Terrified of Vegas - Day 4

Another day, another breakfast. Breakfast today was going to be at The Peppermill. Do I even need to tell you how we plan on getting there? We're walking it!

The two ways we discovered how we can successfully exit the Vdara was to either cut through Aria or through the Bellagio. Today, since we were headed North back to the Wynn end of the strip we cut through the Bellagio.

We've walked this route several times already, but today for some reason I noticed the fondue fountain, turns out it's the World's Largest Fondue Fountain.

We decided to take the Treasure Island side of the strip walkway today, since we've been walking on the other side this entire trip. I find the TI side less crowded and easier to walk.

As we were walking we came across the site for the Resorts World Las Vegas. Man I'm excited for this property! It didn't look like any construction was going on at the time though.

When we finally get there, I order the Eggs Benedict and she orders Joe's San Francisco special, which sounds great, but didn't look that appetizing and didn't taste as great either.

Once breakfast had concluded we were going to venture further North of the strip to the Riveria, SLS, maybe even the Stratosphere and Circus Circus on the way back.

Our first stop was Riveria.

As per the usual, go up to their players booth inquire. Aside from the typical earn 10 points get $5 freeplay, they had another promo which was use $20 to buy $30 worth of promo chips. So she did that, we went to a table, she sat down with her $30 promo chips and I bought in for $20. We each played $5 a hand. Of her six $5 promo chips, she was only able to win 2 hands and she cut her table loss there, man she has no luck at the tables! I wasn't having much luck at the table either, although at first it seemed like I did 'cause I hit THREE Blackjacks in a ROW! ONE. TWO. THREE! Bam! But of course these were only $5 bets, so it's not like I was going to retire any time soon. Once I brought it back to my original buy-in, we left the table and went to go focus on our slot play.

Man, trying to earn those measly 10 points for that $5 freeplay was almost not worth it in this case, we both seemed to have been losing pretty fast at the video blackjack machine, but of course, I pressed on and we eventually won it. Did a quick lap, couldn't find the Alice game so we just settled on a random game and blew through the $5 pretty quickly.

Up next, SLS! We started walking towards the SLS, but then decided that it probably wasn't worth the walk just to be greeted by another potential small freeplay amount. So we decided to head back towards the South direction as we were going to stop by a Tix4Tonight booth to buy tickets to the Bodies exhibit.

We crossed the street and walked on the Circus Circus side of the street, did a quick lap in the Slots-O-Fun casino, but didn't hear any coins dropping from any of the machines. (Do they even still have coin machines there?)

Saw a tix4tonight booth, but we wanted to pay cash and he said he couldn't take cash at his booth and the next closest booth was at the Fashion Show Mall, which was fine, we're headed in that direction anyways.

Since she only had a light breakfast we stopped by McDonald's for a quick snack. Back on the strip we saw a sign that read 2 Big Macs for $4, we wanted that deal, we went in and was sad to discover that they didn't have that deal there. But to our surprise, they had a Hot N Spicy McChicken for only a dollar each, so we each grabbed one.

We passed by a $0.97 souvenir shop, so we popped in for a quick peek, nothing special there.

We eventually made our way to the Fashion Show Mall and then to the tix4tonight booth where I purchased 2 tickets to the Bodies Exhibit at the Luxor, paid $23 for each ticket. The tickets were valid from 7 days from the date of purchase which was fine 'cause we were planning on using them tomorrow.

From there we made our way to the Miracle Mile Shops, of course we had to stop by the Sephora in there. Don't recall that she bought anything though.

Dinner would be at Pampas Brazilian Steakhouse tonight, as I had purchased a voucher from TravelZoo for $49US. This included the all you can eat meat portion, plus 2 cocktails. I skipped the $6 add on per person for the unlimited gulf shrimp as I figured we could get our shrimp fix from the regular buffets, plus turns out she doesn't even like shrimp!

This would be my second Brazilian Steakhouse experience overall, the first time was located Touro Churrascaria, located in Markham, Ontario. That one was SOOOO much better. How was my dining experience with Pampas? Bleh!

I found the meat to be over cooked and dry, so we both got tired of chewing really quickly. They had the roasted pineapple, but didn't have the caramel sauce to go with it.

Would I eat there again? Probably not.
What if it was free? Still probably not.
We have no idea why there was such a big lineup the other night.

The plan for tonight was to put in more face time with Aria, since this was my final night there to make an impression before checkout tomorrow morning. I was told that since Vdara has no casino, your play at Aria is connected with Vdara.

Since we were fairly close to the hotel, we decided to pop back up to our room, drop off some of our belongings and take a breather.

I ended up buying a souvenir mug from CVS, which ended up being a dollar cheaper than had I bought it from the $0.97 souvenir shop located North of the strip, which I was surprised about, I thought that it might have been cheaper there. I just didn't buy it there 'cause I didn't want to lug that around with me all day just to save a dollar. Turns out it was a #WinWin for me.

When we got to the Aria hotel, we did a lap to search out for Alice, nope, Alice was no where to be found. This made us wonder how old of a game Alice was. She was sad, she really wanted to spend more time with Alice and make her her b!tch by having her spit out more bonuses.

So she settled on her next best game Cats. She was playing on my MLife card to help me collect the points, I had requested another card after my experience at the Wynn. After watching her for a while I got bored and sat down next to her and popped in a $20 into the Cleopatra II game, decided to give that a shot and earn some points as well. Played for a bit, then finally hit a "jackpot" and won about $15 or so, so I was up to double my buy-in, which I say is good for a slots game, played until I had about $35 then cashed out. When I looked over, she was at about the same level as well.

Time for a slot break. Time for tables! I find a table, buy-in for my usual amount of $300. Table is pretty full, has a good crowd. Seat #1 has a high roller, betting blacks. Seat #2 has this "newbie" he has the basic strategy card printed out and is right in front of him, dealer and pit boss didn't mind. Seat #3 has an Asian Guy with several stacks of greens in front of him. I sit in Seat #4, Seat #5 has another guy in it, he was the "teacher" of the table.

I wait till the shoe ends, then begin my play. Once again, starts off pretty nice, after a few hands I'm up about $100. If you've been reading my TR, you know what happens next. That's right! Dealer change! It's a guy named Peter, luckily this is Erin's table and she is just on break. Table vibe feels pretty good, playing with a decent crowd, so I play on, let's see how this works. OMG. This dealer is magical! He's pulling 20's and 21's....for himself! At one point, he dealt seats 3, 4 and 5 an Ace, but not one of us got blackjack, we'd hit and get a good pull, then he'd bust our balls by pulling a natural 20.

Dealer's showing a face card, I'm dealt two 8's, book says always split Aces and Eights. With the way this table has been playing so far, I know exactly what's going to happen, but I'd be kicking myself if I didn't play it properly, plus a 16 is a very shitty hand against a 10. Even if I know I can't win, best I can hope for is a push to get my money back.

So I split, first card is a ten, so 18. Stay. Next card is an 8. FML! I have to split again, dealer doesn't even need to wait for me to signal and proceeds to split my 8 for me. Next card is a 9, so 17. Stay. Next card is a face card, so 18. Alright, 18, 17, 18, maybe I do stand a chance.

Dealer flips his card over, natural 20. WTF! All that hard work for nothing! Asian guy to my right can't handle it anymore, colours up and leaves, I play another hand, lose that. So I colour up as well.

Time for a table break. We go to find another bank of Cats machine so she can play. I feel the urge to go to the washroom, so I leave my $35 TITO with her and tell her BRB. As I'm coming back from the washroom, I notice that Erin is back! So I beeline it to the table and quickly sit back down.

During the mist of a shuffle, my phone is buzzes, she's texting me, asking me where I am. I tell her I'm back at the same table and for her to keep playing slots and if she wants she can play through my TITO too. She's a little cheesed at me 'cause I was suppose to go back to find her. IDGAF! Erin is back!

All the players are pretty much the same except for the Asian guy, I'm in his seat right now, which opens up my seat for another person. This guy buys-in and he also is holding a basic strategy card in his hand. He's betting between $25-$50 a hand though. (I also have one of those cards tucked away in my pocket and reference it on "difficult" hands).

The "teacher" at the table had an interesting way to play, I guess he followed the book religiously, he would take even money, and would surrender on certain hands. He would say that by surrendering, he wouldn't take the dealer's bust card, which didn't bother me. His money!

The high roller in Seat #1 one hand he bet a black for himself and a black for the dealer. Which means that if he won, it would have just been even money for him, but it was a push that hand. Later when he coloured up, he said "I can't leave like this" and pulled out a $100 bill from his wallet and tipped the dealer that.

The new guy to my left had already coloured up, the high roller has just left, the other newbie to my right had just busted out, it's the end of the shoe. I look at my chips I'm up $125, it's getting late, time to call it a night!


I go back to find her at the slot machine still and tell her that I'm done for the night, she says she is too, time to turn in! But not before I show her who I suspect is a working girl at the casino.

For some reason, I was super thirsty tonight, might have been the steakhouse, so I drank through around 5 bottles of the free casino water, which meant that I had to make multiple trips to the restroom. Each time I would walk by, I would see this one girl all by herself, the first couple of times she was standing there, then afterwards she was just sitting by a slot machine, all alone.

So I showed my friend this girl and shared my suspicions with her. Was she a working girl? We'll never know!

Terrified of Vegas - Day 5 - Final Day

Today was our last day in Sin City but thankfully we had a full day as our flight was not till 11:55PM!

I had called down last night to the concierge and asked for a late checkout, they told me that they could extend it for an hour, till noon. And that if I wanted to check-out any later, I would have to call the front desk to see what availabilities they had. We weren't planning on staying in the room till noon, but i called, just in case!

Around 9:30AM, I left my room, alone, and headed downstairs to the front desk to settle my bill, luckily there was no line. I told the friendly girl who greeted me and that I was checking out this morning and asked if she could do anything about the resort fee. She immediately asked me what was wrong? I wasn't expecting such a question and stammered for a bit, I told her that there was no major issue, but I could make up some stuff if it made it easier for her to waive it.

She told me that they generally don't waive resort fees unless there is a major complaint of some sort, but she would go ahead and waive it for me anyways. Cha-ching! That's $28USD a night saved!!

If she needed reasons, the reasons I had at the top of my head were: the wifi kept cutting out, and I had to keep signing back in, there was no daily newspaper as indicated on the booking under what the resort fee includes and the maid forgot coffee cups and keurig cups one night and I had to call down and have them brought up to me! See minor issues, no major ones.

I then asked her to print out a copy of my room charges as I needed to go see a Casino Host to try and have those waived as well. I knew that I did not put in nearly enough time at the tables or on the machines that was required to have the charges waived, but I was hoping maybe she could work her magic and maybe waive the glass of wine, or maybe even the appetizer or side?

So off I go to Aria and quickly locate the casino host room, it was easier to locate than expected. I'm instantly greeted, I sit down and explain why I'm there. She says let's see what she can do, asks for my room number, 29008. Then asks if I'm Peter or Juan? Uhhh, my name is neither. Oh! I'm staying at the Vdara, not the Aria. So she looks through my file once again, frown and says, yeah, there's really not much play here. I ask her what I'm rated at, she says I'm rated for about an hour of play at $23 per hand and that they were looking for someone who puts in at least a solid 4 hours of play at $25 a hand. I say, okay, that sounds about right, thank her for her time and leave.

I probably put in 2 hours of play, but they can't track every minute, so the hour sounded about right. But the weird part was the rating of $23 an hour, I pretty much flat betted $25 a hand #Weird.

So since the host wasn't able to waive any of the charges from the steak dinner the other night, I had to head back to the Vdara to settle my bill, there was a lineup of about five people now, but luckily they had more check-in attendants, so I waited in line, walked up and told them I wanted to pay by cash, she didn't have the cash box and I was told that I had to wait for another attendant who did have a cash box to become available.

Once he was available, I told him I wanted to pay for the charges in cash, but that I had accumulated a small amount of XpressComps from the machines and I wanted to use that. I had managed to accumulate a whole $1.05 in comps! Which sounds about right, I have about 100 points on my card. So I used that to offset part of my bill and ended up paying $86 in cash.

So I head back to my room and begin packing, OMG. All this change.

What shall we do with it? Luckily my travel companion had a plastic bag, we were going to prepare two little baggies and split the change and then hand them out to a couple of pan handlers when we crossed the overpasses, but I was only able to find one plastic bag. Oh well one lucky individual gets it all!

We finished packing and leave the room at around 11AM, head down to the lobby and leave our luggage at the hotel, we'll be back later tonight to pick it up!

Next stop! Lunch buffet @ the Bellagio! I had one more MyVegas reward to redeem and that was a 2-for-1 lunch buffet at the Bellagio. Found the players club and had that reward loaded onto my card. Went to the buffet, yes! Only one other party in line! Was a little concerned that the outflow from the CES convention would be lined up here for whatever reason.

I made myself a breakfast plate:

 Then I made myself a lunch plate:

Don't think I've ever done a lunch buffet in Vegas yet, so this was probably my first. Not bad, especially with the 2-for-1 deal!

Now that brunch is out of the way, time to make our way over to the Luxor for the Bodies exhibit. She was the one who wanted to go, I could have survived without it. We walk all the way to the Excalibur then take the tram to Mandalay Bay, hop off and then immediately take the tram to Luxor. That saved us some walking!

I wanted to grab coffee before I headed in there, was afraid I was gonna fall asleep walking around the exhibit! But sadly no food, drinks or photography allowed.

The exhibit wasn't that bad, had some interesting stuff, it was a larger than expected exhibit, had rooms and rooms filled with stuff. I think we were in there the longest 'cause we read practically every single board.

When we exited the exhibit I was glad it was finally over, but she wished that there was more to the exhibit to see.

We went to the food court to grab me my coffee and her tea. Then proceeded to the casino to search for our dear friend Alice. I think we found her alright, but she wasn't very friendly and ate up our $20 very quickly without giving us any love.

As we were leaving, I came across a Super Times Pay Video Poker machine, those are hard to find too, so I bought in for $10 played some nickel Video Poker and was able to bring it up to just over $20, then I quickly cashed out!

We have one last dinner before we have to board the plane, so we're headed to the Wynn to chase that friggin buffet!

When we get there, the video Blackjack machines that we were using the other day were in use, so we tried going to other machines, but they weren't setup the way these ones were, the other machines didn't have the split or double down option. So we waited a bit and then finally they were done and we parked ourselves by those two machines. Ordered a red bull vodka for myself and a pina colada for my lady friend and we set to work.

She plays $1 a hand, slow and steady! I bought in with $20 and started out with $2 a hand, lost that after a short while, we were still short about 200 points. Slipped a $100 in, go big or go home right? Well I'm going big, then I'm going home! Changed it up to $6 a hand, so that each hand would get me 1 point.

By the time I hit the 750 mark, I was down to about $50. I didn't want to cash out yet, I was either going to lose it all or bring it up to break-even and then cash out. Luckily I was able to bring it back up to my $100 and cash-out, but by the time i was able to cash out, we were at 897 points. Whoops.

Ugh! Only 300 more points to go until that steak dinner! I knew I could easily do it, but buffet it is. So the buffet ended up costing us about $32, $20 for me and $12 for her. I have her load the buffet onto her card and off we go!

It's about 6PM, I'd say still pretty early for dinner time. We both agreed the value of this buffet if one was to pay was better than the one at Caesar. Even though I was severely disappointed that they didn't have the Asian dishes that I was looking forward to. No Peking duck, no Sui Mai, no Ha Gow, the crab legs were soaked in salt water, so we could only eat a few.

She really enjoyed the tacos, but I passed on them. By the time we were getting ready to leave, there was a pretty big line up just for the crab legs and an even bigger lineup outside, a lot of badge wearing people, looks like CES just let out.

Side note: Someone needs to tell Mr. Wynn that there's a spelling mistake on one of his place cards.

As we were exiting the Wynn casino, there was a blackjack machine that was facing the walk-way, seemed like it was just calling to me, so i ran up to it, fed it a $20 and played $5 a hand, I was either going to double my buy-in or bust out! The highest I think I got was to $30, then I busted out. Probably ran through another 10 points or so on the machine.

Diner is done and our trip has drawn to a close, so we're slowly making our way back to Vdara to pick up our bags, we pass by the Mirage and notice that there are a bunch of people standing around the volcano area, and shortly after it goes off.

I can't remember the last time I saw it go off, didn't even know that it was still operable!

We pass by Caesar's Palace on our way back and notice that the Caesar's Chalet is now in full swing.

We decide to cut through the Bellagio one last time and we make it to the side of the fountains that's not on the street. Once again, we see a collection of people gathering around it, hmmm spider sense is tingling, it must be about to go off. So we stand there and prepare our cameras for it.

As we get to the conservatory of the Bellagio we notice that they've got up more stuff, they took down the Christmas decorations a day after we got there, so we weren't able to get any pics, but I was able to snap a few quick pics of their new setup. It must be Year of the Goat coming up.

We finally make it back to the hotel, grab our bags and hail a cab. The cabbie seemed like a nice guy, asked us if we wanted to take the cheaper but longer scenic route, or take the faster but slightly more expensive route. We opted to go with the scenic route.

We get there, print out boarding passes and head to the gate. FML! Our flight has been delayed by 2 hours. Gosh darn it, I didn't check before we left for the airport, could have stayed a couple more extra hours, same thing happened to me on my last trip too! Some things you just never learn!

Closing notes:

I forgot to stop by one of the many hotel gift shops and pick up some more strategy cards, the one that I have is a little out of shape.

I think I'm ready for my rental car experience now. That way I can explore the further properties, such as M Resort, The Palms, Rio, SLS, etc.

I'm 1-0 for 2015 thus far.

Terrified of Vegas - Day 3

We were out the door shortly after nine today, the plan was to head to Ellis Island for their Egg N Steak special. Can you guess how we’re getting there? That’s right! We’re walking it!

I read that the walk can be a little sketchy at night, but since we were walking early in the morning, I wasn’t too worried.

We both ordered the Egg N Steak special for $5.99. I told her that they have a microbrewery and they brew their own beer here, so she opted to try their light brew for $2.

As we were walking into the restaurant I noticed they had a sign up that said you get a $5 match play if your bill comes out to more than $15. Which wasn’t an issue ‘cause for my beverage I opted to go with coffee and that was close to $3. The breakfast was really good and did not disappoint!

 

Once that was done, we headed over to the player’s booth to sign her up, as I had already had a card. As a new member once you play through $10 they give you a random amount of free play anywhere between $5 to $500. She said she wanted to try her luck at the tables and actually sit down and play this time, so we each changed a $20 and found a $5 table. Turns out that in order to use the match play, you needed your receipt from the restaurant, so I had to go back to the restaurant, track down our waitress and ask for a copy of our receipt.

So now we each had a $5 match play, one from the restaurant, one from ACG. She said the beer was really good and wanted another one, so we each ordered a beer and started playing. I think I might have won my match play and she might have lost hers. Long story short, she busted out really quickly, I was able to stay in there for twice as long, but wasn’t really winning anything and shortly after I busted out as well. Just to put it into perspective to let you know how quickly this happened, our cocktail waitress wasn’t even back with our drinks yet and it's a fairly small casino.

So we stayed relatively close to the table and went to a machine to ring through $10 worth of slots. By the time we were done with that, our drinks had arrived. From ACG we had another coupon that gave us up to $100 in free play once we ring through $10, so she had to go to the booth to get that loaded. Once that was loaded, we were directed to a computer terminal where you would swipe your card, enter your pin and select the promos available to you.

After she loaded the promo onto her card, I was curious to see what kind of promos I had on my card, you know, for shits and giggles! I swiped it and it something about invalid and for me to see the player’s booth, which is what I did. Lucky I was curious! As it turns out Ellis Island updated their computer systems back in October of 2014, so all their old member info was wiped out and now everyone is considered new again, so I was able to sign up and qualify for the random amount of free play from $5 - $500.

So she played through both of her free plays, which I think the random amounts both times were $10. So now it’s my turn to play through, which I did very quickly, then I go to enter my pin to reveal my random amount, lo and behold, I’m presented with $198 worth of freeplay! Cha-ching!

One of the things that I wanted to do this trip was run a $100 through a $1 slot machine, on a max 3 credit bet and see what fortune it yielded me. I quickly run up to an attendant and ask them where their bank of $1 slots are, she tells me that they truly only have ONE machine that’s a dollar per spin, all the other machines are like penny machines that you can play more credits.

So I go to that machine to load $30 a time to test the waters. Press MAX bet which is $3, the first couple of $30 play throughs were alright, got some $6 and a couple $9 returns; there was no $3 return even though you were playing $3 per pull. I’d be sure to cash out my winnings every time, after a little bit, I decided to try my luck on a random machine next to it, once again I ran through $30 on it, and I think I might have hit $0.40! That was a big waste.

So I hop back over to my $1 machine and run through the rest of my free play. After feeding all of my TITOs in, I ended up cashing out with $66.40.

So minus the $20 that I lost from the BJ table, I was up about $40 from Ellis, all because I was curious to see what kind of promos my card yielded.

Once we were done with that, we started making our way towards the High Roller. 

They didn’t even begin construction yet last time I was there, so I wanted to check it out. We also wanted to check out and buy from the cupcake ATM. So we each took turns buying from that.

That whole lane way where the High Roller was located was new to me, so I snapped a couple of quick pics there.

Then I went into The Linq casino to ask if they still had the promo going on where if you hit a natural blackjack you would get a ticket to the High Roller, but sadly they said that promo had ended.

We proceeded to make our way to the North end of the strip, since we haven’t explored that section yet. The next casino we stopped at was Casino Royale. Once again, I was already a member, but she wasn’t, and the promo for this casino was they give you an instant loss rebate of $20 if you lose $20 while playing slots.

She sat down by a bank of 2x2 machines that just happened to be the Alice in Wonderland game and fed a 20 into it. This was a penny machine that had 40 lines, so $0.40 per pull! Shortly after a few pulls, she triggered a bonus game, won a few dollars off that. Then she would move on to the next Alice machine. Once again, after a few quick pulls, she would trigger one of their bonuses, the game had several different bonuses. She kept on doing this until she had cycled through all 4 of the Alice machines within that bank then she cashed out. In the end, she was up by $12.

She decided that she wanted to cut her risk there, keep the $12 and walk away. I on the other hand, saw that she was so “good” at slots and wanted to cash in on the action, and take advantage of the loss rebate promo, but I knew that I had to lose $32 just to gain a chance at winning back some money.  It’s a stupid bet I know, but hey it’s Vegas! What the heck.

So we decide to go 50/50 in this, and we each feed $16 into the machine. We end up losing it all, which then triggers a $20 loss rebate, which is paid in freeplay, and we somehow win back almost our buy in, might have been a couple bucks short, but that was okay.

Little did I know that this would become “her game” and that every casino that we gambled at from here on out, we would be in search of her Alice game. Which was fine by me, it gave us a side-mission from casino hopping and it was a fun game, with the various bonuses.

We continued our way north, with a mandatory stop by the Sephora shop right by the Venetian, while she was in there, I pressed on a bit more and took some quick snaps.

Then went back to meet up with her. She bought a $25 make-up that was half price because it was either labeled improperly or in the wrong section, regardless she was happy.

We popped into the Venetian asking about their player’s card promo, there was nothing of interest there, so we cut through the Palazzo for our next hotel destination.

We finally made it to the WYNN! What a relief! I had butterflies in my stomach as I was approaching the revolving Wynn door. As I stepped in, I was instantly greeted with that nice aromatic smell. We snapped a couple of pics as we cut through the Wynn to get to Encore.

Once we got there, I told her that Encore was my absolute favouritist hotel. There’s just something about this hotel that just gets me!

Quickly found the Red Card booth, was glad to hear that they still had the same new player promo, but without the freeplay I think. Earn 300 points, get a spin on their wheel to win a prize, earn 750 points, get 2 comped buffet dinners, earn 1200 points get a comped dinner at Society Café.

Before we signed up, I pulled her over to Society Cafe and showed her the menu to see if she liked the selection. I wanted to earn the 1200 points for this comped meal, as I've already been to the buffet numerous times, but only eaten at the Cafe once.  It was really just another place that served steaks to her, and she noted that we would have already been consuming a lot of steaks this trip and she wanted to try the buffet 'cause she heard great things about it. Okay, you win.

As she was signing up, the lady behind the desk asked if she wanted one card or two cards. I quickly said two. Why didn’t I remember this earlier on the trip when we were trying to earn points to collect the freeplays! *facepalm* With two cards going at once, we can both be earning points simultaneously! I guess it didn’t really matter before because those point targets were rather low, 5 or 10 points. This time we were striving for 750 points!

It would have been awesome if her wheel spins, landed on the 2 free buffets, but realistically, she’d most likely hit the $10 in free slot play.

Right next to the Red Card booth there was a bank of Blackjack machines and we both got to work immediately, we both put in $20. I started off playing $1 a hand to test the waters, then gradually moved up to $2 and I think maybe even $4 at one time. I look down at my money and next thing I know, I’m already at $115 from a $20 buy-in! I should have cashed out at that time, taken the money and pay for the buffets! But I had only begun chasing the buffet, I think at this point in time I was only around 100 points, still a long way to go!

So of course I kept playing on, next thing I know, I’m out of credits! I feed another $20 into the machine and this time as soon as we hit the 300 mark, I played till I was back to $20 then cashed out. We were both earning points, so she may have contributed about 15-20 points, while I did the rest.

She went up to spin the wheel and of course it landed on the $10 free play, and of course we had to go search for an Alice machine, but I don’t think we were able to find one, so she had to settle on another game, CATS. Once again, she started off pretty well with this game as well, quickly turned her amount into $30-$40, then cashed out. 

Like I said, this was my favouritist casino, so I didn’t want to leave, and I wanted to try my luck at the blackjack table. Plus, I gotta show Steve Wynn some love, so that he may extend me those very generous marketing offers once again!

So I buy in at the table for $300, win the first couple of hands, then dealer change, changed from a female to a male dealer. I dis-like male dealers, I can never seem to establish a flow and win with them. I’m quickly down $125, so I decide to get up, cool off and look for another table.

As soon as I get up, she tells me that she wants to go play some more CATS, ‘cause this is her new game and she’s great at it! So we go. While she’s playing and distracted, like a cat, see what I did there? I sneak off to go find another table. A female dealer, perfect! Once again, a couple of hands in, dealer change, but she tells me to stay that this is a good shoe. I stay, not because she told me it was a good shoe, but because the new dealer was also female.

Once again, I’m flat betting $25 per hand. I’ve already played through about half the shoe, I place another $25 bet, my phone rings, I step away from the table to answer it, it’s her, she’s asking me where I am, I tell her my location and she’s coming to look for me. I go back to the table, I see 2 $25 chips, uhhh, and I guess I won that hand? I collect one of the green chips, and play again; I lose it, the dealer jokes that I should go talk on my phone more.

My travel companion managed to find me and is now standing beside me, that’s when I realize I’ve been winning more that I’ve been losing, time to try a couple of $50 hands! I play through about 2 $50 hands, win them both and yellow card! Signaling that it’s the end of the shoe, while she’s shuffling, I’m counting my chips and realize that I’m at $650. I tell her to colour me up!

I know, some of you are probably screaming at me right now, saying that I shouldn’t have left, I was on a hot streak and should have kept playing, but I practically quadrupled my table buy-in from that one shoe, and doubled my buy-in for the day, so I was happy! Snap a pic, then head to the cage for some cold hard cash!

As we’re leaving the casino, I catch up with her on what happened with her Cats game, she lost it all! But she was okay with it, since it was just freeplay to begin with.

Now we’re headed to Caesar’s for the Bacchanal buffet because the line up Friday night was just too long. It’s early, we get there at 5PM, but that was our plan, to get there early and even if there was another 2 hour wait, we would wait it out this time!
 

OMG. It’s $60 a person? FML! I’m paying for dinner too! Our arrangement was that I would pay for dinners and she would pay for breakfast and lunches. It’s a 25 minute wait until we get to the cash register, I had them my CET card and told them that I have $40 worth of reward credits loaded on there from SocialRewards, he swipes the first time and says no I only have $10. What? That’s impossible, I checked my balance before I left on the trip and I had $30 and another $10 was pending, I ask him to swipe again and he says, okay, I see $30 now #Odd. Okay whatever, the other $10 was pending anyways, maybe it didn’t get processed over the weekend, so I pay for the rest in cash.

We wait in line for another good 20 minutes before we’re seated. So all in all, we waited for about 45 minutes before we got seated. There was a party of 3 directly behind us in line the whole time and they were pressed for time because they had a show to get to, which I felt bad for, ‘cause they would be rushed through the whole buffet experience.

My thoughts on the buffet? It’s not the greatest! I found the lighting was a little dark for my liking, I like bright rooms. I felt that the “lounge seating” kind of chairs was a bit odd for a buffet. My table was too crammed next to the other one, so you had to tip toe and shimmy your butt to get into your seat. After riding several taxi rides and hearing them advertise over 500 different items, we both were expecting more of a selection. Although it did have more or a variety than other buffets, I'm not sure what kind of extravagant items I was expecting.

The raw oysters that they had out, didn't look fresh, looked like they had been out for too long. Other than that the food was good, they had warm and cold crab legs, which taste the same, and weren’t too salty, they had scallops, a lady from Nicaragua (I think), told me that the Taco’s there were legit and really good, but I still preferred the ones from Freemont street, and thanks to a tip from a friend, I was able to acquire a secret Mochi Ball.

After the buffet, we made our way over to the Cosmo, i’m considered a new player there and wanted to see what promo’s they had. Sad to say that they weren’t running any promos whatsoever when I asked. I guess this is actually a good thing, ‘cause all the promos for this trip have been pretty crappy, so hopefully next time I’m there they’ll have a good promo that I can capitalize on!

So we proceeded to head to the Aria, once again we were on a mission to look for Alice, we looked high and low and she was nowhere to be found! So we settled on her second best game, CATS. Played that for a little bit, I knew I had to put in some face time at the tables if I wanted my resort fee waived, so I bought in for $300, it was a very quick session, one up, one down, rinse, repeat, BORING! No excitement, no action, was playing with a table full of people too. Once I was UP the one green chip, I coloured up and called it a night!

Terrified of Vegas - Day 2

Each day we would wake up around 8AM and be out the door by 9AM. Today we were going to go to Hash House A Go Go, the one down by Freemont street. Don’t worry; we’re not planning on walking it! We hail a cab and tell him we want to go to the one by the Plaza Hotel. He seemed like a nice enough guy, as he was starting to drive he gave us a “fair warning” and told us that our destination was a “bit out of the way” I guess just so we wouldn’t think he took us for a ride. As we approached the Peppermill Grill, I told my travel companion that the place she wanted to go to later on in this trip Taco El Gordo should be around here somewhere, that’s when the cabbie piped in and said that the Taco place we’re looking for, closed down about 3 weeks ago. He thinks it was a dispute over the rental amount. He said he was pretty disappointed with it as well, since he didn’t get a chance to eat there and wanted to try it out.

We finally get to our destination and I was worried that there would be long lineups just like what we experienced last night, ‘cause it is Saturday morning, but I guess we were there early enough as there were plenty of seats available. By the time we were leaving, most of the empty seats had filled up. It didn’t take us long to order as we already researched it on Yelp and knew what we wanted. Andy’s Sage Fried Chicken.

I know what you’re thinking, that does not look appetizing at all, ‘cause that’s what I first thought when I saw the picture as well, but for someone reason seeing it in real life, it was different, and plus the chicken tasted baumskies! In other words, it was really good! The internet said that the portion sizes were huge, so we ordered one to share and that was more than enough!

I bought the American Casino Guide (ACG), and the plan was to casino hop and use some of the coupons listed in there. First stop, the hotel that we were already in Plaza Hotel. We got $5 worth of free slot play from them, probably burned through that like nothing playing penny slots.

We then went across the street to Las Vegas Club where they had a mid-sized slot machine right outside of the casino, we were invited to spin the machine and for my spin, I won a “Level 5” prize, which was supposed to be really good! I was thinking Match Play of some sort! That’s when I looked at his jacket and realized that he was not with the casino and what had happened. I let a time share guy talk to me! It was her turn to spin, and she spun a lowly “Level 1” prize, but the guy reset the machine and let her spin again, this time yielding a higher level prize. We were then invited inside to claim our prize. He walked with us over to this little booth, where another guy was sitting there reading a book. The guy from outside that brought us in, talked us up! Said we were really friendly, blah blah blah and wanted his friend to take good care of us and hook us up!

So his friend starts talking us up too, saying a bunch of nice things, making some small talk, then starts to “give us” stuff. Two show tickets, $100 in free slot play, $50 match play, free dinner. Says that we just need to attend a short presentation and at the end of it we’ll be able to claim all our stuff. I told him no thanks that we weren’t interested. I told him I’ve heard about this stuff and I was going to pass. He then told me that they weren’t a time share, it was something different. I then told him that we’re only here for a few days and that we’ve pretty much already have everything planned out and we’re on a tight schedule and didn’t have time for their presentation. He understood and stopped after that.

My travel companion was interested and wanted to do it, but I gave her the gist of it and told her what I knew about them and said that it would be high pressure selling trying to get us to buy stuff, and told her that maybe one time when I’m here for a longer period of time, I’ll attend one just to get a better understanding of it all.

After that we walked to the Players Club only to find out that their player’s club didn’t open till 1PM. Who opens up their players club so late during the day? So we just left and went across to the next casino, Golden Gate.

I was already a member here, so I couldn’t sign up and the only ACG promo I qualified for was for a free Calendar, I had a choice between the Girls of Golden Gate or the History of Golden Gate. I chose the history book. 

My travel companion was a new member and was able to claim the $25 match play, which she won on a hand of blackjack and $5 of free play by earning 50 points. Those 50 points were not easily earned; we almost lost a lot of money trying to win it! We parked ourselves at the bar playing Video Blackjack and was able to get 2 coronas out of the deal, but it was a close call!

After Golden Gate we went over to Binion’s. I wanted to show her the million dollars that you could take a picture with, and we did just that! Once again, me being an existing member, all I could do was request a new card. She was able to get a free “aces” card for a blackjack, meaning that the first card of her hand would be an ace on a $10 bet; she won that hand as well. Then if she earned 10 points she could get $10 worth of free play. They also had their existing swipe and win promo, where if you earned 5 points, you had a chance to swipe your card and earn up to $5 worth of free play. She swiped and won the $5; I swiped and won a 2-for-1 entrée, pass!

She was still extremely upset over the fact that Taco El Gordo closed down on her, so she was still on her phone trying to find another taco joint that was close by. She found a place called Zaba’s Mexican Grill that was fairly close by, so we started walking back to the direction where we came from. When we got to Main St. we made a left and started walking West for a little bit, a couple hundred meters in, we stopped, ‘cause it didn’t look like there were any restaurants, just empty buildings. We looked really lost and a passerby even tried to help us, but they didn’t know the place we were looking for as well. We started walking back towards Freemont thinking we made a wrong turn and was supposed to go right, that’s when she looked up and noticed it right across the street! It was located inside the Plaza Hotel! The hotel we started at this morning!

Zaba’s is located in their food court, we get in there and order their 2 taco combo, it came out to about $6.50 The taco was okay. I’ve never really eaten a taco before except from Taco Bell. So I was thoroughly confused when I saw the double layered flour taco, it looked nothing like Taco Bell taco.

After that I wanted to press on with the next casino, but it didn’t seem like she was enjoying herself too much, ‘cause we were suppose to go outlet shopping after this and she was worried that we wouldn’t have enough time for it. So I flipped through my remaining ACG coupons and found the “good ones” The D was giving out a $25 match play and a ‘money back’ bet if you got dealt a 22.

We decided to walk the rest of Freemont first, and then on our way back we would pop into the D to claim them. We were walking and then came across this mini food court that was selling tacos for $2. So we decided to each grab a Taco, one beef, one pork. OMG! These taco’s were baum! They tasted really good! Wayyyyy better than the ones we just ate at Zaba’s.

We passed by CVS and she wanted to go in, but I didn’t want to. So I devised a plan to divide and conquer. I would go to The D and claim the coupons and she would go to CVS and we’ll meet up after.

 

I got to The D and turns out, I already had a players card there, surprise surprise! So I wasn’t able to get the match play, but I was able to get the ‘money back’ coupon. The maximum bet allowed was $25. So of course I had to play the max bet to take advantage of it. I did one lap around their tables area, looking for a good spot to play in, noticed most of the table action was $5-$10 minimums, but they were mostly full. I was about to start my second lap of the place, when a female dealer from one of the elevated pits made eye contact with me and told me to go play there. This was an elevated pit ‘cause it was their “high limit” section.

Turns out the table minimum for their high limit section was $25 which was perfect! So I bought in for $100. As soon as I started changing the cash, a cocktail waitress walked up and asked what I wanted. I really felt like a high roller! Before I sat down to play, I texted my friend and told her that she would need to sign up for the players card in order to get the match play, ‘cause I couldn’t do it. So when she was done with her CVS shopping, she went to go sign up and met with me afterwards.

I played a flat bet of $25 per hand, one on one with the dealer until the end of the shoe, by the end of it; I was up $75, not bad I think. Then when she came back, I gave her a $25 chip to play the match play with ‘cause I knew $25 a hand was just too much for her to handle. Yup! You guessed it! She won her hand again! So I coloured up and walked away with $125 from The D.  This whole time I had the 'money back' card with me, but I played through the whole shoe without busting on a 22, so needless to say, I didn't need to use it and still have it! Maybe I'll save it for a future 2015 trip. I wonder if my play warrants any offers in the future, we’ll see!

After that, we hoped in a cab to the North Premium Outlets. As soon as we hopped in and I noticed that the driver got on the freeway, I knew he had longhauled us, but it was too late by then. I pulled out my phone and verified with google that he would have taken the local streets. The fare ended up being about $16.

We spent about a good two hours there at the outlet. I didn’t buy anything, I just sat around waiting for her, ‘cause at first it was really good to just sit down, then afterwards I got bored and started wandering around as well.

Once we were done shopping at the outlet, we cabbed it over to the Luxor, ‘cause I had another MyVegas reward to redeem, a $75 credit to Tender Steakhouse. We would be coming back here later tonight for dinner after our KA show at MGM. Dinner wasn’t till 9:30 so we need to grab a snack to hold us over, since we were in the Luxor we hit up Tacos N Tequila. That’s right! More Tacos! We ordered their Alambre and split that order.

I told my server that we were in a bit of a rush and he acknowledged that and was quick about everything! . These tacos were pretty good, much better than Zaba’s but still not as good as the $2 tacos we got from Freemont! I have a feeling that next time we’re in Vegas we’ll be making a special trip just to Freemont for those Tacos!

From the Luxor we took a tram over to Excalibur and then from there we walked to MGM and began lining up for KA, we got there just in time!

These tickets were part of my flight and hotel package that I booked, but if it wasn’t I would have been willing to pay for them anyways. This was my second time watching KA, my first time watching it was in 2008. This time it was just as entertaining as the first! The section that I was sitting in, gave the cast and crew a standing ovation. I think this happened the first time I watched it as well. This goes to show that KA is one of the better cirque shows.

Once the show was over, we started walking back to Luxor for our dinner at Tender. We were seated promptly and was greeted by our 2 servers. The reward stipulated that I would get $75 off my bill upon spending a $150. I pretended to be daft and asked my server how the voucher worked and he said he would take $75 off my bill. With him saying that, I didn’t “force” myself to spend the $75.

So all I ordered was the 14 oz Range-fed Ribeye from New Zealand:

and my dinner date ordered a glass of wine, the Lobster Bisque:

the 10oz Wagyu Kobe-style beef from Idaho:

and we split a Lyonnaise Potato Gratin:

but the steaks were more than enough that we barely even touched the potato. The bill came out to about $150 after tax. After he had taken off the $75 credit, I charged the tip and the rest to my room over at the Vdara. Why? It just made me feel special being able to do so!

When we looked at the bill we realized we were each charged $4 for the sauces that went with the steak, we were a bit cheesed about that, because we didn’t know that the sauces were extra. He phrased it in the way that we thought the sauces were part of the meal. But we didn’t make a fuss about it, will know better for next time!