4 weeks in Vegas - now with pictures :)

Just returned from a 4 week trip to Vegas. Plane ride home was 18 hours so I'm gonna type a little and then go to sleep for 2 days.

Stayed at:

MGM - Glamour suite - great suite with a jacuzzi that would fit 4-6 people. Payed $79 for that suite and that included a $25 dining credit and some other freebies...

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Caesars - Palace Tower room - great room with pool view and jacuzzi in the bathroom. The new Caesars tower is really blocking the view from the Palace Tower though.

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Bellagio - Lake View room - booked the $139 internet special. Room was great. Looked and felt fresh. Tried the $20 trick but that would have gotten us a jacuzzi room without the lake view and since we really wanted that we skipped the upgrade. (We got some anniversary gifts from the giftshop instead which was nice.)

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Luxor - Pyramid room - booked a $129 weekend special which included two spa passes and some other goodies. Tried the $20 trick and got upgraded to a jacuzzi corner room/suite.

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TI - Tower suite - tried for upgrade several times but no luck. They kept telling us they were sold out. Anyway - stay away from pirate battle view. You do not see the pirate battle very well and the noise will disturb you if you are in your room during the evening. You get a nice view of the Wynn construction though.

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Luxor (again) - this time we wanted a tower room. We found the same clerk who upgraded us the weekend before and he upgraded us to a Junior(?) suite in one of the towers. This was a nice suite. Similar size to the Glamour suite at MGM but no jacuzzi.

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$20 trick seem to work best late evenings. Perhaps all the managers are home by then - or the clerks have a better feel for which rooms are available.

Gambling:

On this trip we played mostly poker and video poker. We probably played something like 100 hours in the Monte Carlo poker room. Great place. Friendly dealers! The have a 2-4 game with a single 2 blind and high hand jackpots(!) for 4-of-a-kind or higher. If you play for 4 hours straight and ask nicely they will give you a $6 food comp (which works great as a line pass).

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Tried the Luxor poker room also and it seemed nice too. 2-4 game - $2 and $1 blind. High hand bonuses (not jackpots) and a bad beat jackpot.

Played VP at Caesars, TI and Bellagio. TI gave us $15 cash back and $25 off our food. My wife hit a royal at Caesars but I only hit the straight flushes. (Caesars still has 9-6 JoB at quarter play btw.)

Eats:

Prime for anniversary dinner. Good but expensive.

http://iborg.cjb.net/lv/IMGP1075.JPG (A toast before going down to have dinner.)
http://iborg.cjb.net/lv/IMGP1081.JPG (Enjoying dinner while the fontains are going off in the background.)
http://iborg.cjb.net/lv/IMGP1090.JPG (Happy anniversary!)
http://iborg.cjb.net/lv/IMGP1100.JPG (After dinner there is a patio where you can have some drinks and enjoy the fountains.)

Also tried Bellagio, Aladdin, Mirage, Paris, Mandalay Bay buffets. Bellagio and Aladdin still best imo.

We did a lot of other things as well, saw O, went to Valley of fire and some other things but I do not have the energy to write a trip report for 4 whole weeks.

/ucamper

[ August 21, 2004, 08:17 AM: Message edited by: ucamper ]

 

I'm impressed you had the energy to get home from the airport and type up this much!!! Thanks for your impressions. I haven't heard of the Glamour Suite at MGM. Nice to know you were able to get an upgrade at Luxor--we're staying there next year for a convention and I'd love to be able to upgrade since we're going to be there at least 5 nights.....

 

....


Thanks for the great hotel information. I noticed you did a lot of research before the trip, and now we get to see how it worked out.

And thanks for trying all those buffets for us. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it...

....

[ August 16, 2004, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: LearningVegas ]

 

4 WEEKS!! Now thats a Vegas vacation. I hope to do that as well, but I haven't hit the Massachusetts Lottery just yet!!! Boy would that be an experience... 4 weeks in LV wow!!

 

liked the info on the $20 trick.. i wonder if other T2V'ers have noticed the late night trick working more..

 

My god, 4 weeks!?!?

I'd be like Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas!

 

I realise 4 weeks may seem like a very long time to stay in Vegas. But we thought it was actually too short.

My wife was attenting two conventions (9 days total) so she was working some of the time. And since the the flight(s) to LV takes an insane amount of time we thought we should stay a while.

Anyway - here's some more mixed info:

Male clerks seem more receptive to the $20 trick whereas female clerks seem more receptive to nice talk and mentioning special occasions like an anniversary.

We stayed a couple of days at Alexis Park (for the DefCon convention). Stay away from that place if you're not some kind of airplane entusiast who likes to fall asleep to the sound (and smell!) of airplanes landing. Pretty standard motel rooms otherwise. Its located next to (across the road) to Hard Rock though, so if you want to hang out there but do not want to pay their rates you could stay at Alexis.

The Monte Lago casino at Lake Las Vegas is very nice and it was nice to walk around a bit by the lake. The have 9-6 JoB from 5 cent and up. If you have a car this is a nice place to have lunch and to check out for an hour or so.

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Green Valley Ranch - Nice casino but the hotell part was much smaller than I expected. They did not have a single JoB machine in the whole casino though?! Worth to notice that you get between 5 and 500 dollars of free play if you sign up for the slot club for the first time.

Fatburger - great burgers! Try it!

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Aladdin slot tournament still gives a $20 dining credit if you ask for it. So for $25 you get a $20 dining credit, $10 free play, some other discounts and a chance to win some money in the tournament. Great thing to do, if you're gonna eat there anyway. Also - they'll give you Aladdin caps and/or mugs just for asking at the slot club booth.

Downtown Freemont street experience upgrade did not impress me that much. I expected something a little more. Still worth seeing though.

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The best view at TI is pool view. Perhaps that will change when the Wynn and new Venetian construction is completed, but for now always go for pool view.
Always go for lake view at Bellagio - try the $20 trick. (One of the bellboys at Bellagio even suggested this to us!)
I don't think there are any good views at Luxor. The choices seem to be I5, MB, Excalibur or airport view.

Never give back room keys when checking out. You can use them later on for valet parking when the valet is almost full (and only open to hotell guests) or for access to areas normally only allowed for hotell guests (like the pool).
Beware though that sometimes they may swipe your card to make sure it is active. (Happened once at the Bellagio when going to the pool.)

Star Trek Experience at Hilton is cool but way overpriced. (You get $5 discount and 25% off at Quarks with a monorail ticket.)

The monorail is ok, but the stations are located at the back of all the strip properties which makes it a fair walk to them. Especially if you're staying at the west side of the strip. We only used the monorail to get to the LV Hilton which conveniently has the station located next to the Star Trek experience.

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Gamblers general store on Main street is really cool to check out if you're interested in buying something (books, cards, chips) gambling related. We bought some poker chips, racks and cards there. They have slot machines, tables and all sorts of cool stuff for sale there.

If you find a 5 cent BlackJack machine you can get really drunk when playing, even if there is no extra pay for a BlackJack. A dollar will keep you playing a long time....

Also, if you want to try playing BJ but find the strip limits too high, you can easily find machines from 25 cent and up on most strip properties. (I'm not sure if playing 25cent BJ is soo much worse than playing $5 tables where a BJ only pays 6 to 5. All the machines I tried claimed to use a single deck and dealer stands on soft 17.) You'll also earn slot points on these machines! Playing $5 on a BJ machine really racks up the slot points whereas at the tables you would not even get rated if you're not playing at least $25.

Boardwalk had a couple of $3 BJ tables with BJ paying 3 to 2. That was the cheapest BJ limits on the south/center strip I could find.

Playing Hold'Em is really fun! We both signed up at some online casinos and practiced online a while before this trip.

While checking the poker room at Bellagio I saw Amarillo Slim, and at Mirage (they had a WPT event while we were there) we saw some other poker celebrities. These two only had 3-6 games though so we didn't play there. We prefer the lower 2-4 games since if you go in for $50+ you can actually play for a while.

I hit two high hand jackpots when playing Hold'Em at Monte Carlo - 2 four of a kinds each paying around $70.

Tried out the spas at Caesars and Luxor. Luxor was much larger but a little dirty(!) compared to Caesar's. The exercise equipment were ok at both places. (I mainly do weightlifting.)
My wife really liked the Luxor spa though.

O is a good show but a little overpriced. Make sure you like Cirque type shows before paying. The Mystere sunday matine for $60 might be a cheaper choice if you want to check out Cirque for the first time.

Valley of Fire was ok but did not impress. Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Zion, Bryce (we have seen those before) are much more impressive, but they are much farther away on the other hand.

The pool area at MGM is huge and looks great! I would rate it higher than both Bellagio and Caesars. TI pool looks like a childrens pool.

The pyramid rooms at Luxor is much more worn than the tower rooms. I would choose the tower rooms over the pyramid rooms every day. (You can still go up in the pyramid even if you are staying in one of the towers.) Be aware though that the highest floors (29 and 30) can not look down inside the pyramid.

The weather was kind of strange this time around. A few times it was raining - and the next day it was hot as XXXX.

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/ucamper

[ August 21, 2004, 08:21 AM: Message edited by: ucamper ]

 

Wow, 4 weeks in Vegas - awesome.

5 cent BJ? Where was that at. I've never seen any BJ via slot machines in any Vegas casino and I tried looking for them when I was in Reno last year - no luck. How do I find them?

 

These are called Multi Game machines. They have several games - normally Keno, different kinds of Video Poker and Black Jack. Major strip properties normally have 25 cent minimums but I played lower limits at StarDust (5 cent) and some of the off strip places.

/ucamper

 

I hate to think what I would come back to at work after four weeks.


Nice report

 

Never give back room keys when checking out. You can use them later on for valet parking when the valet is almost full (and only open to hotell guests) or for access to areas normally only allowed for hotell guests (like the pool).

I hear ya. I have quite the collection of room keys for that very reason. My first trip to Vegas, I had a friend who lived there (still does) and every where we'd go, she'd whip out a room key and get us valet parking.

The pool area at MGM is huge and looks great! I would rate it higher than both Bellagio and Caesars. TI pool looks like a childrens pool.

I think the pool at MGM is sooOOo underrated. (As opposed to the highly overrated Flamingo pool, IMHO.) Other than Mandalay Bay, MGM is my favorite pool. Always some eye candy, great waterfall, good locations for drinks and nicely priced food. And the lazy river can't be beat. (I can't say why, but it beats Mandalay Bay's lazy river.)

And a big "Hell yeah!" to Fatburger!! I took my wife for the first time last trip. She gave me a punch in the arm for not telling her about it sooner.

Thnaks for the report.

[ August 20, 2004, 08:17 AM: Message edited by: farkingidiot ]

 

Added some pictures. Please note that the pictures are stored on our own webserver at home and the bandwidth is kind of limited. So please be patient!

/ucamper