Mirage 8/10-8/13 Part I

The night before we had to wake up at 530am for our 7am flight, the fire alarm went off in our apartment building. Someone on the second floor had a minor fire in their bedroom. We stood outside at around midnight for an hour, woke the kids up and dragged them out too (they were going on a trip that same morning with my parents while we were in Vegas). Needless to say we figured this was an omen of our upcoming luck.

When we woke up in the morning and heard about the terrorist plot and new airport security guidelines….only could happen on the one day a year that we fly….yep, definitely an omen. We only had to wait a little while to get through security at DFW since it was early and we were flying America West (the flight was empty). I took one of my lighters out of my backpack and threw it away but when we got through security and to the gate, while looking for something else I saw another lighter in there that made it through! Great security.

The flight was smooth and we arrived in LAS early. We could not believe the lines at McCarran airport. They were miles long for people trying to get through security. It was truly unbelievable! Of course we did something that I swore to never do again – put money into a slot at the airport. $60 to be exact. Nothing, nada, zilch….lost it all in less than 10 minutes. We took Bell Trans to the Mirage and went to check in.

For the first time, the $20 trick did not work for me. Nothing seemed to be going right on this trip so far! I had requested a smoking room with my reservation but when I went to check in, I had the $20 in my hand where she could see it and I asked for an upgrade smoking or non-smoking it didn’t matter.. Well first of all, let me say that 80% of the agents were wearing “In Training†badges. So, I purposely went to someone without that badge. Seeing the $20, this girl gets on the phone and says something to someone in the back. Then she tells me that they were sold out and did not have any views or upgrades available but that she had a room ready on the 2nd floor. I wanted to get our luggage in there and change clothes so I quickly pulled the $20 back and said “that’s fineâ€. It was a room on the end of the hall (which I think are a little bigger) but had NO VIEW whatsoever. We were on the back of the building looking over the roof. Oh well. Oh, also we tried to present our Check/Debit card (with a Visa logo) to put on our room and the lady said that since we are Casino guests (staying on comps) that we HAVE to present a Major credit card. Well, we don’t have a MAJOR cc, so I had to give her travelers checks. $200. BUT – I still cannot charge anything to the room. This is the strangest thing I have ever heard of, and I am a Front Office manager at a Hyatt! The only consolation to this is knowing that if we lose everything, we were at least going home with $200! hehe

Now, I don’t want to say too much about our first day. Let’s just say we lost almost $900. Most in slots but some at the tables. We racked up almost 3K Points on our Mirage slot card in one day– which I will tell you about later on. The good points about our first day was that we ate lunch at La Salsa’s and had our free dinner for 2 at Cravings, the Mirage buffet. The Buffet was good – a little too much to choose from, you really aren’t sure what to eat first! The only slight luck we had that night was when my husband put in $100 to the Elvis slots at NYNY. I ran out of my $100 pretty quickly. He was able to hang in there on the same machine for almost 3 hours and walked away winning only about $50 more. Better than losing it though, and I was able to get lots of free drinks during that 2.5 hours!! Over all, we just walked around that day – nothing exciting.

Listen closely – we went back to the Mirage and around 145 – 2am we stopped by the players club desk to check on our points. This is when the lady tells us that we have almost 3K points and that we could get another comped meal in any restaurant except the gourmet ones. We couldn’t decide which meal we might want the next day so she tells us to just come back tomorrow and we could get our comp then. More to come on this later…..

The second day was fun, we didn’t gamble much in the beginning because we had already lost our A$$es on Thursday. My husband went to TI to get us Starbucks. He was gone for an hour and I was sure that he was sitting down somewhere losing more money. When he got back, he said that the line for Starbucks was a million people long. Which proved to be true because when we went back out and took the tram to TI, there was still an unbelievable line. We ate lunch at the Paris food court, 2 Nathan’s hot dogs. The bill came to almost $15 for 2 hot dogs, a thing of fries and a bottled water. When we had lunch at Stage Deli the next day, they bill there was only $15 for much more food than this!

We joined the Ceasars Total rewards club to see if we could get anything by swiping our cards at any of the sister properties. Well in 2 days we didn’t win one damn thing….we just got our free “3 Million†monster-sized T-shirts for stopping by 3 casinos, and a bunch of exercise for walking to all of them.

We went to the Wynn on this day. It was really beautiful. It really reminded me of the Mirage in a way. All the tropical plants and waterfalls were very similar to that at the Mirage. We joined their slot club and played for a bit on the machines. I won about $80 on a Blazing Sevens machine after I put in $4 and had 2 pulls. I was hoping our luck was turning around. We went by the ticket box office to see how much seats were for La Reve. They turned out to be $88 for seats in row C. We bought 2 tickets for the 730 show that same night.

On the way to Harrahs to take the monorail down to the South end, we went into Casino Royale and joined their slot club to get the free Margarita coupons. They give you a voucher for $50 in free play that you can ONLY use at their promotional machines. You cannot cash out until you rack up $100 in points or more. Did I mention these were dollar machines?? Well, nope….didn’t win here either. But I did get my $1 Margarita and my husband got his free beer.

When we got down to the South end, we went to see the Bodies exhibit at the Tropicana – yep! I talked the Hubby into it. Wow was that cool….I thought it was interesting. The baby section really got to my husband and at one point I turned around and he was gone. He didn’t want to see any part of that. One thing that did bother me was that I couldn’t get the silicone smell out of my nose for about a hour after we left. I promised him we would see the wax museum the next day because he was such a sport. Hehe. We joined the Tropicana slot club and played a little – very little. Lost it all (not surprising).

We quickly got back to the hotel to change for La Reve. We arrived for the show at around 710pm. At 715, they started the pre-show and at 730 the real show started. Let me just say that this show is AWESOME. We have seen Mystere, Zumanity and Ka and this one blows them out of the water (no pun intended). There is comedy mixed in there and great music. Steve Wynn really went all out on this one. They told us that row C is in the splash zone….we didn’t get one sprinkle. They were awesome seats. I will post more later about the show under the “Vegas Shows†board. We left there around 930pm.

We decided to go back to the hotel and check on that comped dinner – we were looking forward to eating at California Pizza Kitchen. When we get to the player club desk, the lady tells us that we have no comps and only 990 points in our account. When we ask why, she said that since we are staying at the hotel on free nights, that they have to use the points we accumulate to PAY for the free nights. She then tells us that yes, last night we had almost 3K pts, but that at Midnight they applied the first free night, which brought us down to under 1K. My husband tried to explain to her that the lady last night had told us this and it was already after midnight. This lady was from Bulgaria and still just kept saying the same thing over and over. Our reasoning was that, we were told something – they screwed up and gave incorrect info – give us our dinner….that is their problem. But, I guess that they don’t have to provide good customer service and do what is right because they are the Mirage – and we are low rollers. So, even the supervisor said no and that she would “counsel†the lady who told us about the dinner the night before. I never knew that they suck out your free nights from your point balance every day, that is ridiculous! I then inquire about the $75 in Free Play that came with our room, she credited that to our account and we took the $20 cash back that we had coming to us. Screw the Mirage – we were not going to play any more slots there with our card – what good does it do anyway?? We walked away with our $20 and $75 in Free Play and off of the Free play we won about $100. In your face Mirage! That paid for our dinner so we got a “free†dinner regardless!! We were both really tired and fell asleep early that night…around 11pm. Well, at least we weren’t at the tables losing more money!

Part II coming tomorrow, I have to go do laundry now…let me just say that our luck turns around a bit on the 3rd day!

 

What a good trip report! Can't wait for the rest of it. We are leaving in 5 days. Staying at the Luxor. So far you guys did allot. I would love to see a show we are still deciding. I hear ya about the laundry I have to go fold the clothes (lol).

 

Wow, what a pisser. "Gee, you can stay at our lovely hotel for free, but while you are here you have to earn it!" What if you never ended up gambling there while staying, would they have kept your security deposit?

 

That is total bullshit about using your points for the room after they've already invited you to the hotel on (what I am assuming was) an offer from Casino Marketing. This is yet another nail in the coffin of the Mirage as far as I"m concerned. MGM has toasted the place so badly w/ all of their great design changes and now they're adding the MGM quality customer service? What's next... charges on your room for the use of the TP in your room?

These guys couldn't carry Steve Wynns brief case IMO... Care to know how I really feel?

 

"When we ask why, she said that since we are staying at the hotel on free nights, that they have to use the points we accumulate to PAY for the free nights."

I'm shocked by this MGM policy. It's sort of like inviting friends to your home to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner and then handing them a bill for their dinner before they leave. Hubby and I have "comped" nights at Paris next month. Does anyone know if they (Harrah's Entertainment) will do this to us? You can be sure I will be calling Paris within the next week or so to address this issue.

 

I'm not sure if that is even legal. One time I was invited and I asked the girl at the desk if it would come off my points and she said, "no sir, that would be against the law." Not sure if she was kidding or not, but, I would check.

 

I just got home from work and dropped into the board to check the replies and I see that the MGM's point policy has you all as "chapped" as we were. I asked the supervisor, "What if we didn't play and accumulate any points during our stay?" She replied with, "That's ok, you would still get your free nights". Doesn't make much sense does it? Oh, and they all addressed us as Casino "guests". That is why we couldn't use or check card on the room -- something about us being Casino guests. Money is money right? What's the difference? Myself being in hotel management -- your replies have inspired me to write the MGM a nice lengthy letter and I know exactly which buttons to push to get some kind of response. Thanks guys, you all are exactly right....they suck! Timmysmom, let me know what the Paris says. I will finish off the report tomorrow

Oh, did I mention that we gambled (and lost) our butts off at the MGM properties and after they sucked all of our free nights out of us, it left us with a whopping 74 points to our Players Card when we got home!

 

Weluvvegas, I just called Paris Las Vegas and ask if our reward credits would be used to pay for our upcoming "comped" nights. Individual I spoke with said absolutely not. I told her about your experience at the Mirage and she said she'd never heard of such a thing. Was there something in the fine print on the offer you received that stated that your points would be used to pay for your room? If not, it's time to send a letter to MGM corporate.

 

I am SOOOOOOOOOOO gonna follow this thread. I just got offered to " Stay " at NYNY for 3 nights.. Ya I have a players card, but I sure don't rack up the points to cover 3 nights and I sure don't want to lose any points I do earn, and I plan on playin there, to my stay I've already been offered. I'm sorry they screwed you but I do hope you send a letter and maybe this gets fixed for all of us. They should do something for you as well. Another stay with a butt load of meal comps or something..

Looking forward to the rest of your TR!

Sticky

 

Sticky... you made me laugh out loud, I haven't heard "butt load" for a long time and that used to be one of my fave sayings...lol

After re-reading this, I'm thinking maybe a lot of what happened was just the (very poor) way the palyers club employee explained it, which was obviously using no tact at all. I think that's kind of how they look at it when you're in on a "marketing" offer but my guess is they're not supposed to tell the player that... at least not in those words. Our experience has been that when we're invited in for 3 nights comp'd and don't play enough points that "would have" comp'd us for 3 nights (if that makes sense), I never really expect them to comp any add'l nights but they usually will take "some" (at least $100) off of our bill in food and the free play or cash back (whichever the hotel offers) should be based on "all" of your original points.

We've had much better luck not asking for meal comps one at a time and just charging everything to our room and then asking a host to look at our play on check-out day and see if there is anything he or she could do for any of the food or drinks. Seems to work better that way.

There can be exceptions w/ a little bit of scheming and luck Case in point: Our last trip we had enough play from our previous stay to get 2 nights comp'd up front so I called the host and booked 5 nights, 2 comp'd and 3 at casino rate was what she said she could do. She was a little hesitant to do 2 nights cuz we were a liitle short on points (she said) for 2 nights but I think because we were coming in for five and paying the other 3, she went ahead and did it for us as a "customer service" feel good thing. If you've never stayed in any of Steve Wynn's hotels (while he owned them), he has a reputation for great customer service. So...anyway... about 4 weeks before our trip, we get an offer from "casino marketing" for 3 free nights and some free play. It was the "Full House" deal that quite a few on the board got offered w/ different denominations of $$ in free play. So, I called Casino Marketing and told them I had received this offer and would like to see if my dates were available. I told her my dates and when she said yes, I told her I actually had those dates already booked but at casino rate and she said that she'd be glad to change those for me.. SCORE = 5 free nights. If I had been talking to the host, I'm not sure they would have done it. Now, all that said....Mr. Wynn still got his money because we gambled and ate quite a bit more (in $$) than the room cost for 5 nights so overall they know what they're doing it seems. But, it certainly made our trip less expensive and got to gamble for a week and eat great food and relax at the pool....worth ever penny