First Time Sans Kids-NYNY-6/20-6/23:DAY 1

I'll try not to make this too long, but I'm sure it will be, so bear with me.

This was my 3rd trip to Vegas. First time without kids. Our little guys are 7 (8 on Sunday) and 4 and we've been married 12 years, and this is our first time going on a trip by ourselves (well, by ourselves since we started having kids!). My mom took my kids to her home in California (they are STILL gone!). The previous times we've gone:

April-May 1999: My cousin's wedding at the Rio. We didn't stay at the Rio, though. We stayed at the Stratosphere . Not doing that again! At the time, my oldest was about 9 months old. We had a rental car and we went at the end of April/beginning of May and it was FREEZING! All we brought were shorts, so thankfully, we had the rental to drive out to Nellis AFB (dh is Air Force) to buy all new clothes.

Again we went for a wedding:

May 2004: My Aunt's wedding this time at-I know I'm getting it wrong-Little Chapel of the West? The one across from Four Seasons. Then, "reception" dinner at Paris buffet. That time we stayed at the Excalibur. This time my oldest was 5 and youngest was 2. We had a great view from our high room of down the strip and the NYNY roller coaster. The kids thought that was the best-said they had more fun in Vegas than Disneyland! That time we drove from our home in Texas. So again, had a vehicle.

Move to June, 2006. Totally different trip, different reasons, different people. We have some great friends. They met at our wedding in June, 1994. He was a groomsmen, she was one of my bridesmaids. They fell in love and married about 9 months later (no, 9 months didn't mean baby, that's just the timing). They are Air Force, too and have spent the past 8 years in Japan, now they're in Hawaii for 4 years. So they come back to Texas (where they're from) every few years to visit and come stay with us, as their kids are about our kids age. So she called me several months ago, said they were going to Vegas. Of course I offered myself to come along! He (Mike) had been to Vegas before with the military-she (Michelle) had never been.

So I booked with Travelocity and got air for 2 from Houston, 3 nights at NYNY for a little over $600 total. That was the best I could do.

We had a flight out of Houston (3 hours away, but my family lives there) for early Tuesday morning. So we drove there Monday and spent the night at my Aunt and Uncles house. We about had a panic attack, though. It was flooding in Houston and the day before we were to fly out, flights were being cancelled. Off to a great start! So we get up at 4:30am Tuesday morning to catch our 7:25am flight on Continental and it's raining. The Park-N-Fly's parking lot electricity is out, they were handwriting tickets. Had to wade through ankle deep puddles (with my new, cute sandals) to get to the shuttle. I was just happy when our plane took off.

Day 1:

We got to Vegas about 8:30am. Mike and Michelle were flying in from Dallas (where they left their kids with Grandma) and arrived about 45 minutes after us, so we decided to stick around and wait for them. Found them, waited forever for their luggage (we got lucky-ours was the first one out on the conveyer belt) and got the limo shuttle. Of course it was full of people going to every different hotel, but we were the second stop after MGM.

I was so excited to be there-I had been wanting to stay at New York, New York for some time. Check in was a bitch, though. I know we had basically "Run of the House" rooms (I used to be a travel agent for 10 years), but I wasn't pleased with check in. What happened was, we knew we were there early-before check in. But it was a Tuesday morning, so we thought we'd see if they had any adjoining rooms available now. It wasn't mandatory we check in now, but it never hurts to ask. I had called before I left and she said I'd have to wait for check in to ask for adjoining rooms. So the girl is looking and looking and my back is starting to hurt just standing there. She said the only way she could get us adjoining rooms right now is if we upgrade from Broadway Deluxe to Park Avenue Deluxe for $10.00 more a day. All of a sudden, I couldn't remember the $20 trick, or how it worked, so I didn't do that. We thought, ok, $10 a day isn't bad if that means we get a little better room, adjoining and checking in now. So we sign the paperwork. Then, she's clicking away more on the computer-10 minutes passes and she said she made a mistake. The rooms she gave us we smoking (we asked for non smoking). Ok, so she said she could get us adjoining rooms, still Park Avenue Deluxe, ready now for $15 dollars extra a day! Basically, we have to pay more for non smoking rooms! Now we're starting to think twice, but our friends said screw it, just do it. I'm starting to get pissed. Granted, we're not high rollers or anything, but in a town where people easily get free upgrades, etc. she made a mistake and has the balls to charge us even more. So then, she gives us one key. Then the next she said isn't ready, but to call back about 1pm and they'll give us our room number. Isn't that what she said-the rooms were available now? However-I asked if it was the next room. She said no, but it's not far, just a few doors away. But she looked really guilty as she said it. Wasn't that the whole point of us standing there for 30 minutes and paying $15 extra a day? I know we had alot to ask, but if they couldn't do it, or we had to wait until later in the day-that's fine. Just tell us. Don't pretend. So we go to their room-to put all our stuff until ours was ready.

We decided to go walk the strip, but jumping ahead before I go on, my husband decided to call the hotel a little after 1pm to get our room assignment. We were waaaayyy down the hall around a few corners from our friends. They were in New Yorker, 1664. We were in Chrysler, 1684. Basically 10 doors down (if they were all in a row, but you know how those hotels are)-right near eachother according to the front desk girl. They got the view of MGM and the rollercoaster. We missed the roller coaster, got a view of the MGM and M&M's store across the street. I'm one of those weird people in Vegas where I care where I stay and like a view. At least we were facing the strip. Does anyone think this is normal? Should I say anything to the hotel? I just felt she lacked a little honesty and like I said, if you can't accomodate our few needs, then just tell us. We also had 2 queens beds instead of 1 king, but can't have everything.

So anyway, I completely forgot to change my shoes before we decided to park our luggage in our friends room. I had on my Payless sandals. So we decide to get something quick to eat downstairs at the little fast food court. I ate at the burger joint right there on the corner-had a sourdough burger melt-it was good! After that, we looked around the hotel a bit. Boy, those timeshare people are getting worse than I remember. At one point after they were yelling what tickets they had to us, Michelle turned to me and said, "What are tickets to 'The Last Virgin'"? I thought for a second and laughed and said, "Lance Burton!! They were offering tickets to Lance Burton...not The Last Virgin!" Cracked me up for a good 30 minutes. The guys assured us that if there was a 'last virgin' show, they'd definetly be there. So anyway, we decided to hit the strip. Went to Monte Carlo, played the slots there for a bit. Went to Bellagio to look at the gardens. Moved on to Caesars, had some good luck on the Titanic slots there. Found the Elton John store and about freaked. I had to be dragged out of there! Made it down to the Forum shops. By then it had been several hours and my out-of-shape, sandals wearing feet were killing me. I could feel my shin splints starting to hurt and the sandal part of my shoes were digging into the top of my feet. Plus, I'm only a whole 5'2" and everyone else was much taller than I, so I had to practically run to keep up. We crossed over to Bally's and I couldn't remember if the monorail charged or how much it was. So we go all the way through the hotel to find out it would be $9.00 just go to down to MGM. So we said screw it, we're walking no matter what. We stayed indoors to get to Paris. In each place of course, we shopped and played some coins, too. We make it through, then out to the Alladin where there was alot of construction going on. It was a little over 100 degrees that day, so we had gone through ALOT of water bottles. We stopped at the little 7-11 and got some water and just a bit down, I found a bench to rest my feet. I was starting to feel the heat from the bottom on my sandals hitting the bottom of my feet. So I sat down on the bench only to find it burning my bum in about 2 minutes. So I'd sit for a minute until my butt burned, then stand until my feet burned, then alternated. We finally made it back to the hotel and checked into our room. It was about 4:30pm and I crawled into one of the beds with the intention of watching TV and resting, but crashed. I heard my husband saying he and Mike were going out to find some cheap liquor at one of the gas stations. Have fun!

I woke up about 6pm and we just decided to hang at the hotel that night. We went over to the Excalibur for dinner buffet. I hear nobody likes it, but we've always thought it was just fine. We were stuffed and didn't feel like doing much after that-especially drinking! I'm not supposed to be drinking anyway (I'm not a huge drinker to begin with) because of a bleeding ulcer I have. So we head up to Coyote Ugly. That place is LAME. Granted, we were there early (about 8pm) and it was happy hour, 2 for 1 drink specials. There wasn't a whole lot of people, maybe about 75 or so. I didn't find it to be like the movie. I'll tell you though-places like that give you a few people to laugh at. Just thinking of some of them a few days later gave us the laughs.

I felt like such a loser, but by 9:30pm I was tired. I still never really quite woke up from my nap-I hate that feeling. It was 11:30pm Texas time, we had been up since 4:30am traveling and I'm just a big wus I guess. So we said goodnight to our friends, (they stayed down there some more-he was playing craps), headed up and went to bed. I think we were asleep in 10 minutes.

The next day we had no real plan to begin the day, but I'll continue that later. Still trying to do wash and recover from the trip!

I'll be back for Day #2!

Renee

 

Sounds like fun so far! Keep it up. That really sucks about the mishap at the hotel, i would DEFINATELY call them! There is no reason to pay more without getting what you asked for. Maybe they will comp you or something for the next time...They should at least give you something back, if you bitch enough!

 

Thanks, evesixer! That's right-I think I'll bitch enough. Apparently I can be quite good at that, lol! I mean, we did get the room upgrade, but it wasn't ready and wasn't adjoining. Like I said, I understand if they can't accomodate our needs, or check us in early, that's fine. But don't tell us you can, then make a mistake, then charge us even more! If I would have been the clerk I would have been embarressed I made the mistake by putting us in smoking and said, "My fault, I'll put you in the upgrade still, but I won't charge you the $15, we'll just keep it at $10". I think I'll just have to send them an email.

Thanks for the reply. I'll do more later!

 

You absolutely must complain. What the desk clerk did was completely unethical. I've worked at front desk and reservations in a hotel for the last 25 years. You should expect an upgrade to cost more, especially when you book through a third party, but non-smoking? I think not. It is discriminatory. Who ever heard of charging more for non-smoking or to get an early check in? It just doesn't happen. Also, I would not only send an email. Call and ask for the front office manager.


Lori

 

Thanks Lori!

I think what she was charging more for was the upgrade of the room from Skyline to Broadway to Park Avenue. This is from what I understood, I don't know how much of it was true, half I didn't believe, but this was what supposedly went down:

We booked Skyline. We wanted to check in early. She didn't have any Skyline rooms available until later in the afternoon. She said there are 2 Broadway rooms available-that are adjoining-that we could check into now. It would be $10 more for the upgrade to go from Skyline to Broadway. We thought about it. Decided to do it. We'd get the next step up in a room AND be able to check in now AND get adjoining rooms. We say yes, sign all the paper work, she's getting our keys ready, when:

Oops. The adjoining Broadway rooms that we just signed for are smoking rooms. And we wanted non-smoking. So she checked and checked. Told us we could get a non-smoking room to check in now, but the only one that's available right now is Park Avenue rooms. And, now it'll be $15 more a day since that's another upgrade.

That's where I thought they should eat the extra $5 a day since that was her mistake. As a previous travel agent, I would have been embarrassed to ask customers again to pay more-because my mistake, I didn't read it the first time that they were smoking rooms, I already told them I have rooms, they signed the paper work, the difference in this next upgrade is on us. If this was some little, local owned Bed & Breakfast, I'd try to be a little more understanding. But this is a huge, rich resort, where comps are a regular occurance and they have TONS of competition. Heck, I've gotten better upgrades at a damn La Quinta in Timbucktu.

But what's the pisser of it all, was we paid the $15 to upgrade to we could check in now-and have adjoining rooms. When she gave us the first key, I asked if ours was next door, she sort of skirted around the issue. I finally asked her-is it or isn't it? She made a size motion with her hands, like if she were showing us what a foot long is (I don't know either?) and said they are "really close". "So check in to this room and call us back in 4 hours and we'll give you your room number". I mean, we didn't HAVE to have adjoining. It wasn't like families where they need to stay together. But it would have been nice since we weren't planning on splitting up any time during the trip, and wanted to do some hanging out in our rooms, drinking beer, eating food, watching TV type thing. You know the rest period between day and night? Even across the hall would have been nice. Not clear down the damn corridor. I knew she knew how far apart our rooms would be (she said she didn't have our room number until we called after 1:00pm), but wouldn't give us our room number until we had to call. Cause she knew she booked us far apart. If she would have just said, "I can get you adjoining rooms, but they won't be ready until after 3:00pm", that's fine. But doing all these upgrades and back and forth and you don't mean to tell me there's not any adjoining rooms in the whole hotel?

Yeah, I'm still bitter about the whole thing-and it wasn't anything major. But one less hassle the better, ya know? I'm going to start off with an email (for some reason I seem to have better luck with email-I have no idea why) and if that doesn't fly, I'll call. I'll let ya'll know what happens.

Thanks to the both of you for understanding! I still have more days to write, too!

Renee

 

Thanks for your report and I'm looking forward to day 2. But I'd be pissed at the front desk too. You have a very legit complaint IMO.


Buick

 

Right. Upgrade #2 was their fault. They should have eaten it or at least made it up to you in F&B comps or something.

Lori