Old Man and the Me? (NYNY 3/21 – 3/24)

Wow! A Royal AND you partied yourself to the point of crying "Uncle". What a great trip!!!

 

UNCLE!

 

Premium quad at TAG? I could only dream of one of those...lol

And nice royal!!!

 

Day 1
Ok, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, I was killing the quads at Bellagio after lunch at Twin Peaks. I’m not really a VP player so this was a rarity to me. Over the course of the trip I played about 10x my normal coin-in. However, that came at the expense of some blackjack time. I couldn’t lose at blackjack on Monday and came away with a tidy profit (so far). That’s called foreshadowing. Finally checked into my room and took a quick nap. Dinner was Bellagio buffet. It’s been getting a bad rap but I really liked it. In fact I preferred it over the Aria buffet last fall. The best part was skipping the line otherwise I don’t think I would have waited.
My dad got caught an earlier flight and was ready to gamble. We played some blackjack and video poker. I went upstairs to drop off the toothpaste I had to buy but got lost on the way. I had a couple drinks. Karma caught my eye (no not a working girl) but super times pay video poker. Or at least I thought it was STP. In my picture later I realized it was double and I was betting 7 credits a hand. Within five minutes I caught a royal holding three cards. Just about scared the guy sitting next to me with my girly screech. The rest of the night was a blur but did involve a slice of pizza.
A couple of general observations. I feel like there is no consistency in rating my play at Mlife casinos and between pit bosses. I think I played a lot more this trip at $50/hand consistently and earned the same number of tier credits as last trip where I varied play between 25-50. Also, I put through a lot more coin. Maybe it was the fact I was playing double deck. I don’t think Bellagio rates my play at all. Just take the card, set it down, pretend to write something, and give it back because green chip players aren’t worth the effort. They should allow early check-in even if your room isn’t ready without charging a fee. I really feel like they are losing business. This is two trips in a row where I don’t have a room number linked to my card so I chose to eat at a non-MLife restaurant for lunch because there is no possibility of getting in comped at the back end.
More to come later. Day 2 consists of more gambling, jack hammering, gambling at Como, drinking, gambling, introducing my dad to Uber/Lyft, eating, and gambling downtown.

 

Day 2
Day 2 started abruptly. There was major construction going on at 8:30 am either for The Park or some kind of stadium/concert hall MGM is building. It sounded like jack hammering coming from the other room. Yesterday when I checked in there was no noise whatsoever. And me not thinking clearly was like maybe I should get up anyway and not waste my time sleeping. It’s probably just a one day thing, right?

Played a little bit downstairs then we walked to Ellis Island to cash in some ACG and get the steak special. It was one windy walk. At times it looked like a dust storm and litter rolling down the street like tumble weed. After lunch/breakfast we Ubered back to NYNY. I then had to explain what Uber was to my dad and he soon caught on. Here is the thing on Uber/Lyft with the casinos. I have no clue where I need to go to get picked up. Gambled for most of the afternoon. Notably stopped by Cosmo and played at Bond bar. The drink ticket system didn’t seem to slow down the drinks at all. The bartender didn’t seem to have any clue of the time or dollar amount to bet. I seemed to get tickets before I finished my last drink. The one issue is that you hardly notice the tickets when they do come out. Hit TAG up again and eventually made our way back to NYNY. About this time my luck started running out. Coincidentally it was around when I realized I was way up (about half my bankroll up) and made the mistake of texting the wife back home of such good fortune.

Dinner was at Tom Urban’s. Ordered the buffalo wings and shrimp po boys. Wings were ok, po boys had too much bun, but the service was so slow they brought out some free fries. From there we ubered downtown. It was the typical chaos downtown. I used some promotional trips at Golden Gate, redeemed some ACG at a couple places, and stayed out the Plaza after last trip’s bad experience. I played in the GG high limit room by myself for awhile until a guy sat down with tons of money. He was betting near table max every hand so it was making the dealer nervous and they had to keep checking that he wasn’t over the limit. A host approached him and he wouldn’t give the host the time of day. I guess when you have that much money at the Golden Gate with inexpensive rooms and limited food options hosts aren’t needed. We finished up with some more NYNY play to top off the evening.

Day 3 preview – steak, yes more jack hammering, USB breakdown, and how did it get that late?

 

Day 3
It was like déjà vu, right at 8:30 the jack hammering started again. I got fed up and called the front desk. They offered to change rooms but at this point I was up and had an early flight the next day so it didn’t matter. The next part of the conversation blew me away. “We could offer you some resort credit but you are fully comped.” Fully comped is far from what I was. All I had was a room and $50 resort credit. $50 is fairly easy to spend my front desk friend. So I was left with little sleep and nothing to show for it. On top of that my emailed receipt the next day added on one day of resort fees. Calling to get charges taken off after check-out is a multiple phone all deal. The front desk won’t do it because I checked out already. The accounting department handles it now and they aren’t open until later.

Okay, rant over. Mimosas for breakfast as any self-respecting tourist would do. Gambled some at NYNY then hit up Shake Shack for lunch. I was starving and that hit the spot. Very similar to Smashburger for you Midwesterners except I like Smashburger fries more. Basically played around all day Cosmo to use my $60 bounce back offer, TAG, NYNY, and Bellagio. Dinner was at Camelot Steakhouse using myvegas. I dread going into the Excalibur. I get turned around, it smells, I never win, and it smells. But this time was better primarily because I didn’t gamble. Just got in, ate, and got out. Food was very good and I think I prefer it to Tender which I had last trip. It helped that the waiter didn’t drag it out into a 2 hour ordeal.

Next up, the Planet Hollywood party pit. Why? Because I was drunk enough to stare at half naked women but cheap enough not to go to a strip club. These were actually the friendliest dealers I had almost all trip. My dad bailed early due 3 days of smoke and dry air. I proceeded to walk down the strip to meet a friend in town for a conference who was somewhere in the Linq area. One quick stop at Bugsy’s Bar since my beer ran out and I was headed toward the Venetian. I have a love/relationship with the Venetian. I hate that they don’t give any comps to regular gamblers and I hate Sheldon’s politics. But it’s so darn nice in there and they have USB chargers in almost every machine. How can the rest of the strip not realize the need to follow Sheldon’s lead on this very important issue.

Finally met up with my friend and introduced her to gambling my way. Mirage back to PH over to NYNY. Next thing I know it’s almost 5am. The gentleman I am let her walk back to the Venetian. It seemed logical at the time. Decision time! Go to bed or gamble until airport time. I went to bed (I was lucky I found it). Lyft guy dropped me off at the airport and told me to get some sleep. Made it home and finally feel recovered. Now I need to get a new countdown timer.