Long Trip Report 7/18 - 7/24

Reason: There's always an excuse, oops, reason for a trip to Vegas. This time it's because I received an invitation for a slot tournament at Harrah's with a first prize of $50,000. I emailed my host at Caesars and she set me up with the tournament and rooms at Caesars for four nights. I also had a nice offer from Wynn, so I booked that for two more nights - love that hotel but will not spend the bucks to stay there on a regular basis. My cousin, Helen, decided to join me and we were all set.

7/18/07

I don't know what possessed me to book a flight that left Hartford at 7 AM - I think it's because it's the non stop, but when my alarm went off at 3 AM I was not a happy camper. Got my stuff together and at Helen's by 4 AM, at least there's no traffic on the road at that time! I assumed the airport would be empty that early in the morning, but I was wrong again. BDL was busier than I've ever seen it, everyone in Connecticut must be on vacation. Flight departs on time, a few bumps, a little nap and we are deplaning 20 minutes early. Got the baggage in record time, hop the shuttle to pick up the rental at Dollar and we are at Caesars about the same time we were scheduled to land.

Check in and have to wait about half an hour for our room, so we check the bags with the bellman and head for brunch at Augustus Cafe. Service seems to have improved some, we had a very brief wait for meal and it was hot instead of tepid. Get the room keys, have the usual location overlooking Bellagio fountains - great view, dump our stuff off and head to the casino. I sat and played VP until I'm almost falling asleep - time to go up to the room and try to get on the Vegas time schedule. By now, I've been up almost 24 hours. Stick my room key in the door and the little green light does not go on, uh oh...try again, no dice, try turning card around, still nothing. Walk downstairs to registration and they give me a set of reprogrammed keys and a number for security in case those don't work. Try the new keys, no luck so I call security. Loiter in the hall for a few minutes and the security guy comes up, checks it out and tells me that the person inside had thrown the deadbolt but he has an emergency key that can by pass that. Let's me in around 10 PM. Helen is in bed watching TV<g>...she said she didn't hear the attempt to get in and I hadn't bothered knocking. She said she had taken a shower and locked the door with the deadbolt, plus the safety lock above it....got out of the shower and remembered to unlock the safety lock but forgot about the deadbolt. It was so funny because she and I had discussed a trip she made a few years ago with one of her friends where she locked her out using both locks, fell asleep on her good ear and when her friend tried to get in, couldn't because both locks were thrown and had to spend the night playing in the casino until 6 AM! At least I escaped that fate<g>. Fortunately, that didn't happen for the rest of the trip. We have some fruit and cheese from the basket my host had sent up and call it an early night.

7/19/07

Up by 5:30 AM and ready to run downstairs and start playing. We just grabbed capuccino's and biscotti at Rao's and hit the casino. The theme for today is lose, lose, lose. I could have just made a deposit when I registered and gotten it over with. After the morning bloodbath we decide to go have lunch at my favorite lunch stop, The Palm. Have their wonderful, melt in your mouth filet mignon business special lunch - this is such a bargain, $19.50 each, pre tip and tax!

Helen wanted to take a ride out to Ethel M's so we headed out there after lunch. Did a quick walk through, it was really too warm to walk through the cactus garden so we skipped that (did it a few trips ago). By then, it was time to head back so I could register for the slot tournament at Harrah's. Nice welcome reception with lots of good food and top shelf drinks. The gift was an insulated martini take along bar - of course, it was something that I would never be able to get in my luggage so I ran over to Harrah's business center and shipped it home. Just arrived yesterday, so it came pretty quickly.

Back to Caesars and more losses Tonight I'm on Vegas time and roll into bed around midnight.

7/20/07

Off to Harrah's for first of the two sessions today. They had a wonderful brunch in The Range Steakhouse, omelet station, carving station, bananas foster - lots of other choices. We ate and headed down to the session, before I even get to my machine a woman in a wheelchair manages to dump an entire cup of hot chocolate over my new white pants. The woman with her was very apologetic and offered to pay for cleaning, but I told her I thought I could just wash them out. Played the session wet and smelly<ggg> and wound up with a fairly decent score. After that zipped back to Caesars, changed and sent the pants off to the laundry.

Second session in the afternoon was fair, when I looked at the score sheets I was 173 out of 500, enough for one of the $50 prizes. Resumed playing at Caesars with the same results - I'm hard to discourage though<g>. Walked over to Bellagio to see the conservatory, Route 66 theme is cute but not as spectacular as some of the displays they've done. I decided I wanted to see some of the fountain shows; Helen was tired so she headed back to Caesars and I went downstairs. Saw three of the shows and took lots of pictures - got to hear the quintessential Vegas song "Viva Las Vegas". Walked over to Planet Hollywood after that - I didn't really like this casino when it was Aladdin and I still don't care for it.

Walking back on the east side of the Strip had one of those "only in Vegas" moments. Young gal (about 30) and husband/boyfriend walking along; she is obviously totally drunk and wobbling all over the place. I stopped to take some pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the balloon; when I catch up to them a few minutes later she has fallen and her partner is just dragging her along the Strip by her wrist. Even the porn slappers stopped slapping and were watching this exercise<g>.

Back to Caesars, more of the same....win $50, lose $100. Decide I've had enough of that and take a little detour to the Diamond Lounge for a drink and visit with some of the people that work there. Give the gambling one last try before heading upstairs, everything stays the same, time for bed.

7/21/07

This morning we were having breakfast with our Henderson friends at The Boulevard (good food, slow service) across from South Point. Had a great time catching up on news, then it was time to head out for the last session of the slot tournament. I did abysmally in the final session so I know that I'm out of the money. Went up to The Range for the brunch - again, a really nice spread; then over to TI for a little visit. Helen had never been here so we spent a little time; oh yeah, and I contributed a few bucks to their bottom line.

Helen has never seen Red Rock Canyon, so after TI, I head out there. It's a beautiful, cloudless day and the colors are wonderful. Take a slow ride through (actually a longer ride than usual because we're talking and I miss the entrance - about five miles down the road I realize that we're way past where we need to turn and have to double back) and we take lots of pictures. No burros around today and we're disappointed about that. Bring car back to Caesars valet park and walk over to Harrah's for award dinner.

I wind up in 279th place, so no award, but we enjoy a nice dinner (salmon and steak) and the company of some really fun people from Arizona and Texas. I don't know the name of the group that provided entertainment, but they were great! The lead singer was an impressionist and did some Dean Martin songs that sounded like Dean was singing them. Also did some Johnny Cash, Travis Tritt, Elvis and a few others. One of the guys in the group used to be the bass with Frankie Valli and did a song or two; we really enjoyed the show. This tournament was actually one of the nicest that I've attended, as far as food and entertainment is concerned. Walking back to Caesars we saw Pete Rose signing baseballs in the Forum Shops and I snapped a picture.

Back to Caesars and finally I've started winning a few bucks. It's nice to finish the night up with a ticket to cash the next morning! Stop and visit with my host for a few minutes; she is such a sweet person and arranges for a flawless visit for me every time. OK, so I admit the video poker is really sad at Caesars now, but I love the rooms and the people so I guess I look at it as the cost of entertainment.

7/22/07

Today is departure day at Caesars and check in at Wynn. We have breakfast in the Diamond Lounge at Caesars - mimosas - what a nice way to start a Sunday! Go up and pack and get out of there just before noon. We've decided to take a little break from gambling for awhile and head to the Las Vegas Outlets and spend some money on something tangible. Enjoy the shopping for a couple of hours and we each find some things to spend money on<g>. Head down to Wynn after that.

Wow, things are busy here - almost 15 minutes to check in. We're on the 22nd floor facing the golf course this time; we could have had a panorama room but would have had to wait an hour or so, for two nights I didn't think I wanted to waste any more time. Our view was the golf course, the Hilton and cranes<ggg>. I had warned Helen to bring a sweater here, this is absolutely the coldest casino I've ever played in, only warm area is a few spots near the Red 8 restaurant. As always, I was freezing after 20 minutes. However, the play was much better here and I was up for the day after a couple of hours. We had dinner at the buffet - as always, my favorite buffet in town - everything was delicious! Back to playing after dinner and I went upstairs with some of my winnings to tuck away into the safe at around 10 PM. Decided it was way to early to call it quits for the night so I headed back downstairs. Played until 1 AM and again managed to come upstairs a winner for the night - nice feeling for a change!

7/23/07

Our last full day - hate it when the vacation is winding down Had breakfast at the Terrace Point Cafe. I had a lobster benedict that was to die for....all my favorite foods, lobster, hollandaise, and asparagus! Helen had buttermilk pancakes that were a ridiculous size - too bad they don't offer them in a smaller size, she was able to work her way through one and a half, but called it quits after that.

After that we walked around (try to get rid of some of those calories) and enjoyed the Wynn. I had planned for pool time that morning, but it was raining slightly and they said they didn't know when they were opening the pool. Headed over to the Venetian and the wax museum after that. I had been there about five years ago and I was disappointed this time - it seems like there are less figurines displayed and the little movie thing they did has been replaced by the House of Horrors (which we skipped). We did take pictures there of some of our favorites - Johnny Depp, Bono, some of the sports figures and of course, John Wayne for my hubby.

When we got back to Wynn we had burgers at Zooza Crackers - fair, Helen said hers was on the dry side. Got back to the serious playing after that and had a great session and another deposit to the safe.

7/24/07

Our last day and we have to play, play, play before we leave. I call a host and get a 1 PM check out, which will work out well for us. Go downstairs and have breakfast at the buffet then hit those machines, today is not as good a day as the preceding two, but it's not totally a wipe out either. Go up to the room and attempt to check out using the express feature, get all the way to the end of the exercise and it tells us that the express function is not working!! Grab our luggage and head down to check out at the desk, takes about 20 minutes to get out of there. Valet is fast, the Strip is busy (surprised because it's a Tuesday), stop to gas the rental up and return it. This time we used the baggage check in at the car rental facility - we just didn't feel like dragging our now fully jammed bags to the baggage check at the airport. It's twenty bucks for up to three bags, we each had one that we checked so we thought it was worth it. When we got off the shuttle bus we just had to walk through the throngs up to security. This time security was almost empty - I can never figure out what the perfect day/time is to depart. Obviously, Sunday must be the worst - I've never flown out of McCarran on a Sunday and have no plans to do so.

Uneventful trip home on a packed plane. Flight had to head out on a different route to avoid some storms that were moving into Vegas from the south; we flew over Bryce Canyon this time. We were about twenty minutes late getting in; so we arrived in Hartford at 1:10 AM, ugh, another ugly hour Dropped Helen off and was home by 3 AM....I made myself feel better by saying "it's midnight in Vegas"<g>.

Counted up the cash when I got home and found that I came home with a pretty decent profit, which I was pretty happy about considering the way the gambling started. No royals this time - I had four to a royal so many times that I eventually didn't even get excited when they showed up. My winning sessions at Wynn were what gave me my profit; I played bonus poker and got many, many four of a kinds - most of them were for 2, 3, 4 and Aces, so I got some very nice payouts. Sad to say, I can gamble at better paytables at my local casino (Mohegan Sun)....I see full pay video poker disappearing at most of my favorite casinos in Vegas.

I was home for a day and saw a sale at Southwest that was ending 7/26 - round trip Hartford/Vegas was $260. I called my friend, Gerry, and we've booked for 11/8 to 11/13, so I'm on a countdown again!

I do want to visit the Springs Preserve, but it was much too hot to do it this trip. I'm hoping that will be on our list in November. Also planning to catch some shows on the November trip.

Sandy

 

Great tr! Sorry you didn't end in the money during the tourney, but happy to hear the food and entertainment made it all worthwhile. Congrats on coming home with a profit...one of these days I'll know what that's like!

 

Very nice. Too bad you didn't finish in the money in the slot tourney; but, you did leave Vegas a winner so that's even better.

 

Thanks for the report...............always nice to add up the cash when you get home and see that you have a profit! Enjoyed reding about your adventure.................

 

Great report!

What do you get with the filet for 19 bucks!?

 

Choice of soup or salad, a potato combination thing that they call hash browns - kind of reminds me of kettle fried potato chips and some hash browns, and coffee or tea. They also have some great quality breads they serve, but beware - first time we ate there a few years ago, we were famished and attacked the bread basket big time - end result was that we couldn't finish our steak! Friend of mine always orders the citron chicken luncheon special, a platter of chicken breast with a lemon and caper dressing - she said it's her favorite lunch in Vegas.

Sandy

 

Enjoyed the report! Thanks for posting!

 

Thanks for the great TR!! Those are great places to stay... one day ill have to learn how to get a casino host!!

Aloha,
Kel *

 

Congrats on the winning trip! Good thing you move to the Wynn...I like BP some too. I kind of hop around on games hoping to find something that's hot.