21st Birthday and Christmas Trip to Aria Sky Suites 12/23-27

Good morning!! We are just back from a whirlwind weekend at Aria Sky Suites to celebrate my twin boys' 21st birthday on 12/24 and Christmas. Over the next few days I'll share our thoughts on Sky Suites (it was our first time as we are normally Bellagio people!), lots and lots of dining out, and more.

12/23 - Departed from BWI on Southwest for a direct flight. The airport was quite crowded! We secured our exit row seats and settled in for the flight. We were comped a 2 bedroom Sky Suite at Aria with generous FP and resort credit. The limo driver was waiting for us when we got down to baggage claim and we were checking in within an hour of landing. Not a bad start! After checking in and getting our luggage delivered, we went in search of food. It was about 2 PM Vegas time but felt like 5 PM to us. Arriving at that time on a Wednesday food options were very limited at Aria. Salt & Ivy was just about the close the kitchen so our only option was the Burger Bar. Burgers were good though!

I had arranged for a local business to help me make the room feel a bit more festive for birthdays/Christmas. We hung around the lobby bar waiting for the delivery. I met the lady and her son who had picked up a birthday cake from Freed's, done a liquor/grocery run for us, brought a gorgeous balloon marquee for their birthday, and brought a small Christmas tree that they set up with Vegas themed decorations. The tree made the room so cozy and my husband and I loved sitting in the main room with just the Christmas lights on, sipping mimosas, and watching the sunrise each morning.

After finishing up with the delivery, we explored the Aria property. The boys needed to recharge their phones, my husband was ready to gamble, and I had a shopping appointment at Van Cleef at Bellagio. We all split up for a few hours to do our own thing. I was the only winner as hubs burned through all of his FP but I left Van Cleef with a new bracelet!! Highly recommend the shopping experience at the Bellagio Van Cleef. I spent so much time sipping champagne and chatting with the manager Alex, that I almost ran out of time to actually look at jewelry before I needed to leave to meet everyone for dinner!

For dinner we made our way via Uber to the Forum Shops and had a lovely dinner at Joe's. Ubers were MUCH easier to get than they had been during our August trip. We never waited more than 3 minutes. Joe's was a new spot for us and we'd definitely go back. We did have a fun "celeb" sighting as Vegas Dave was seated right near us. He was hard to miss with his LED light up Louis Vuitton satchel.

We were all crashing from the time change and long travel day so the boys and I went back up to the room to take power naps because we needed to be ready to go for midnight to ring in their 21st birthday!!!

 

Sounds like a great start to the celebration! I would love to see a picture of your new bracelet.

 

Look forward to the photos and the reports. My twins are a bit younger, hopefully I can do this with them when they come of age too.

 

@MK4Vegas what is the name of the business that supplied the decorations. I would love to have the room decorated next Christmas.

 

@jjluvsvegas will do! it's being shipped to me to save on sales tax but I'll post one when it arrives!

 

@breanna61 sure thing! It's Elephant Balloons. They're on instagram. Stephanie and Mikey will hook you up!!

 

Obligatory room pics: Aria Sky Suites 2 Bedroom Suite (55011)

We had never stayed at Aria or the Sky Suites. We really enjoyed the 2 bedroom suite with 4 adults. The extra bathroom space and living room space was great and the empty fridge came in handy for storing the cake and champagne! While I still personally prefer Bellagio, I would stay at Aria again. The Sky Suites had great service and we loved that the elevator let us right out on the promenade where several of our dining reservations were located anyway.



1 of the 2 full bathrooms


Jetted tub


1 of the 2 bedrooms


Living room. Had a nice wet bar, table for 4, mini bar and separate fridge.


Powder Room

 

Good luck, have tons of fun .

 

To celebrate their 21st Birthday, I had this balloon marquee made. It made the room so much more festive and was fun for photos.



We also had our Vegas themed tree. Loved the ambiance that it added to the room and made spending Christmas in a hotel feel a bit more normal.


Had an awesome red velvet cake delivered from Freed's for their 21st as well.

 

After our recharge naps, we headed down to the Lift Bar a few minutes before midnight. There were a few other people there but definitely a very low key vibe. They got their IDs checked and ordered their first official drink as 21 year olds right at midnight. We stayed down for 3 rounds of drinks/celebratory shots and all decided it was time for bed after a long travel day from the East coast. Plus they had a busy birthday day ahead of them.

The waitress at the Lift Bar was great and made a huge deal of their birthday. While it wasn't the wild night out the boys may have imagined, it was definitely still a fun celebration and they enjoyed themselves!

Jordan, my husband Vic, and Joseph in the room before we headed down.


First official drinks: Lemon Drop martini and Strawberry Daquiri (pictured). Second round was Crown Apple shot for one and Malibu and Pineapple for the other. Third round was a Modelo for one and a lemon drop shot for the other. Oh to be young and mix soooooooo many different alcohols and not feel like total crud the next day!

 

I like the decorations and especially the tree.

 

What a nice time--sounds like a wonderful way to turn 21! Thank you for sharing!

 

Beautiful family. Sounds like a fabulous 21st Birthday....one to remember!

 

What a great way to celebrate their birthdays! Very handsome young men! Your room looks amazing and I love the decorations you had set up.

 

Am loving this trip report. Your boys are so lucky to turn 21 in Las Vegas. Will only happen once and what a great place to be. The tree and Champagne balloon are awesome. Thanks for taking us along...

 

Love the experience you are giving them. The decorations and room are awesome. Oh, to be young again. sigh... Lol. You have handsome young men. Hope they enjoy their Vegas time.

 

What a memory you made for the boys. You & your husband are tops.

 

Did ya get to keep the tree?!

 

@Mommaof3babes YES!! She's shipping everything to me. So I get to keep the tree, decorations, and custom tree topper that they made for me! Looking forward to setting it up in our house next year to remember our awesome trip!

 

12/24 - Christmas Eve/Birthday

After ringing in their birthdays, we had a full day planned! The morning started at Salt & Ivy. We had a great breakfast there. We opted for the bottomless mimosas and our waiter was so fun. He brought us out every possible mimosa flavor combination to try. We sampled classic, peach, strawberry, pomegranate, apple, and pineapple. So fun and since it was bottomless if we didn't like a flavor we just moved onto the next. My husband said the waffle was one of the best he's ever had.

Vic and I stayed at Salt & Ivy a bit longer but the boys had an 8:45 pickup for their trip out to the desert to race dune buggies!!

Sunbuggy picked them up at Aria and took them out to the desert to race dune buggies for 30 minutes. They came back raving about it being a once in a lifetime experience and how much fun they had. I highly recommend Sunbuggy. I was able to pay for everything in advance so all they had to do was show up and then tip the shuttle driver and their instructor.



Vic and I headed back to the room to relax while we waited on them. They made it back in time for all of us to head over for lunch at Caesar's. We opted for Gordon Ramsay's Pub for lunch. OMG. Fantastic meal. I tried the lunch special and had the tomato soup, petite chateaubriand, and sticky toffee pudding. Soooooo good.



Still drooling over this. The meal was also made even more special by our fantastic waitress Sarah. She was the bubbliest person and really went over the top making a fuss over the boys' birthday. She brought out a sample of Gordon's favorite beer for them to try and a complimentary sticky toffee pudding.

We had a little hiccup with Uber leaving Caesar's. We had been dropped off right up front so when we left the Pub, we started back in that direction and called for the Uber as we didn't see any signs about Uber pickup. The driver messaged he had arrived and we were up front and he let us know that pickup was in the parking garage. I apologized and told him we were on the way there. We were speed walking/jogging to make sure we didn't keep him waiting for too long. We got out to the garage and saw no sign of his vehicle so I looked at the app to see he had cancelled the ride. Not a big deal and the mistake was totally our fault. Quickly got another ride back to Aria. However, a few hours later I got an email from Uber that the driver reported that he had declined to let us in his vehicle because we refused to wear our masks. I LOST it. We hadn't even seen the driver and we definitely all had our masks on!!!! So I had to then go back and forth with Uber for several hours to get the faulty accusation taken off of our account because I didn't want us to be blackballed from future rides!

We made it back to Aria just in time for my scheduled shopping trip at Hermes. Had a fun time there and picked up a new bag and a belt and got to drool over some wish list items back in the super fancy private shopping room. While I was shopping there, the boys wandered the Crystals and Jordan splurged on a Gucci credit card case with his birthday money so we had a fun time there while Vic continued his losing streak. We headed back to the Aria and stopped for a drink at the Lift bar.

We decided to go ahead and get ready for dinner and head on over to the Bellagio to play a bit there before our dinner at Lago. I will say that security was all over the boys. The minute they'd sit at a machine someone would be over checking their IDs even with me standing next to them. I was very impressed at how diligent they were. They all congratulated them on their birthday once they confirmed that they were of age.

We had a fantastic dinner at Lago for their birthday. We got a prime seat on the patio and enjoyed the holiday themed fountain shows. We were toasty warm with all of the heaters so the patio was a perfect spot for us! They also brought out a nice dessert with candles for them to blow out.



After dinner we played a bit more at Bellagio. I had given each of the boys $100 to play with. They stuck to playing penny slots and really made the money last for quite a while. They'd go up and down and compare who was ahead and just loved all of the bonus games, lights, and noises. We decided to head back to Aria after a long, full birthday.

We had their birthday cake back in the room and then Joseph and I settled in to watch the first Wonder Woman movie in prep for WW1984 coming out the next day.