May 22 - 26/05 First Time Trip

First trip to Vegas, solo, in preperation for my cousins wedding next year.
Arrived in Vegas at 10:24pm, an amazing view from the plane. Got out and waited for a cab while looking at the size of the buildings. Got to the hotel, Imperial Palace, and hit up my first slot machine. Monty Python machine, had some funny bits, but seemed to get annoying after a while. Ticketed out and moved to the Star Wars machines. Being a Star Wars geek, this game was nothing but awesome for me. Yes, I lost what I won on the Python machine, but it was well worth it. Walked on down the strip to the Barbary Coast. Star Wars again, 20 in, 80 out, sweet. Signed up for the slot card and got a pack of cards and a free drink at the bar. Downed that and walked up through the carnival court area on my way to Casino Royale. Ordered up a few $1 Michelob's and wasted some time on a Match Game slot machine. Got another couple of travelers and walked back to the hotel to hit the sack at 3am.
Woke up at 830 am and hit the IP breakfast buffet with a coupon I had. Yes, I ate it and had no ill effects. Nothing special, very high school cafeteria quality food. Went through the IP car display, some cars were sweet, others I wondered why they were there. Worked my way from the IP to Harrahs to Casino Royale to Venetian to TI to Wynn. Harrahs seemed to have a bunch of construction going on with Toby Keiths place and some work on their cafe. Got slot card, plus a 12 pack of coke, free blockbuster rental and keychain. Moved to CR and got their slot card. Promptly went through the free slot play on the special machines, got another Mich and walked on over to Venetian. Very cool looking place, both outside and the shopping area with the gondolas. Found the casino to smell different in different areas. Some places smelled like a soft peppermint and others smelled like old lady perfume. Walked over to TI, liked the feel of the place. Got my slot card, and quickly got up to 179 points playing Star Wars machine, which was enough for me to get a TI t-shirt. Not sure how the MGM point system works, but that seemed like a lot of points to me. Made my way over to Wynn. Paid the $10 to enter the car dealership and got my free Team Penske baseball cap. They have a used car showroom downstairs that has 20-30 more cars of all makes, errr, high end makes. Walked back to IP, got my monorail ticket and headed down to MGM to head over to NYNY and ride the coaster. MGM is huge, checked out the lion habitat, but from what I saw they only had 1 female lion out and about. Got the $40 thing at NYNY for the coaster, includes unlimited rides on coaster, t-shirt, picture, food, and some other stuff that I didn't bother with. I know I've read it here before, but that coaster should be renamed to the concussion maker. Had some neat parts to it, but head damage is not worth it. Grab my goods, ate some food and walked back over to MGM to catch the monorail up to Sahara. Speed coaster was wicked fast, to bad its such a short ride. Ride the monorail again to the Hilton to check out the Star Trek Experience. Liked the Klingon ride better than the Borg part, but both kinda neat. Back to the IP around 7:30pm, and figured I would settle in for a nap, and ended up sleeping 11 hours.
Barbary Coast for breakfast special, never knew that regular drink prices were so high, $2 something for a cup of coffee. Food was good and the place was packed. Starting to wonder if Americans don't really like scrambled eggs as everytime I've had them so far seem to be the powdered egg type. Walked over to Flamingo, they had computer problems so I couldn't get a slot card, asked if it would be the same at all their affiliated casinos and was told yes. So I walked over to Paris and got my card there. Liked the casino area of Paris, and shopping area reminded me of the Venezian shopping area. Hit Bally's and it pretty much reminded me of Bally's AC. Walked on down to Aladdin. Walked around the shopping area but was so early that nothing was open yet. Settled in to see the rain storm thing, was kinda sad at first with most of the things just dripping water but as the storm went on the rain effect was much improved. Moved on over to the Excalibur, seems like a confusing kind of place to get around. Moving walkway to Luxor. A very darkish kind of casino area I thought, but very neat with the hotel rooms up in the pyramid. Worked my way over to Mandalay Bay. Very light, airy casino. Nice smelling, and the possibly the hotest CW's that I have seen so far. Took the tram back to Excal and walked over to NYNY to play some keno. Didn't win anything, so headed over to Monte Carlo. Kinda of a bland, nothing special or really memorable about this place. Had a pint of pale ale at the brew pub, not as good as Alexander Keiths, but nice none the less. Tram to Bellagio. Loved the conservatory with the water fountains, very nicely done. Had very patriotic theme with a liberty bell, american eagle and and little baby eagles in a nest that moved and made noise. The whole Bellagio area seem ed really nice. Sat down at a quarter video blackjack machine, and sat there for a long time. Enjoyed many jack 'n' diets while sitting there. Many, many, many to be exact. Left there very happy and headed to Caesars. Very nice chairs at the slot machines, almost looked like it did on the tv show. Cool spiral escalators in the shopping area. Time to head over to BC to catch Big Elvis. Enjoyed a free hot dog and couple beers during the show. Big is right, but he sounds like Elvis from what I can remember. Head back to the room to change with plans of eating at the Rio buffet and then heading over to Palms to check out Ghostbar. Go to Harrahs to catch the shuttle over to Rio. Hit the huge buffet, everything I had was good, and I had a lot. Get up to move over to watch the air parade thing and realize that my left calf is nicely cramped up and I am hobbling around like an old man. See the parade, kinda neat, and decide that I am too sore, too full and too drunk to even attempt walking over to the Palms, so I catch to shuttle back to Harrahs and back to my room where I layed down with an uncomfortable full stomach. Turns out there was a Snoop Dogg concert at the Palms with the after party at Ghost, so not even sure I would have been able to get up there anyways.
Pampering morning for me. Manicure, pedicure and facial. All very relaxing and nice as its the first time I've done either one. Refreshed, I head on down the strip and eat at fatburger. About 15 minute wait for food, but I didn't find anything very special about it. Head to the Tropicana, again reminds me very much of the same casino in AC. Walk on down to San Remo, and get myself a ticket to Showgirls of Magic. Traffic was crazy on Tropicana, and I waited 15-20 minutes at SR for a cab, hoping to head to the gun store to shoot a machine gun. Fed up, I decide to start walking as I knew the gun store was somewhere on Tropicana. Big mistake. Very hot day, long walk past some very trashy looking places. Get to Paradise and say forget it and turn up towards Hard Rock. Make it there and quickly down a coule bottles of water. Liked the layout of the casino here, everything in a circle. Catch a cab back to IP and play some more Star Wars before heading over for the 8pm show at SR. About 1 1/4 hours long, seemed like there was a lot of dancing and filler with tiny bubbles and the mask guys. The girls were all attractive enough, only one had implants. Make my way over to Boardwalk in plenty of time to catch the Purple Reign show. Go Prince! Very interesting mix of people in the crowd. Old, young, white, black, chinese, midgets, you name it, they were there. Did some Morris Day and teh Time songs as well, though it's not the same guy that does Prince. Slowly make my way back to the hotel for the night.
Sleep late as I have to check out today. Check my bags and catch the monorail to MGM, across to Tropicana and take a cab from there to the gun store. Got to shoot an MP40 and a Thompson. Very fun, very cool, never shot a real gun before. Take the bus back to MGM. Did nothing to change my mind about public transit. Head back to IP and eat lunch buffet with coupon again. Again, no ill effects, nothing special nothing bad. Run over to Harrahs to see Mac King. Very good show for the price, I enjoyed it very much. Back to IP, win some on Star Wars again, so I head over to 3 card poker. Buyin for $100, bown to about $65 and catch a straight flush. Sweet!! $5 to the dealer, and played untill I had $200 left. Made possibly the worst decision of my trip and hit the craps table. Did everything right so I thought, buying the inside, tokes to the dealers but nothing worked and it all went away. Thanks to Mikey I caught some of the short sticking(proper term?) to some rather busty ladies in some low cut tops. Dejected, I decide I should eat before I head to the airport. Ate at the Burger Bar at the IP. Never will I do that again, nasty stuff. Off to the airport to head home.


Pictures!

[ May 29, 2005, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: LostHope ]

 

Nice report! I was walking with you as you described everywhere you went. I make similar rounds when I'm there. I'm gonna have to try Star Wars next time I go.

If the dice are cold it can be miserable unless you're on the dark side. Nice win at 3 card poker anyways.

 

Nice report-- I am so ready to go--check out my countdown-- will be there exactly one week. Thanks for sharing