1 Week at The Plaza 3/2-3/9

This is my fourth trip to Las Vegas and first trip report. I started reading this blog before the first one and have enjoyed every trip report. While this won't be like many of the great ones (no pictures) I didn't want to share some thoughts and experiences. Also since this will likely be the last trip for a while (wife has proclaimed it time to start trying for children) I figured this would be a great way to remember it. I will try to keep this fairly short, but I've never been known for brevity. I will break this into a few parts for ease of reading.

A little about my wife and I for context. We are both near 30 professionals who don't enjoy beaches or skiing, but love gambling and drinking along with good food and some pool time. Naturally Las Vegas was made for us. After staying entirely on the strip the first two years, last March we decided to stay downtown for half the stay. This was the single best vacation decision we have ever made. This year when getting ready to book my wife wanted nothing to do with the strip hotels for staying. After some initial booking difficulties with The Plaza, I reached out to Gary through this board and all was set up. This was the earliest trip in the year we have ever taken, but it was designed to get in to see the Backstreet Boys (my wife's bucket list concert). Despite not being much more than mid-rollers Gary was able to comp 3 nights, and casino rate 4 nights, despite a huge convention going on. He also advised to check with him at check out to see if anything more could be done. (I wasn't optimistic as I've never felt special in casino hotel)
Transportation:
Southwest nonstop BWI-LAS left at 6:30 am arrived at 900 am
Presidential Limo at the airport booked for a roundtrip. Driver was Mark and he was amazing!
From landing to room took right at 1 hour.
Lyft and Uber all week, amazing and only one surge after BSB Wednesday
Presidential back to LAS with Mark on Thursday at 530am
LAS-BWI 6:55 am-245 pm
Hotel:
I know this board has it's lovers and haters of the Plaza, and I'm not a believer in getting people who dislike something to change their mind regardless of the quality of the experience, so as a disclaimer right here I was previously a Plaza liker (from last year's vacation) and am now firmly a Plaza lover. Prior to leaving my wife proclaimed to me she would never stay anywhere else in Vegas again and wouldn't return if we couldn't stay at the Plaza. Everyone person we encountered on the entire trip was super nice and all the dealers and pit bosses were fun to play with. They genuinely seemed to appreciate our being there and made us feel like we mattered.
We stayed seven days in a King room South tower with pool view. The room is perfect for our needs, extremely large, with King bed, small couch, nice television options, desk area. The only complaint is relative to the size of the shower/toilet area. It's small, but very serviceable. I am a large human and had no real issues for the trip. That being said, it does feel like during their next renovation, there may exist an opportunity to alleviate some of the extra space with some more bathroom space. The room was spotless and was kept up wonderfully by the housekeeping staff. They regularly left extra water and towels and did an excellent job of keeping the room very nice! Check-in (a huge source of complaints) was breeze. From walking through the door to the room was under 10 minutes with free early check-in at 10 am. Throughout the week there was never a line of more than 4 or 5 people checking in despite massive crowds of people coming for conventions. Security was abundant checking room keys for elevators and routinely escorting people out who weren't supposed to be there. The smell that is often a source of issue was non-existent to me and I have pretty significant allergies but never had any issue.

I will take a moment here to say this. To my wife and I The Plaza has all of the amenities of a strip hotel that we would use (we don't do spas or night clubs), but treat people like us as though we matter and are important. The dining options are all good to great and perfectly varied. Very good steakhouse in Oscars, great unique dining in hash house, solid cafe/deli in Brightside, good pizza and McDonalds for drunkenness, and a solid mexican takeout. Additionally, the proximity of everything downtown gives you access to even greater options with more dining and gambling options. Every time we traveled to the strip for anything we found the staff miserable and discourteous (Cosmo, Harrahs, Ballys, Planet Hollywood, Aria, Bellagio, Paris) and like we were inconveniencing them by playing at the tables or ordering drinks (we always tip, dealers waitresses, and bartenders).

Gambling:

The gambling was solid this trip. I played enough at the Plaza to advance to the second tier players card and got 35 dollars in slot play with points at check out. Their bar top video poke was excellent and they have a great spin poker deluxe machine for nickles that dealt me 4 aces on bonus poker for a $400 payout. I did also hit for 300 dollars at cosmo (4 aces at chandelier quarters and a 200 win on bejeweled). I had many quads on bonus over the weekend a quad jacks on ddb at TAG one night before in and out. All told I had about 15,000 coin in at Plaza over 7 days along with about 5 hours of table play. Probably an addition $5,000 coin in spread out everywhere else. Total loss for the trip was right around $400.00.

Dining:

Probably our fanciest dining vacation with dinners at BLT, top of Binions, and Oscar's. I think the best steak was oscar's (rib cap), but best overall experience was binions. The BLT pop overs were delicious.
We also did the Aria dinner buffet (BOGO My Vegas) which was very good. LVA 25% offs for Binions and Oscar's along with BOGO at Fremont and MSS buffets. We ate Hash House 3 times as my wife loves it and used the funbook coupons for those, stops at In and Out and Giordanos along with Lombardo's were all exactly what they were supposed to be. Pop up Pizza, Pizza Lotto were serviceable. Freedom Beat and Triple George were pleasant surprises for both food and drink.

Drinks:
We found drink service to be solid most places to exceptional at the downtown grand the d and the plaza. All those places we found ourselves with glasses that were never empty. Cosmo and Aria were probably the worst. I played Video Poker at Chandelier nonstop at a decent pace for more than 40 minutes before the bartender came back around. At that point he said the ticket should be coming shortly and to keep playing. Finally after nearly 50 minutes after the initial comped cocktail he looked at the receipt made a second one and just said I guess the machine isn't giving them out. In the end it hurt them because as he was serving the second drink I hit 4 aces so that's a win. At harrahs and TAG (great stouts) we were told that as long as the light is green, liquor is every ten minutes and they can do a beer every 5. That was reasonably close to what actually happened.

Experiences:
We were there for the rugby sevens parade of nations and were right on the red carpet! That was a cool experience and using an app called royal crawl we also participated in a pub crawl after. Also going on was the Mint so we got to walk through the area of displays for that which had Fremont closed all the way to the container park. Dierks Bentley Friday night was excellent at the Chlesea was a great venue. Mat Franco was incredible and well worth the admission. Mob Museum was cool but maybe a little expensive. BSB was excellent and my wife loved it so that's even better.

At the end of the trip we stopped in to see Gary who was out, so we dealt with the host on duty. Initially we were told nothing more than our 3 nights, but to check with Gary when he came in. We were going to be gone to the concert and then leaving so I sent Gary an email instead. After evaluating our play he took care of 2 additional nights along with our food from Hash House and Oscars. Total cost for 7 nights and 4 meals was 288 and change plus tax. That's the first time anything like that ever happened to us and it made us feel even more valuable. We also got to meet Earl and he was wonderful! *

* A caveat to this: we did not change our play or coin in or length of stay from any of our past trips. We do not play for comps, we play to our level. The exact same coin in at Luxor, TI, and Harrahs was all met with a thanks for staying, but here is a bill for everything, and a feeling of really not mattering. It's my belief that casinos in vegas should be looking to court people like my wife and I, who are professionals with room for significant income growth as we go. The fact that we have never had a problem spending for rooms and food should make them want us to come back. The fact that we play where we stay and play as much as we can should make us even more valuable. Instead we are left feeling like we should be grateful for the privilege to stay and play on the strip.

I believe the best way to show how we feel is with our feet. I walk away from 6-5 blackjack even at 5 dollar limits, I won't play 2x odds craps and I will avoid bad video poker (hard on the strip). I am hopeful to be back to vegas sooner rather than later, but if it takes some time I leave with the best trip there I have ever had and the feeling that we have a solid home base for the future.

Thank you all for posting and reading and for keeping me entertained until next time!

 

Terrific report. Thanks very much for the time and effort you spent to make it so detailed and readable.

 

Great trip report. I have always liked the Plaza, but haven't stayed there in years. I am glad you had a great time there. I have always been treated better downtown than the strip.

 

Wonderfully done report. Thanks for your thoughts on your stay. As we all know, what is most important to people is their actually experiences with the entire service sector. Great report, and thanks again.

 

Greatly enjoyed your TR! We downtowners love the close proximity of the casinos and especially the comps that come with reasonable play.

 

Amen to that. It's nice to be appreciated at the end of your stay. Thanks for the report

 

Awesome report. Thanks for the details.

 

Right back at ya

 

Loved your report!!! We have never stayed a single night downtown but decided to book our next trip and pretty much stay only downtown. We might venture to the strip one afternoon but all our shows and extras will be downtown. We always have the best time on Fremont Street and are really looking forward to it. Your trip report has me really excited!

 

Very nice report!

More and more I find myself spending my time DT. I have to say, I have been extremely pleased with Plaza. Gary is so easy to work with and everyone else has been great too! Glad you and your wife enjoyed your time there too!

 

Enjoyed your report and all the Plaza details! Did you notice much noise in your room? That is the only hesitation I am having about building up comps there.

 

Thanks for all the details and sharing your observations. Sounds like a great time.

 

Hi, I can always specify your room being away from the Fremont noise. Just ask and I can assist.

 

Wow! Thank you for the great report!!! Feel free to contact me for your next trip.

 

There was a bit of noise from the trains, kind of rhythmic white noise at times, but we had wanted a pool view. Last year south tower and strip view (with binoculars lol) had no noise at all.

 

Excellent report! I'm a new fan of the Plaza

 

Thank you for the report .. Looks like both of you enjoyed.

I have always enjoyed our stay at the Plaza. Somehow in next trip starting next week I missed booking the Plaza.

 

Nice report! Glad the bartender as cosmo cut you a break on a ticket. It sure sounds like some of those machines have issues.

 

How do you get a hold of Gary? Would love to stay at the Plaza.

 

Nice observations. I was a Strip visitor from 1992-2000 and was never comped anything more than a drink. I moved downtown and was offered comped rooms (at the time a twelve dollar value) and a bit more. As my income and gambling grew I became used to never paying for a room and always getting free food and freeplay. If I had stayed on the Strip I would still be getting the back of the hand.