my other tickets that lost and leave me with a profit.





- Had a nice $300 winning session at Caesers craps on the DC. Played at TAG for a while back at Linq after to finish off 1000 TCs for the day (gets me 1000 TC bonus). Great VP and beer selection. Had a few nice hits, but like the summary of my VP sessions on the entire trip, I would start hot and be up a hundred or two, then end up plummeting down and losing it all knowing I should cash out and not doing it. Oh well.












- Bounced down the strip.. Diamond Lounge at Flamingo for some food, then VP/craps at Planet Hollywood. Besides seeing the downgraded bartop paytables as mentioned above, I still see their best VP being the bartop 7/5 BP STP at Heart Bar. Unfortunately the machine is butted right beside the DJ booth with the terrible pop blasting my ears out so I didn't stay long.





- Drunken hallway stumble back to room. Another losing day but fun.

 

Enjoying your report, thanks!

 

Great report, love the pictures!!

 

Excellent pictures. Thanks for posting.

 

Thanks for posting the room pictures. Looks like a huge improvement from the old IP days.

 

Sunday 2/22
- Props again to the Linq. Hash house room service breakfast FTW.



- Went down for my morning sports betting/VP ritual and I may be crazy, but they downgraded the VP paytables on the All Star machines overnight. I checked both Catalyst and TAG... the JOB DSTP went from 8/5 to 7/5 overnight. I kept thinking I was seeing something wrong but I swear it's true. Bad trend we're seeing here.



- Put down 8 $25 single team bets, with 3 fairly nice payoff upset picks.

- Went over to Harrah's center bar and played for quite a while, 5 play 8/5 JOB DSTP still present here. Tommy the bartender here was super nice, kept my greyhound reloaded without needing to ask. As always, I started up $200 quick, held even for quite a while then started plummeting. Back at my original buyin I knew I should move on but I played until it was all gone. I never learn.

- Watched the end of the games at Caesers sportsbook. TWO MAJOR PET PEEVES. #1- The bartenders here can be serious dicks. I understand they're busy and it's a long bar, but there's this Mexican guy, didn't catch his name, who I have seen on multiple trips and he's great at avoiding eye contact with you. You're trying to catch him for a drink and he just walks by over and over ignoring you. The white haired older guy is a little better at giving attention but always seems so stressed it's hard to get his attention too. PET PEEVE #2- with the WORST of the paytables, Caesers and PHo also don't serve Red Bull. It's all Rockstar which is horrid. So the worst odds and the worst drinks at their best two properties. It's like Caesers is trying to ruin their best bar at the sportsbook as much as possible like Aria did. Once the 30 minutes per drink policy like Aria kicks in here I'll lose my sh*t. Anthony gets props as one of the good bartenders. One quad over 2 hours which means I lost more money.



- Blue Jackets lost in a shootout to the Rangers or I would have pulled in all 3 of my bigger upset bets. I still snagged two of them with the Pacers and Grizzlies on the moneyline as underdogs. Went 5/8 overall but the two upsets payed nice.





- The rest of the night was very rainy, weird...same thing happened the day my Buckeyes won the championship last month, two trips in a row there's a day of pouring rain. Called it an early night around 11, done losing money and flew out early AM.

Overall, a fun a trip and the most spontaneous one I've ever had. Sports bets and craps both won me money and I finished down $1k at VP. Lesson? Play more craps and low roll/slowplay VP while sweating my sportsbets? Not sure, we'll figure it out in May. One royal and I would have been even on VP.

Can't wait for May!

 

Good report!

And let us pray that the rest of CET doesn't follow this horrible Game King trend!

 

YESS. Be prepared for a ridiculous weekend. Only concern is going to be trying to get any type of seat anywhere. It's gonna be nuts.

 

I never understand why so many continue to let CET hold them hostage. Wez, give the sportsbook bar at Palms a try. Sportsbook is nice and the bartenders are awesome. You never wait for a drink...they remember you one trip to the next, call you by name and remember your usual drinks. That is good customer service.

 

100% agree. We told them please don't call us anymore.

 

I'm all about free rooms and benefits for my level of play, and they still treat me the best (Diamond). I put the same coin in at Bellagio, I get "special discounted rates" of like $109 a night. Now after this trip, I have 5 nights booked at Planet Hollywood over Halloween worth like $1200, all comped. And I can then spend a lot of time at Cosmo/Aria/Bellagio on a "comp myself" trip.

Everywhere has pros and cons. Aria/MGM properties are great in some ways, love the Mirage/Bellagio/Aria sportsbook VP, but some of those bartenders are assholes, the paytables blow at Mirage, and the 30 min policy at Aria is horrid.

Cosmo is my favorite casino on the strip, but I get few very offers from them... VP bars are easily full if you want to sit beside a friend or two because of lack of seating, limits can be higher if you want to lowroll vs what you could find at CET, their player's club is the least accessable with a terrible website. You basically have to ask the Identity desk your tier points and status in person. It's all give and take.

Next trip in May will be 1 night at the D with lots of freeplay/matchplay, 3 nights at Cosmo, 2 nights at PHo. I have things I like and dislike about them all.

 

Love the spontaneity of this trip!

 

Great trip report - thanks for sharing!

 

Great Vegas fix here on a Sunday morning. Nice pix!

 

Great TR and super you just completely changed plans at the moment you knew you missed your flight. Great move! Enjoyable read and loved all the pics. Thanks for sharing!

 

Thank you for posting this trip report. I appreciate your review on Linq and the pictures. Interesting about VP. Looks like you had some good hits but sorry no royal.

 

Just an FYI regarding Cosmo. I always had trouble checking my points online, I had to call, email or find out when I got there.....yesterday I checked and they actually showed up on the website. Maybe they have fixed that little problem and hopefully it stays that way.....fingers crossed.