Vegasworm & Fam - Spring Break & Shamrocks - 03/13-03/18 - Luxor LIVE!

Currently grabbing a bite to eat in Las Vegas, but not the Las Vegas I love.

Vegasworm

 

Viva Wrong Vegas!

 

VMB quote of the year so far

 

Long time lurker here. It has been a LONG time since I have made a comment. Almost did on your last TR since I enjoyed it soooo much! Not only did I enjoy this one just as much, I cannot resist coming out to be included in the creepy Vegas friends category!
Your family is lovely...beautiful couple with beautiful girls!
Love how you keep it real! Love that you love LOVE, ( the only Cirque show I have seen twice) and when you heralded the Beatles White Album it melted my heart!
My kids are grown now but your adventures do remind me of when we did Vegas with our kids. Went back in the day when MGM Grand was Emerald City themed with the theme park out back. Also stayed once when Excal was new for a trip with the kids.
Although your girls may not have a sophisticated palate yet, the restaurant experiences you are providing them is nothing short of a good education for the future. Sticker shock for me on what you have to spend for a family of five to provide this for them. Cudos to you and your awesome hubby to manage these amazing family Vegas adventures! Love getting to read all about it!
Not sure you realize the true enjoyment you provide to a lot of strangers a.k.a. creepy Vegas friends but please keep it up.
Heading to Vegas with my awesome hubby of 42 years tomorrow! Wish us luck!

 

Thank you for the amazing compliment! I'm so glad you posted.

I agree, the sticker shock for 5 is insane! I'm so glad V talked me out of trying for #4!

I cherish these memories and all that we do with the girls. I know that will change someday and their schedules will make it harder to travel together. Until then, I plan to squeeze as many good times in as we can.

Good luck to you and your hubby! I hope you have an amazing and winning trip. I'm so glad to have finally tried Vegas out in March. Such a nice time to be there.

Enjoy!
Vegasworm

 

Well, we made it home! Olive is unpacked, the dog has been retrieved, and showers are being taken.

V and I are going to make a quick grocery run, since we have nothing fresh and the snow is coming. It looks like this storm won't be as bad as first predicted, so that's good.

My brain is already plotting our July trip. I can't wait! In the meantime, I want to finish out this report in the next day or two. I hope to get another post up tonight.

Thanks to all for so many kind and funny comments!

Vegasworm

 

Thursday, March 17, 2022 (Part 1)

St. Patrick's Day was the only day I "slept in". G felt so bad from the night before, and I had been going hard, so it seemed a good morning for that. Plus, the only time I could get a reservation for Rí Rá Irish Pub was 10:30am on St. Paddy's Day.

You got to see the cool shirt that V wore already, but here we all are that morning. We were goofing off taking pictures.




H's shirt is one we bought the night before at the Beatles LOVE show. Cool souvenir!













They had a St. Patrick's Day menu, but the items looked mostly like what I had looked up online.



I was surprised how big Rí Rá is inside. So many rooms that stretch far back. Live music started up towards the end of our meal.

As previously posted, V started with a Guinness, and I got a Key Lime Martini.


Key Lime Martini for E


Guinness for V


We ordered the Scotch Eggs. These were great!


I wanted to be traditional, so I ordered Corned Beef and Cabbage. It was different, but good. I'm not used to the sauce on it, and we serve ours with carrots and red potatoes, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.


S got the Chicken Wings Appetizer. LOL. They were super yummy!


V got Bangers and Mash. He said it was very good, although he doesn't like tomatoes, so he left all of those on the plate.


H got the Chicken Curry. She said it was good, but I didn't try it.


G is a pickier eater, so she stuck with the old standby hamburger.

I ordered the Drumshanbo Bowl which was a very refreshing gin based drink. When we were ready to go, I poured the remainder in a to-go cup.


Drumshanbo Bowl for E

We've been wanting to try Rí Rá for a long time, and it didn't disappoint. I would love to come again for a bowl of the Guinness Beef Stew and some more Scotch Eggs.



When I received the check and looked it over, I saw a 20% service charge. If this was printed somewhere, I didn't see it, nor did our server say anything. Before paying, I asked the server if the service charge was the gratuity and he kind of nonchalantly said it was. It felt a little off, but I usually give 20% as a tip standard unless service is awful or amazing, so it made totaling the bill easy. $202.14 it was! I've seen a lot of restaurants post-COVID charge service fees, but they've been in addition to gratuity and they're not 20%. I think the wording threw me off.

I'm sure it's etched in many of my Creepy Vegas Friends' minds, but after our Irish brunch, we went back to the room for a live taping of "Hoarders", I mean a room clean up.

I won't put you through the agony of seeing those pictures again.

I also posted how H and S and I shopped at Ross, while V and G stayed in the room. Dinner that evening was at Tender Steakhouse at Luxor, so that will be the next post I cover. I promise I won't drag this report out forever.

Vegasworm

 

Well, the girls have to be up early for school. Our schools start at 7:30am for the older kids, but traffic forces you to get them there around 7am. Such a shame since this age needs to sleep in. Our district has been a hold out on flipping the start times with elementary.

I have to go to work tomorrow, and V is working from home, but I should be able to pull off closing out this report tomorrow evening. We have a super busy week ahead of us, so I would like to wrap it up.

Good luck if you've got a Vegas trip lined up soon! I'll be living vicariously for the next few months.

Goodnight!
Vegasworm

 

Every bill you post has me going even though I know you are a party of five. The sticker shock! It is a good thing you don't have three boys.

 

@Vegasworm your TR has me trying to convince H we should take the kids to Vegas. There is a Lumineers concert coming to Raleigh that we are going to take the girls to, and I suggested that we could go see the one at MGM Grand instead. He's not going for it though. HAHA

 

Loved your trip report. I am thinking about my son who has girls 4,3 and 1 and what their trips will be like in 10 years.

 

Are your girls future gamblers? My nephew likes to bet through me. Poor kid has 10 more years to go but he is always giving me Keno numbers but no money. Says anything he wins is his, even though it's MY money!

 

Speaking as someone who's parents usually went to vegas without her as a kid/teen. Just because you can't gamble doesn't mean you don't want to go lol.

 

Thursday, March 17, 2022 (Part 2)

After donning hazmat suits and cleaning up the room, I poured a Baileys in honor of the day and went and played some slots which I covered live. I also covered taking H and S shopping at Ross. Walking back, we saw a brigade of cars honking and going slowly down The Strip with banners. They were protesting for higher rates for Lyft and Uber drivers. I get that with the gas prices the way they are. At least they were easier on the eyes than the whiney weenie protesters.







So now, let's get on to dinner at Tender Steakhouse at Luxor.

V and I are slowly making our way through the various steakhouses in Vegas. This is my favorite form of dining in Vegas. Currently, Mastros and Bavette's are tied for our favorites. We have many more to try though. We used to love Hugo's until our fourth visit there. This was the girls first visit there in 2019. The service and presentation was so disappointing. I felt so sad that one of my beloved places had failed me. If you dig around on Tripadvisor, you'll find a one star review that's mine from our meal there in 2019. It was that bad.

Back to Tender.... I didn't have low hopes going in, but I didn't have high ones either. I chose it mainly because it was at the property we were staying at on our last night. We tend to try to stay nearby towards the end. I had always passed by the bar area on my way to the Mandalay Bay Shoppes escalators, but I hadn't seen the dining rooms. Like Ri Ra, it's deceptively larger than it appears.

I had made a reservation for 7:00pm. There was a bit of a snafu when the hostess mixed up my name, but nothing major. We were seated at a nice, cozy room off to the side. We were at a table, but there were the large half circle booths that I adore at steakhouses. Here are some pictures of the bar area and the dining room where we were.









The girls ordered Shirley Temples and Roy Rogers, while V and I started with cocktails. Here is the second and only other snafu. V ordered their version of a Bloody Mary and the waiter even repeated back his order. Well, H had left her phone back in the room, and V was a good sport and went back for it. Our drinks were delivered and I kept staring at his drink thinking maybe I had heard his order wrong.


Here is what V got. Doesn't look like a Bloody Mary to me.


E's Extra Dirty Grey Goose Martini

When V got back to the table from going to the room, he saw his drink and gave me a look. He then asked the waiter what it was and it turned out to be another drink on the menu that is similar to a Manhattan. V is a good bloke when it comes to not wasting alcohol, so he said he would keep it and then order a Bloody Mary later. The weird thing is that the waiter acted like that was what he had ordered. It wasn't. V just wanted to make sure he hadn't accidentally been served a 100 year old scotch or something like that and then have the cops called when he refused to pay for it a la the shenanigans that Salt Bae pulls at his stupid Nusr-Et restaurant.

After that, everything else was super. I was really impressed that the steaks and salad we ordered that we said we were sharing were all plated separately for us. Nice touch! Here's a look at what we had. Everything was delicious. Keep in mind you're seeing a half portion for some stuff.


Complimentary Bread Service.


E and V shared a Caesar Salad. This had a lot of lemon flavor which was great. I LOVE lemons!


E and V shared the Coffee Rubbed Strip Steak (medium).


G & H shared the 18 oz Ribeye (medium).

S ordered the Shrimp Scampi appetizer, but it wasn't what she expected. It was more like a shrimp/toast/salad thing. Kind of odd.


S's Shrimp Scampi Appetizer

We all shared the following sides which were all good and complemented the meal nicely.


Broccoli and Cheese, Gouda Mac & Cheese, Mashed Potatoes


Here is my plate with a little of each of the sides.

V ordered the Bloody Mary he didn't get the first time around, while I ordered a glass of Pinot Noir.


V's Bloody Mary


E's Pinot Noir

One thing that kept happening to all of us when we dined, is we were too full to order dessert. The desserts at X-Pot were included with the tasting menu, so that's why we had those. We swore we would order dessert on the last night. Now I'm a Creme Brulee or Panna Cotta kind of girl, but we went with chocolate to please everyone.


Chocolate Cake


Chocolate Ice-Cream for H. The stare on S's face. LOL

V and I also rounded out the meal with some cups of coffee. Overall, this place is a solid choice for dinner. No, it's not as fancy as some of the other places, but I thought it was a decent option for Luxor.




After a 20% tip, our total was $363.50. I charged to the room as I did with all the MGM property places we dined at.

The whole time we ate, my chair faced a back wall and this picture of a tree is what I kept staring at.





Doesn't it kind of remind you of the burning tree in that movie "The Ring"? Spooky!



Vegasworm

 

Glad you enjoyed Tender…it is actually one of my regular spots to grab a steak at the bar….always been tasty and good service. Never tried the desert though…may have to next trip

 

Going to work on the final day post and then do a wrap-up and replies hopefully by tomorrow...or the next day.

Vegasworm

 

FYI - the very bottom of their menu below the FDA warning for the past 4-5 years has stated they add a 20% service charge to parties of 5 or more, which is where that comes from

 

Hope the above review helps! Enjoy your dinner there.

Vegasworm

 

Gotcha! I'm thinking that wasn't on the one sided St. Patrick's Day special menus they handed us that were in plastic sleeves. Or else I might should have had my reading glasses on.

Vegasworm

 

Absolutely loved reading your trip report.I am going with my 3 Sons in June 2022 albeit they are 37,34 and 31 .This is for belated 60th from 2020 which has been delayed till then. .This will be our 3rd visit together and they are memories which dont fade. Unfortunately my wife cant attend with us as she is helping out looking after the Grandchildren whilst all the fathers are having fun .Hopefully you children will still want to go with you in their 30s although with me and my wife footing the entire week how could they turn it down haha.