Trip Report #11: BeeeJay Dances with the Stars at Palazzo and Encore

Trip Report #11: BeeeJay Dances with the Stars at Palazzo and Encore
Welcome to the 11th installment of BeeeJay acting stupid and blowing cash like a $2 whooore on nickel nite. This installment describes the second Vegas leg of my 21-day cross country business-pleasure drive from Chicago to Phoenix .



Again, I’ll cover the non-Vegas sections quickly for continuity and move into more detail for the VEGAS ACTION BABY!!!!



Ok so I last left you with just under an $850 profit after the first week of my trip thanks to some good craps rolls and a minor stake of promo chips. By this time I have fully recovered from my illness and no longer having to pull over as I cough to vasovagal episode unconsciousness while driving the twisty roads from Phoenix to Vegas.



I had spent one week in Phoenix staying with friends. 3 days with the buddy who bought before the boom and regrets not selling at the top, and 4 days with the buddy who moved in across Carefree Highway 3 years later is about $300K underwater. Being from Chicago I am loving those 3,500 sq ft houses with pools and spent most of my time sleeping in, hanging by the pool, playing two rounds of golf (500 Club and The Biltmore), and dining very well in the evening before finishing up the evening in the hot tub and with a chick flick chosen by my buddies wives….(the buddies are Big Dog and Money from Trip Report #4: BeeeJay & The Boys Sin Early & Often, NYNY & Wynn Fairway Villa, Golf, Royal, 6 W-2's, 60 Pics, Hooker Offers----recently retitled).



Anyway, enough of all that, I was off for the 4-5 hr drive to The Mecca from northern Phoenix . A really enjoyable drive from the scenery perspective. I arrived late afternoon and drove down the strip from the airport side, pulling into the Palazzo parking garage happy to see at least a couple days of good pool weather on the horizon.



Wednesday, April 1st, 2009



I was staying on the good ole $250 freeplay, 4 nights in a luxury King suite at Palazzo, along with concurrent 2 night reservations at Orleans for freeplay and food and Luxor for $450 freeplay, $250 resort credit, and a chance to return to the scene of the crime, the Pyramid Corner Spa Suite where I had taken my wife for 3 nights on one of our first dates. Bam Chica Bow Wow---yeah not anymore 8 years and 3 kids later. Haha.



Anywho, or ANY HO as the case may be after being away from the wife for two weeks, I got checked in, the room was awesome at Palazzo as always, and I headed down to use the freeplay. I pulled $225 out of the $250 and decided to do the only real gambling I enjoy at Palazzo which is craps. Well well well, I sidle up to the table with maybe 10 players and who else is playing quarters at the other end of this $15 table but the dude from all the posters around here. Good ‘ole David Spade, who I love in that sitcom Rules of Engagement. He is just hilarious in that show. In person just hilarious looking as a short dude with long hair coming out of his pulled down baseball cap, button down shirt, jeans, and a dinner jacket…..with some business looking dude probably his personal assistant or something. Anyway he didn’t talk much and the table broke up fairly quickly so I was a little bummed he didn’t get to roll or bet on my roll and have some ensuing smack talk occur with someone famous.



So I spent that first night gambling and did pretty good, got up to about plus $1,500 for the trip before hitting the hay after a nice room service turkey burger---yeah I guess I felt like doing something “healthy†for a change.



Thursday, April 2nd, 2009



Slept in a while and contemplated driving down to Luxor for check-in and hitting the Orleans check-in on the way back. Was too hungry so went straight to Orleans , checked in and ordered a chicken salad sandwich with fries AND onion rings! I was just getting over this bug that had cost me a few pounds and my fat a$s was ready to gain them back. It must have been around 11am when I ordered the food, waited a while for delivery while re-renting Whose Nailin Serra Paylin? For the 3rd time this trip on PPV. Couldn’t eat as much of the food as I thought, although recovered, not yet 100%. Decided to head down for some craps and give these boys some low-level play.



The craps play went incredibly well. Having not drank anything I found it quite easy to play my pass line with odds, 2 come bets with odds basic strategy. I hit a few numbers right away and was never down. Seems like more often than not I buy in $500, lose $400 in short order and rebuy and go crazy on hard ways trying to get even. Sadly that has worked for me too often lately to break me of the habit. Anyway I made a slow and steady progression playing smart and won $400 after tip so cashed out $900. That is the way it is SUPPOSED to work, right?



The only painful thing was that I was actually rolling a lot of hard ways but it was cool since I was making some other players some money. Also it felt good every time I hit an EZ way not losing that bet, knowing what poor odds are involved from the player standpoint.



So with some food in the gullet and approaching $2K up for the trip I was relaxing quite a bit and thinking maybe I was recovered enough for some cocktails. I decided to repark the vehicle (wouldn’t see it the rest of the week…haha) at Palazzo and head over to Wynn for a little VP at my good old favorite spot near Blush.



Well the cocktail waitresses were good to me, but baaad to my liver! I was well served, played quarter double bonus mostly losing, but low level so maybe only a couple hundo. Looked at my watch and it was 2:30 so I decided I’d better head on over to the Luxor and get checked in.



Due to my state of inebriation I took a cab over to the Luxor . Interestingly the cabbie dropped me off at the front rather than the usual spot on the side which is quite near the tower and VIP check-in. Being upfront for some reason (hmmm grey goose perhaps?) I was confused so asked a gentlemen at this information type booth near the insanely crowded front desk lines how to get to the other check-in.



Well this tub o’ lard was a read D-bag. I made the mistake of asking where the tower check-in was and he said well that is currently only being used to check in the Seattle Mariners. Ok dude, fine, I just need to get down there so I can use VIP check-in. He responds…â€let me see your players card†and says some other crap inferring this is not necessarily something I can use. Once dillweed figures it out he finally rudely directs me. Thanks for nothing, here is $5 bucks go buy yourself a personality J-Hole!



So I head down the ramp to VIP, grab a DC out of the fridge while the lady finished up with some very unhappy dude. He leaves and I step up, notice my DC is pi$s warm. She admits she just stocked them. So I grab one from the back. Front desk girl says “yeah it crowded†we’ll call you when your room is ready. So she gets me checked in enough to get my promo chips and I am off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of old ladies at the cage.



Long line at the cage so I sit down and feed a hundo into $1 VP…..4 Kings (you can see on my video montage I believe). Few hands later full house, full house 4OAK! Darn too bad I wasn’t playing double bonus!!! Anyway my $100 bill has magically turned into a $500 TITO---match that David Copperfield!



The line of cash advancers, marker malcontents, and other degenerates has dwindled so I head up to the nice ladies and cash my TITO and get my promo chips. They were very sweet and I tipped her $10 as she said she had seen me at that machine having a ball. Plus it is a pain all the paperwork for those promo chips.



I took my promo chips and headed over to a BJ table where I bought in for $300 in quarters and bet $75. The promo chips were 4 blacks and 2 greens, there is a picture of that in my video as well. I like to buy in and get “rated†before pulling out the promos so in case all I do is the promos at least I have shown some minimal play and not a total stiff. Plus I guess I am getting rated on the time I am actually playing the promos if I mix them in later after keeping them in my pocket the first 5-10 minutes.



BJ went fine, as most BJ’s do. Well actually BJ doesn’t always go that well, but I digress. Actually I might better equate this lovely 7th ring of hell succubus dealer to a Black&Decker Pecker Wrecker in the BJ category. She was a real ball buster, but in the end I cashed out about $100 below expectation, including tips.



The BJ had taken quite a while as I was pretty drunk (haha no pun intended), and I had two messages from VIP on my phone. Headed over and got my keys and proceeded to spin around the pyramid about 5 times looking for the “A†bank of elevators. Once I found them I was up to the room quickly, it was a dive compared to how I remembered it 10 years ago with the wife, but then again I was a Circus Circus and Frontier regular back then while my last few stays have all been Wynn, Bellagio, Encore or Palazzo.



I honestly don’t think I think had changed in 10 years in that room except I was now occupying it at 225 lbs instead of 175 lbs. Speaking of the gullet I was starting to get hungry again so I searched for a room service menu---but alas---none was to be found. I called down and just ordered a filet and whatever.



I got to enjoy the 2-room suite (pics on my video) for about 90 minutes while waiting for the grub. When the food arrived it was worth the wait. I had decided to go filet to help burn that $250 resort credit. The steak was probably the best room service I have had, it must have been from their upscale steakhouse….just really good along with all accompaniments.



Just as an FYI---I did refrain from ordering “Whose Nailin’ Serra Paylin?†while awaiting my food at Luxor .



After dinner I headed down to the gift shop and spent like $150 on souvenier crap, sunscreen, hairspray, a ton of $3 dice suckers which my kids love, oh and two more of the good old MGM-Mirage beach towels, now collectors items since they quit making them and half those properties will be sold off soon if not foreclosed and turned into housing for old ladies with 50 cats a piece. Might actually improve the smell at Circus Circus.



I took a cab back to Palazzo with all these shopping bags and crashed early again---SAD.



Friday, April 3rd, 2009



Pool day….finally some decent weather!



I headed down and hit the pool shop on 3, the pool deck where I enjoyed being able to buy a $2.50 diet coke. There are a couple different pools and I went around until I found a spot in the sun. It was pretty early maybe 9ish so not at all crowded. I parked my a$s here for about 2 hours reading and sleeping, listening to music, etc. Things started to crowd up a bit.



Around 11am the cocktail waitress began making rounds. I hadn’t planned to drink at the pool as I wasn’t RFB at Palazzo but the waitress was TO DIE FOR at the Palazzo pool so I had to. Also seemed to be a younger and much hotter chicks type crowd at Palazzo pool versus old ladies at Encore the week before. In particular one conservative looking girl sat across from me and she had some quality packaging. I enjoyed my peach daiquiri while watching her read her book and imagining her punishing me and calling me a bad boy in her role as librarian as I returned my book after the due date.



Hellooooo….wake up…..ok I’m back. Anyway she left and a few more hotties showed up and of course they had to make a show of taking off their pool dresses to reveal the bikinis. Man who needs a strip club? These girls may have been amateurs but it definitely wasn’t amateur hour if you know what I mean.



So somehow my antsy self was able to hang at the pool a full 5 hours before heading back in for a shhheeet, shower, and shave.



By this time I was starving but not about to pay for food. I decided to go on a quest, a quest for fun. I’m gonna have fun, your gonna have fun. Were gonna have so much f’n fun there going to need plastic surgery to remove the smiles from our faces! Your gonna be whistlin’ Zippy A Dee Doo Dah out your…..



Well you get the picture. So I started to work my way up the Mirage side of the strip, playing a little hear and there. Mirage, bypassed Caesars, hit Bellagio, Monte Carlo , NYNY, Excal, and finally arrived many hours later at Luxor . I felt a lot like Clark W. Griswold in original Vacations when he comes out of the desert. I was so desperate in fact that I used the last remaining Luxor resort credit to hit the buffet by MYSELF! Egads the true sign that I have really become a degenerate vegas loser, eating solo at Luxor buffet. Seeing as how humiliating this was, and given my remaining credit covered it, I got the champagne included buffet.



Either I was really drunk, or really hungry, but the buffet was actually pretty darn good. After eating I spent an ungodly amount of time in the washroom and then hit the tables. Knowing my next visit would be for the Hatton-Pacquiao fight I gave significant play and BJ losses to Luxor . On the plus side I found the service to be impeccable, as the pit boss offered to comp cigarettes without my asking and the drink service was quick and consistent.



Finally I took a cab back to Palazzo, and the funny thing was the cabs were coming REALLY slowly into the line. It wasn’t too long a line, but there were actually 2 lanes blocked because a cabbie had his driver side door taken almost off the hinges by a passing shuttle. So they were just stuck together there waiting for the cops under the dropoff overhang. What a pain. I got a few pics of that which you can see in my video if you look closely.



Once I got back to Palazzo I decided to follow up my blackjack losses with another enormous beating---on roulette which i played very little of, but mainly on blackjack where I experienced that painful never-ending run of double down 20's losing to 6-card draw out 21's by a dealer showing a 6. This was uncanny to the point of frustrating even the dealer in fact.



So after having been up as much as $2,450 I was way down for the trip….as in five-figures down. This is not a good feeling on a trip I had planned to be conservative, and I hadn’t been gambling really crazy, it was just consistent losing. It wasn’t going to be a debilitating dent in my “vegas fund†but it certainly had me rethinking strategy to improve longevity and allow my ongoing monthly to bi-monthly vegas trips to continue without any non-vegas fund capital infusion.



So basically I hit the hay deciding to play minimum bets from now on…haha.



Saturday, April 4th, 2009



Woke up to a half-eaten late night omelet, a size 16 female room service outfit, and large white woman covered in SPANX and KY. Ok, only the part about the omelet is true---I wasn’t that drunk.



I was hoping to hit the pool one last time but alas it was cold and windy again so it wasn’t meant to be. Instead I decided to lick my wounds and play this day at Slots-A-Fun. I headed over early and bought the last 4 remaining glasses, $4.50 empty, $5.50 for the one filled with Bacardi-diet. All 4 were dusty as hell.



I enjoyed a conversation with a gentleman who was retired from the military, had bathroom problems, and was very happy his second wife understood the effect of prostate cancer on erectile dysfunction as he was sure his first wife would have left him. He also had a REALLY interesting take on what a screw job social security is for people with full military pensions who started private businesses after the military. Interesting and a little more depth of convo then I had expected at Slots!



Anyway the full pay quarter VP fully paid for my cups and drinks, I enjoyed some $3 craps and hit up McD’s for lunch once that menu became available. I headed back to the Wynn for some nickel 10-play super times pay and cocktails. That was fun. In the afternoon I cabbed over to Luxor and placed two $100 bets on the two dogs in the Final Four.



Everyone there was so friendly and the cocktail service was best-of-trip. I enjoyed hanging out to see how my bball bets turned out with well placed TV's and ez to find $10 tables. The funny thing was my host, Brian showed up and saw me playing $15. Haha. I guess he must have made a notation because my supposed “front of the section†tickets to Hatton-Pacquiao were literally THE BACK ROW in May. Not that I give a crap, it was fun for free anyway….but don’t be a d-bag dude. I’m REALLY glad I gave them all that $15 play now and a grand total of ONE $100 promo bet in May---but that’ll be on the next trip report.



After the games concluded I cashed my one winning ticket and headed back to the Encore for some light $15 BJ to wrap up the trip. This turned out to be a very interesting evening. I bought in for $300 and sat at one table just getting pounded. I kept almost losing it all even though I had 20 bets worth of chips on my buy-in at this $15 table. It was usually only me and I played for 3-4 hours. Finally came back after one bathroom break and the table was packed with only my seat open!



I got into a nice convo with a couple from Chicago and finally lost down to my last $15. So I pulled out $300 more and turned my hat around RALLY CAP STYLE!!! Well wouldn’t you know it I ended up having a great run on that BJ table at Encore. All the while sitting beside some red-head for about 2 hours who I thought she was just another drunk cougar. Once Danny Gans let out this red head and her gals and two cowboy hat buddies were mobbed by fans and it turns out all these people were in town for the Country Music Awards the next night and those people were Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn.. I don’t follow country music so I had no idea who these people were playing quarters and hitting 14 vs. dealer 16 like a normal Clark W. Griswold. Also that country twang voice must have had the evening off. It would have been cool to get a pic with Reba as my wife watches her goofy ass show occasionally, but I was content not to have her saying "Look at yooooooouuu!" and jinxing me every time my first card was an ace.



Actually despite her Mr. Jinxy HiJinx my 50 cent piece count showed 9 blackjacks and due to multiple double downs my $300 turned into $15 was now $1,035!!!! That is a pretty ridiculous come back although one time at the boat in Elgin I went from $15 to $4,415 in 7 roulette spins so this was nothing compared to that.



Sadly it was too little too late as I got pounded on my larger bets all trip long. If it weren't for a few craps runs I would not have gotten much play in. After the BJ session I was drunk as hell and headed back to bed at Palazzo with an late morning exit for home in the offing.



On this trip I really enjoyed the Encore and Palazzo rooms, pools, dining, etc. Having a chance to compare both in such a close time frame, I realized I really enjoy the Palazzo room layouts and pool setup which are both a little more spacious than Encore. Mr. Wynn more than makes up for it in drink service (which did have some bad moments) and casino ambiance, and definitely food options.

I don't much care for the Palazzo casino as its sorta one big warehouse, although the craps guys are nice, but Encore had more $10 craps as compared to $15 at Palazzo, although David Spade was on the table one night playing $25 green chips which was cool something seems less cozy about Palazzo. And I have no desire to play blackjack there.

Overall it was a very relaxing trip and generally drove as much or as little as I wanted between hotels. My real loss leader was my large bet 20's losing to 21's on blackjack which still really f'n steams me to think about.

Anyway, I left Vegas and drove to Grand Junction to that Doubletree again, headed to Denver the next night where I stayed at an Embassy Suites and watched the NCAA Final and due to my wifes insistence I skipped a second stop in Lincoln and drove straight from Denver to Chicago and arrived home at 2am after a 998.4 mile drive from Denver in 13.5 hrs as the final leg of my 21 day road trip to Vegas and Phoenix.

Thanks for reading….the next installment in the BeeeJay series is my May 2nd-6th RFB trip to Encore, which will be a whole heckuva lot more interesting than this trip report!

 

You do realize many are quite envious of your travels....lol I work in the airline biz and we work to keep Freq. flyers like you , well, flying...lol

I'm gonna have to walk around with a pad and pencil or pda to keep up with details like these..lol

keep 'em coming...great reports

 

Veryt nice *trilogy* of reports. Thaks for taking time to write them up. Always enjoy reading about your gambling adventures. Your humor is also appreciated.

later, GVJ