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march ETS trip thoughts and post MDW encore trip

Discussion in 'Vegas Trip Reports' started by geoff, Jun 4, 2013.

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  1. geoff

    geoff Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    Trips to Las Vegas:
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    My Trip Report

    Never got around to a tr for my march madness trip since the gambling went pretty bad so i'll start off with some notes from that trip then continue on to my post Memorial day weekend trip.

    -flew southwest nonstop from bdl.. not sure if it was just an old plane or what the deal was but this was a super uncomfortable seat / flight and i had a window with the early check in

    -we headed out for the 2nd weekend of the ncaa tournament. was under .500 gambling on basketball.

    -checked into encore tour suites around 2 on friday, the room wasn't ready. Had to wait until almost 4:30 to get our room.

    -ate at wazuzu, society cafe, tableau, SW, and wing lei
    wazuzu wasn't bad, but the drunken noodles have gone downhill since jet left. also no matter how hot i order stuff here it's never spicy. even 5/5 not sure hat the deal with that is.
    -tableau - duck hash and eggs was good as usual.
    -sw nothing outstanding but solid as usual
    -Wing Lei - first time eating here so i went with the peking duck tasting menu, since that's what they are best known for. It was good, but I'm not sure i'd order it again. Also had a taste of the 3 cup sea bass and that was really good. There was a large asian family/group at the table next to us, i'm not certain that what the ordered was even on the menu (i was told they will make you pretty much anything you want) but everything they had looked awesome and they had a ton of food!

    -saw absinthe sat in the 2nd row, it was pretty cool. there were a bunch of dudes in my row so we were singled out as the "gay guys" ..not sure my wife would approve ;) but i can take a joke. I think the gazillionare was phoning it in a bit that night (late show). I watched a few skits on youtube before going and it seems his crowd interaction is pretty much always the same, so if your going i'd recommend staying away from the videos.

    -one of the guys didn't get in until near midnight friday, it was his 2nd time in vegas and didn't tell the cabbie no tunnel.. $38 ride to encore!

    fast forward to last week...
    had a 3 free night offer (resort room) with $300 freeplay
    tuesday after memorial day we left the house at 3:30am to drive to ny
    flew jetblue nonstop from jfk. gave my wife the window seat and i took the middle. ended up with the larges guy on the plane next to me in the aisle. first loss of the trip! actually it wasn't so bad there was more room and more comfortable seat than sw.

    landed in las around 8:30am local time got our bags pretty quick grabbed a taxi to encore.
    grabbed the bags from the taxi and was right to the front door before the bell service asked if i wanted help. if it wasn't for the wft look i probably gave them i don't think they would have even asked. I figured it was too early for our room to be ready so having them take the bags was something i was going to need. this was the first contrast to the ets service where they jump right on the taxi and grab your bags. but then again they do radio ahead and left the bell service know your there (and greet you by name)

    there was no invited guest line yet so i got the the back of the line. waited maybe 5 minutes to get the the counter. they had a room ready but it was on the 7th floor, fine with me better than waiting! offered an upsell for $20 a night to the 50somthing th floor both rooms had the crappy north view so i declined. I'm been here enough times that the better view of the "mountains" ..lol, isn't worth it to me.

    went to to the room and quickly had the luggage delivered. The bellman seemed honestly surprised when i tipped him (does no one tip on the resort side?)

    decided to check out Bouchon for breakfast since it was still early. even with the better signage they just added over at the Venetian it still wasn't exactly easy to find. I wanted to try the chicken and waffles but i guess brunch is only on weekends? and it wasn't on the breakfast or lunch menus. pastries were very good but the rest of the food we had was not thing spectacular. i much prefer Tableau over at wynn.

    stopped off at the venetian walgreens. it was under construction on my last trip. They did a great job with the remodel. grabbed some fiji waters and snacks for the room as well as toothbrushes and such (more on this later) They now have a big walk in beer cooler with a decent collection of "strip walking" beers :beer:

    played $1 job with the freeplay hit 3 of a kind quite a few times but the only thing larger was 1 straight. ended up cashing it into $285 which was pretty good with no big hands.
     
  2. geoff

    geoff Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    played mostly slots with my wife the first day. but did play some blackjack.
    sat at the $50min dd on the end outside the high limit dumped a buyin really quick (3 "shoes" ) or so. bought in again and played for a while never really gaining much traction, then started losing again and was close to blowing the 2nd buyin. now i did have a good rapport going with the deal and the floor, however, Something very odd happened. I could tell the floor as counting, after a couple hands into a really bad shoe, the floor says the count is horrible just bet the minimum which i did. (and it was) the next show started ok and the floor says no is the time to push.. and for the next 4 shoes he counted and told me what to do (he was correct btw, but i wouldn't have bet as aggressively if he was not telling me to because it would have been too obvious) after couple good shoes i cashed out up a few bucks :)

    had dinner at wazuzu. it was just ok.
    played a little more at night and lots of slots alongside my wife, but we were pretty beat from the the early morning and were in bed by midnight.

    Wednesday:
    had breakfast over at tableau. there was a conference going at wynn and the place was as packed as i've ever seen it. 30 minute eait for an inside table or at least an hour for outside. we did find a table at the bar section right away and ate there. Had the duck hash again and wife had some sort of breakfast sandwich. food was good as usual but the service was pretty poor. server didn't even bring us water. my duck came out with a poached egg when the menu said scrambled. i asked about it and he said it comes with any type of egg. they quickly switched it out for scrambled, but if it was "any type of egg" why didn't he ask me what i wanted? i checked the menu later in the trip and it only mentioned scrambled ;)

    had free passes to the dolphin and tiger thing over at mirage thanks to the MyVegas game. it was pretty cool but i'm not sure i'd pay the $40 to go back (19.95pp)
     
  3. geoff

    geoff Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    We made reservations to attend the Sip & Savor event at spago which was a benefit for Alzheimers by all wolfgang puck's places in vegas. the food was very good, drank lots of caymus and Henriot champage. as well as a bunch of other wines i don't remember. I certainly ate /drank more than the $130 I paid, but I doubt my wife did. I was pretty good to see Wolfgang hangin around eating and drinking with everyone. He was much shorter than i would have thought. It did seem however that most there were locals and regulars on that "scene" as most seemed to know each other.

    back to encore and the blackjack tables I went on a tear while my wife played slots. played the shoe game in the same pit as before (outside the high limit) and got up a buy-in. Decided it was time to step it up so i went into the high limit. bought in and proceeded to slowly lose. the floor up there was sweating me very hard and i was pretty much flat betting on one of the lowest tables up there. I was Many glasses of wine and a half a dozen macallans deep by this point so i was purely gambling. I think he realized i was no threat and was actually a pretty mice guy. My luck changed as the tone started to relax. I can see why some might think its too intimidating to play up there. started to win a few hands, and with 2x my base bet got dealt 77 against dealer 4. split, split again , doubled, and split one more time for 4 hands (and a double) and the dealer did it right and pulled 24.. bingo! won a couple more hands and cashed out to go find my wife.

    here's where things went downhill fast.
    bought in the to the dd game, lost a buy-in in 2 shoes!
    moved to the shoe game lost a buy in in maybe 20 minutes.
    on tilt now, back up to the high limit. bought in half way (10x base bet) which was the same as i was using for a base bet in the shoe game. didn't win a single hand (pushed one) and that $$ was gone! though about chasing but even after all that scotch it was too hard of a beating to go asking for more. played some more slots with my wife and off to bed.
     
  4. geoff

    geoff Low-Roller

    Joined:
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    Thursday
    had breakfast at society then hit the pool. played some slots and video poker but stayed away from the tables during the day. swiped my card at the redcard desk for the yacht giveaway and got my tickets (it's a keno like game where if you match the drawn numbers your get freeplay or grand prize yacht) the machine kept spitting tickets out. i think we had around 50. luckly a red card person came over as said after the drawing to find her and she can check on my card if i won without checking all the tickets. no winners. there were about 5 people on the list of winners though. you had to be there at the time of the drawing so who knows how many actually collected. (min prize was 1k freeplay)

    dinner was at Sinatra. not sure why but they put my wife and I in the private room in the back. score, wife had chicken parm which while not exactly exotic, is still the best chicken parm around if you ask me. I had the veal osso buco which was good as always.

    some more blackjack after dinner but nothing worth reporting. just ground out a small win. still a loser for the trip.

    Friday
    had breakfast the the lobby bar. just wanted something small before flying home. a muffin, bottled water, danish, and small coffee was something like $26 Way overpriced... next time i think think i'd pass.

    had around $130 in freeplay from the points on my card, played $0.25 job and turned it into $123 cash.

    Stopped in the hosts office. at first he said i needed 5k points a day to play off my offer so my 13k points and blackjack wasn't enough for any extra comps. I mentioned that my offer said anything over 4k points a day would qualify for additional comps. he called someone to verify and then was able to comp some of my food. i guess it pays to read the fine print and speak up!

    5k points seems like a lot for a base level encore room. had a pretty candid talk with him for a bit and he seemed like a pretty straight shooter. he mentioned how they don't really do much for blackjack players until you hit $250ave for 4 hours a day. and how with my numbers i'd be getting a lot more comps outside wynn. I don't play for comps and would rather pay for what i want than get something free i won't be satisfied with which is why i generally pay for my tower suite stays. he gave me his card and said he'd try to get me in the ts next time.
     
  5. geoff

    geoff Low-Roller

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    Since now i've had a resort room stay and i know the question comes up pretty often i'll give my opinion of tower suites vs. resort tower. keep in mind my resort stay was midweek and during a slow time.

    -service level at tower suites is much better. bell desk jumps to help you, calls you by name, etc.

    -pretty much never a wait at the ts front desk.

    -room itself is pretty much the same (compared to a base tower suites room) however the ts rooms are never far from the elevator.

    - tower suites has 3 free pressed garments a day. (i don't like to iron)

    -ts room has a toothbrush kit / shaving kit regular room didn't (thus the walgreens trip)

    -no newpapers with the resort room, 2 each day in ts

    -access to ts pool at wynn with the ts room

    -no turn down service on the resort side (so no slippers, chocolates, etc)

    - since i usually play the tables right outside of the high limit, ets is very conveniently located

    - no line ever for the concierge at ts, had to wait a few minutes on the resort side.

    - it's a pain to have to walk around the lobby bar to get to the resort elevators... not a deal breaker but it doesn't seem well designed to me.

    -since i was on a comp room and not paying the resort fee, internet was $13 a day per device. this is included on the tower suites side.

    -at the ts, you get a cab/car right outside the door, on the resort side you have to drag your luggage over down the sidewalk to the cab stand which is away from the front door.

    all in all i wouldn't turn down a comp resort room, however if i'm paying i'll fork over a couple extra bucks for the little things over at the tower suites everytime.
     
  6. Tubbs

    Tubbs High-Roller

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    Thanks for the report, interesting read. I enjoyed the comparison between the Resort and Tower rooms. With the free WiFi and other amenities, paying $50 extra for a Tower room seems an easy decision. At $100 or more it's not such an easy choice.
     
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