The Birthday Vegas Trip July 14th-17th Really Long!

Background: Boyfriend's 2nd trip to Vegas, my at least 7th trip, maybe more, as I have been going to Vegas since I was about 15.... It was my birthday and all I wanted was to go to Vegas, even in the scorching heat. He was not thrilled with how hot it was going to be. I got a free ticket, he paid $400 for his. Booked Monte Carlo for $400 for 3 nights.

Flight: Flew out of Columbus, Ohio on Soutwest Airlines on my birthday, July 14th. It was a direct flight and it was full as usual. Though we were in the B boarding group, we didn't get to sit together. I wasn't thrilled but he didn't seem to mind. I got sat next to a girl ready to party and a man that overflowed into my seat and every time he moved, I got elbowed…. The plus side was that we bought me and the other girl drinks and soon I was too drunk to care that I just took a 20th elbow to the kidney. I had the flight attendant check on the boyfriend, who was up in the front, and he was sleeping the whole time. Arrived a few minutes early and got our baggage. We took a shuttle to the hotel and as I was trying to take in the fact that I was now in Vegas for some birthday fun, a shrill laugh behind me broke me out of my daydream. There were four girls who couldn’t have been much over 18 and they were talking about their pets…..Ok…..boring…..Then one started talking about how her dad ran over her pet bunny and it was SOOOOO sad. They all gave a “Oh My God that’s so terrible†in unison and then started telling dead pet stories…. They were the second stop and when they got off, there was a cheering coming out of the shuttle. This is the last time I take the shuttle….

Room: We arrived at the Monte Carlo and I prepared myself for the $20 trick. I had read and read about it, but have never had the guts to try it. I figured it’s my birthday and we were celebrating our 1st year of dating anniversary (ok, that’s a big deal to me…longest relationship by far in a looooooong time!) so I figure what better time than now? I wait for the youngest guy at the counter to have a clear line and I make my approach. He goes through my reservation and asks for my credit card and ID. I give them to him along with the $20 and ask if there are any suites available for the weekend. He says it’s $90 per night to upgrade to a Monaco suite, but he’d see what he could do. He gets on the phone and talks for a minute. He gets off and says that even though it’s my birthday he can’t give it to me for free, but could do it for $20 per night, will I take it? Hell yes I will!!! He makes the necessary changes and then gives me another option. Do I want the 6th floor or the 30th floor? The 30th is handicapped, but has a much better view he says. Ok, the 30th floor it is. Meet back up with the boyfriend who is hiding around the corner and don’t tell him about the room.. He’ll see it in a minute. We get up to the room (30201) and it’s great! Living room area, two bathrooms and a sweet king sized bed. Good stuff for an extra $20. I go and look at this view the clerk talked about and it’s nice. Rio, Palms, the mountains off in the distance. A partial view of the Bellagio fountains (blocked by the stupid Jockey Club, I think) and then I look straight down. It’s the pool area!! Nice. We get unpacked and immediately head out. It’s still early, around 3, so we hang at the hotel for awhile.

Thursday: So, the parents said you have to stay at the Monte Carlo, it’s great! I usually stay at the Boardwalk. It’s cheap, what can I say? The Monte Carlo is nice and we would stay there again. We go down to the casino and since I left all of my player’s cards at home, I get a new one. I head to the slots, boyfriend heads to the blackjack table. I don’t know what happened at the blackjack table, but an hour later the boyfriend was back and wouldn’t talk about the situation. He said he wasn’t gambling anymore that day and he was going to go and walk around. I played my favorite 25 cent Jackpot Stampede machine without any real wins or losses for about 2 hours. He came back finally and we went out to eat at NYNY food court (excellent pizza!!) and wander the strip in search of the birthday present that he didn’t buy me….

We ended up at the Forum Shops and I didn’t find anything I wanted. I know, how could that happen with all the stores there. Truth is, I didn’t want to pick out my own birthday gift and he knew it and I was also drunk, so that didn’t help matters. We went back to the room and he gave me my card then I passed out  I think….

Friday: Woke up and decided that yesterday was such a waste! How did I not gamble more??? How did I not drink more??? We decided on the Paris buffet since I had read about how good it was, and we were not disappointed! Our server joked that we did not eat enough and told us stories of Asian people and how they will sit for hours and put back 5 or 6 plates of food. She couldn’t understand how they would stay so small when they ate that much. On and on and on…. Then I noticed that she was probably just jealous….She weighted about 200 pounds… I digress….

Anyways, we leave Paris and decide that we are going to try out the Monte Carlo pool facilities (I know, after a buffet…ewww, let’s just say it didn’t matter). We get changed and go down to the pool. Once inside, they give us towels and get us chairs and place them where we want them. It was nice, but we couldn’t figure out how to get over to the big pool with the nice cushy lounge chairs. I think it was gated off from us common people. I took a couple of laps in the lazy river and got out to lay in the sun. One word SCORCHING!!! I made it for about an hour and a half and then suddenly started to feel sick. I went up to the room and found that, WOW, my face was purple and it wasn’t just because I was hot. I took a shower and got dressed. The face hadn’t changed back to normal. I take my second dose of medication for the day and suddenly remember something my mom once told me….Don’t go out in the sun when you’re taking antibiotics because it makes your skin ultra sensitive!!! I can honestly say, I didn’t even think about it, but damn, you would think that they would put a f***ing warning on the bottle!!

It’s about 11:00am, so we leave the hotel and go to our favorite gambling place, NYNY. Last trip, I won about $1400 on slots here and the boyfriend did pretty well at blackjack. We part ways for our respective gaming and the fun begins. I love NYNY because of the cocktail service. Good, strong drinks. I sit down at a Jackpot Stampede and we’re on our way. I’m playing right beside a pit and watching other gaming as I’m feeding the slot monster. Boyfriend doesn’t come back after about an hour and I’m up over $100 on the machine and getting bored (and really toasted…). There is a lonely dealer at the blackjack table by my machine…..I’m gonna do it….. SIDENOTE: I just do not have the balls to get up and play at a real table. I can do it all the time at home online, but just can’t do it in person.

Ok, to be honest with you, I was trashed and it was only noon. Those Absolute Screwdrivers were doing me in quick! I wandered up to the table and sat down. I bought in for $100 on a $10 table. I couple of young guys sat down and I warned them that it was my first time at a table and they were cool with it. Come to find out, they were from Cincinnati, so we had some things in common. Kev was the dealer and he was a hoot! He gave me excellent tips for playing. Then the boyfriend wonders over. I believe I got a “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?????â€, but I’m not sure cause wow, the drink service was even better at the table! He sat down and bought in for $100. People came and went all night and it was really fun. Kev’s replacement was Cha and she was also a lot of fun. Boyfriend ran out of $, so I gave him $100 of mine. Also, there was a guy at the table betting at least $100 per hand. I can’t tell you how many times he left the table to get more money, but he easily lost $5000 before he called it quits. To make a long evening short, I played at this table for 9 hours straight! It’s amazing how accommodating these people are. About half way into the whole thing Bob the pit boss came over and I asked for a pack of smokes. He asked me if I had a players club card and I whipped it out. Then he asked why I hadn’t had it out the whole time!!!??? I was too drunk to come up with an answer, so he got me the smokes. Now I remember why, at Monte Carlo, you have to be playing at least $25 per hand to get rated. Boyfriend told me this. That is not the case at NYNY. At around 9:30 we left NYNY and I was up about $250 and a pack of smokes….Not too bad for 9 hours worth of entertainment. I seriously do not know how we made it back to the hotel room.

Continued below.....

 

tr continued....

Saturday: Didn’t feel to bad when I woke up considering that I didn’t know how I had gotten back to the room. Decided to go to Paris once again and have breakfast. They didn’t raise their price for the weekend buffet….Cool.
Had another amazing breakfast, then boyfriend wanted to go to the pool. I wanted to stay out of the sun so I played slots. Got my a** kicked at the machines. Everything I touched turned to crap! Finally I gave in and went to the pool covering my face the whole hour I was there. I started to feel ill, so we went back to the room. I went back to the room and got sick. It was only 11:00 am and I was bummed. We spent the afternoon in the room watching cheesy 80’s movies. At one point, I decided that I was hungry and wanted room service. I ordered and enjoyed a Monte Carlo Club with fries and a carafe of Iced Tea(I know, bad choice for stomach issues) and he had a Caesar salad and a liter of water. Total cose $56.00 with tip…DAMN…. I didn’t realize it would be that expensive. Oh well. Proceeded to get sick a few more times and then fell asleep. Woke up at 2 and wanted to go shopping. We cabbed it over to Hard Rock to pickup a T-shirt that I had promised a co-worker and then cabbed it to the Fashion Show Mall. At some point the previous night, we talked about getting engaged (don’t remember too much about this, but whatever), so we looked at rings and both totally fell in love with one. Unfortunately it was $5500 and that was too much at that second in time. We left a little disappointed and went over to Wynn.

Wynn was nice. I’ll spare details cause you’ve all heard them from everyone else. I did take them for $200 on a 25 cent Windfall machine. I took my money and got the hell out of there. We walked back down the strip ducking into casinos whenever I felt the need to get sick. We’d sit and run $10 through a machine or two, without ever making any money. Finally we were back at our hotel. I wanted to lay down for a little bit, still not being able to shake whatever this cootie was.

At 8 I said f*** it, I’m going out!! I really wanted to play blackjack again and we were leaving in the morning. I showered and put on my “pretty†dress that my kids had bought me for my birthday. Let me tell you I certainly didn’t feel pretty, but whatever. We headed over to NYNY and found a $10 table. I remembered to put my players card down from the start. Tonight we had Chong and Larry as our dealers and Rick was the pit boss. They were all more than amusing. Since it was the Taylor/Hopkins fight, there were lots of “colorful†people in the casino. There were also a lot of a**holes. We had one guy at the table with his face covered because of the smoke, doing stupid crap like splitting 10’s. Everyone was pissed! So then we would intentionally blow our smoke his way to make him leave. He did, but like a bad rash, he kept coming back. Then there was a guy who kept yelling BUST THE DEALER in very broken English. Thank god the dealer took all his money quick! Lots of good people in and out of this table all night. A couple of hours into it, I decided that I felt good enough to drink again and started getting bigger betting balls. Between the two of us, we were up about $600 at one point. Rick the pit boss bought smokes and cigars for the whole table. It was great! The day before a girl was coming around to sign people up for players club cards and I had mentioned that I left mine at home, so she got me a new one, but told me that I needed to go and get my address changed. Being as I didn’t get up from the tables for 9 hrs Friday night, I did not get that accomplished. I asked Rick if he could take care of that for me and he did. We left NYNY at 4:30 am both up around $200….Nice….

Since the shuttle was picking us up at 8:30, we decided a little food was in order. We hadn’t eaten much in the time that we were there since we were so preoccupied, so we went to the Café in the Monte Carlo. Food was ok, nothing special, but what were we expecting at 5am? I had an omelet he had a cheeseburger. The food took almost 40 minutes to arrive!!! The bill came to around $30. Then we went to Boardwalk to print our boarding passes.

Since it was so late, we decided to sleep for a minute. Ok, a few hours. I got up around 7 and finished packing. He would NOT get up no matter what. I left and went down to see if I could get any comps based on play at the Monte Carlo. I checked my card and had gotten almost 900 points in the 3 days we were there. What was better was that we really didn’t play THAT much there. I was nervous going into the casino host office, as I had never asked for comps before. Turns out, it was all good. I forget his name, but he ended up comping our first night’s stay, took off the three day $20/day upgrade charge for the suite and took care of our room service bill!!!! I just wanted to get out of the room service bill, but I’ll take what I can get! I was told next time I wanted to stay, to book my room through VIP services….Cool. I went back up to the room and tried for the 4th time to wake up the boyfriend. Several tries later (I thought I was going to have to smother him with the pillow) he got up and started packing. We checked out and sat down outside to wait for the shuttle.

VEGAS MOMENT: As we were waiting for the shuttle, two hookers (yes, the real thing!) walked out of the hotel and were screaming for a cab only to have the bell man hail one right over to get them out of there quickly.

The shuttle came and we were on our way to the airport. SWA lines were horrible even though we had printed our boarding passes. They had the line snaked outside because it was so full. Took us 40 minutes to get through, then breezed right through security with a lighter in my purse! For the record I didn’t know it was there…. Flight was delayed because our plane was broken. We got another plane and touched down in Columbus about 30 minutes late.

Final Thoughts: This was a great trip. We really had fun and are already making plans to go out with the parents in March or April. Monte Carlo was nice and treated us well, but I’m gonna wait and see if NYNY sends me anything for all that table play. Thanks so much for reading if you actually made it to the end of this report! Also, thanks for all the advice that I have gotten from this board. If you have any questions about our trip, please do not hesitate to ask!

 

Great report. Glad to see you got more confident with your Blackjack play. Nice score on the room also.

Darin

 

Nicely done Tara. Funny...you say you didn't have the gonads to play blackjack yet not only did you do that but you tuffed it out through that reaction !. Your reward...up some $ and comped on the room charges....sweet !.

 

Very entertaining report. So sorry you had to deal with "cooties" on your trip. That's no fun anywhere. Thanks for the report!

 

Good job on being brave enough to play blackjack! Pretty soon you won't think twice about sitting down to a table to play.

 

I love that you toughed it through being sick and still managed to have a great time! Congrats!

 

Nice TR. I'd love to know how much you played at the Monte Carlo and their other properties that use that card. We were there from July 5-11 and I only had 175 points at the end of my stay (you need 200 points to get any rewards). I played quite a bit at MC but did not win much at all. This is why I don't go chasing comps and can never understand Vegas in this respect.

Glad you had a great time!

 

Only in Vegas can someone think the next morning "How did I not drink more" after a night of being drunk and passing out!

I also liked the remark about not remembering talk about getting engaged...PRICELESS! Too bad you couldn't get that ring.

Great TR, tara!

 

The funny thing was, after that first day (which was hours upon hours at the slots....), we really didn't play at the Monte Carlo more than a few hours and I did not use the card at any of the sister properties. We holed up in NYNY and didn't do much else. I would venture to say that I probably had at least $500 of my own money coin in and then didn't leave the slots at the MC with any coin any of the time....I did play dollar slots for a little bit, which raised the points rather quickly... Then there was that time when I thought I was betting $3 per spin when actually it was $6 per spin!!!!! Burned through a quick hundred really quick that time! I have to say that I was really suprised when I saw how many points I had accumulated, being as I am not a comp chaser.

 

You know, it's amazing what you can put your body through while in Vegas. I could never attempt that at home cause I'd be in a coma for days afterward!! The ring thing was definately a bummer, but I've been promised an even better one.....We'll see. Thanks for reading!

 

Ok, that makes a lot more sense to me. I did not realize that the fifty cent and dollar slots will help accumulate the points more. I play mostly quarter or nickel slots. I thought all the slots on the strip and even downtown were quite tight but then again it is the house advantage to play those things but they are so much fun at times.

 

Tara,

I was in the Monte Carlo the same weekend, and the Casino Host also took really go care of us, I was alittle surprised, the last time I stayed there I got nothing, hopefully they have changed their policy. I found the machines in MC to be very loose that weekend, so much so I am already booked to return in OCt.

 

liked the story...you sure seem to have good luck gambling...... and as a current pharmacy student, am curious to know what antibiotic you were taking. If it's too personal I understand. There are many antibiotics you should avoid too much sun exposure while taking, most popularly Levaquin, Cipro, and Bactrim DS.

 

Thanks for reading my trip report! I was taking Biaxin which DID NOT contain a warning label. When I got back, I was still feeling bad and went to the doctor and they gave me Cipro. It did have a label and let me tell you I followed instructions!!

 

Irish66,
I was stunned with all he took off the bill, considering we did most of our long nights at NYNY. I will definately book at the MC again! Thanks for reading!