Flight was scheduled to depart from YYZ at about 9:30AM, but it looked like they had some mechanical issue with the wing because we saw about 3 trucks and half a dozen guys using duct tape that matched the colour of the plane trying to put it back together. Then when that issue was fixed, the pilot made an announcement that someone had clogged one of the toilets and they had to send another maintenance staff to take a look at it. So we took off about an hour later than scheduled, but only arrived about 30 mins late. So either the pilot flew a bit faster or there is less wind resistance with duct tape than we think.
The flight was full of business people flying away to Vegas for "business purposes" so everyone of them was buying drinks and food, so it took forever for the complimentary drink cart to reach us, just so we could have our comped orange alcohol-free juice.
I've been to Vegas a few times before but this will be the first time that i'm personally in charge of a rental car, usually i just rely on taxis, but a quick cab ride here and there, those costs add up quick! So once we de-board the plane, I make sure to let her walk first. Once the pathway opens up a bit more, I catch up to her and can see the huge smile on her face because there are slot machines in the airport and I explain to her that this is really where the saying "Go big or go home" really comes into play. As we walk towards the shuttle, we see a guy carry a water boiler and several packs of instant noodles as his carry on and seemed like he was in a rush to catch his plane, I guess he came here with one mission and one mission only.
We get to the Rent-A-Car Center and i'm glad I opted with one of the smaller companies instead of the bigger named ones, 'cause those big name ones had long line ups, the rental counter at Thrifty's was empty and the agents looked like they were falling asleep, so they were ready and glad to help!
I went for their 'wild card deal' where I pay for a compact and they could give me "anything" from a compact to larger. After most of the paperwork is done, I head to the garage where the guy tells me "Pick any car you want from Zone 5 or 6. The keys are in the car" OMG. I get to choose which car I want? Exciting! I want a Mustang! Oh wait, all the cars are practically the same, just in a different color, bummer. It's either a Toyota Yaris or a Mitsubishi Mirage. So we picked the very first car, a blue Yaris. Since this is my first time being responsible for a rental car I told her that we should inspect the car for any damage and make note of it in case they fault me for any of it. I think they thought of this too, because the parking garage is sooooo dark, you can't see anything! We start looking over the Yaris and we get to the front bumper, uhhh it's protruding from the side, I don't think it's suppose to be like that. It looks like this car blacked out with it's previous owner and someone tried to sell it's kidneys on the black market and did a rather poor stitch job. Rather than risk it, we choose the car next to it, a red Mitsubishi Mirage. We begin to look over that car doing the best we can with the lighting conditions and by the time we're done, we practically have every single spot on the sheet circled or noted. As we were loading up our car, a very old lady was helped into the Blue Yaris that we were just inspecting, she didn't bother to inspect it and just hopped in the car and turned it on, that's when I noticed that her car had a rear view camera and mine didn't, so I was jelly. My GF asked if we should tell her about the protruding bumper and I said if you want, so she knocked on the window to tell the old lady. The old lady thanked her and went back to play with her new rear view camera, she probably thought it was a GPS or who knows, she might have been late getting to a slot tournament because she didn't seem to care about the bumper.
Once we leave the parking garage, our first stop is to hit up In-N-Out, 'because it's about 3:30PM EST and we're starving because we only ate a bah-gul for breakfast this morning.
Two Animal Style Cheese Burgers, no onions and Two Animal Style Fries with one Large drink for here please. The burgers are only $3.50 and the entire meal came out to about $15 after tax? No wonder why Americans are so fat.
Okay, now that our bellies are full! On to the "hotel" to check-in. Or at least that's what she thought! Since it was her first time here, I wanted to take her to the Las Vegas sign as a surprise. I made a turn and started heading in the opposite direction of the strip, at first she didn't notice because she was still in awe of the place, but eventually she realized we were going in the opposite direction and asked where we were headed. When we got there she was surprised and excited! I think more so excited than surprised. Even though i've been to Vegas many times, I didn't stop by here for the past 6 trips, I think the only time I ever came here was when I was really young, and we probably didn't stop either, probably just drove on by. So I had to read up on it and I read that there was usually long line ups and that everyone was very civil and would line up to wait for their turns. Turns out what I read was correct! There was a bit of a wait and everyone just magically filed into a line and waited their turn, everyone except wedding parties and people with limo service, 'cause yano, they're "special". We both understand that this economy runs on tips, there was this guy there taking pictures for people, but no one seemed to be tipping him afterwards, even though he would say "tips are appreciated" after taking your picture and not running off with your camera, so we decided to tip him a couple of dollars.
(This isn't us, just a random family that happened to be standing there when I snapped the photo)Okay, so we're going to head to the hotel for real this time. We take a nice slow drive from one end of the strip all the way to the other end of the strip and take it all in. As we get to the lobby and head on into the line up, it's a very short line up as we're pretty "late" checking in, but there is someone serving everybody in line with Wynn water, this is pretty nice, I can get use to this. As we're checking in, the front desk girl is telling us about the Riveria implosion tonight that will happen at 2:30AM and there will be fireworks and they offer ear plugs if necessary, we tell her it's okay and head on up to our room.
I've stayed at the Encore before and it's my favourite hotel to stay at while in Vegas and the room layout is a little different from the past, but everything else is just as I remember it.
We get to the window and OMG, I know she was telling us about the Riveria implosion, but I didn't realize that we would be getting front row seats to it as well!
So after a quick break and the traditional Vegas wallet switch, we're off!
Off we go to Walgreens because she's never been to one before and we wanted to pick up a few things like snacks and some water for the room. After we drop them back off at the room, we begin to explore what's near by, the Palazzo, Fashion Show Mall, once we're done with all of that, we head on back to the Encore. We walk to the buffet and aiyah, it's $40 a person for a Monday night. So I explain to her the Red Card that we could either pay for dinner or we could sign her up for a Red Card and try to collect the 700 points to win the free buffets. Now, I have done this promo for new members countless times and have helped them get their free buffet every single time, and of course with me as their plus one guest. Hey, it's my money that i'm putting on the line to help them win this buffet! I'm sad to say that this time I actually failed at achieving the buffet target, we got 2 cards, she lost about $40 and I lost $50 and I was only at 170 points, still a long way to go for the free buffet. She's not a huge fan of buffets since she doesn't eat a whole lot, so we decided to abandon the quest for the free buffet and eat something else for dinner.
We had planned to eat at Tender tomorrow night, but since we're free for dinner tonight, we decided to move it up ahead a night. Luckily I rented a car, otherwise, it would have probably been a $25 cab ride there and another $25 cab ride back!
We get to the Luxor and head on over to the MLife desk and have them load my MyVegas reward of $75 off your $150 food bill, this is pretty much the only MyVegas reward I redeemed this time, 'cause all the other rewards suck now.
Tender happens to be part of Restaurant Week so she ordered that and got her starter, main entree and dessert for only $50, which meant that the rest of the $100 was up to me!
So I opted to go with (in order of appearance) the Soup Tasting Trio of Wagyu Beef Chili, Maine Lobster Bisque, and Exotic Mushroom Soup.
All their soups was excellent, but once again the Lobster bisque was absolutely amazing, even though there were no actual pieces of lobster, you could really taste the lobster!
And for my main, i'll have the steak please. Make that a 16oz Kansas City Strip, Black Angus Dry-Aged beef to be exact!
and I was planning on ordering dessert as well, so that's probably $100 right?
As for her meal, I forget exactly what it was that came with the meal but it was the Exotic Mushroom Soup, a steak and a dessert sampler.
So before all of this amazing food arrives, our server comes by to tell us that we're about $20 short from meeting the $150 mark, so I look over the menu again and opt to go with the Big-Eye Tuna from the starter section.
So as we're eating all of this, our server comes by once again and tells us that we're still about $16 short from hitting the 150 mark, he must have seen the confused looks on our faces 'cause he says he'll bring us a copy of our bill thus far, so we look it over and it seems fishy, but everything seems to add up. So I ask for the dessert menu, as I was going to order dessert anyways, so I order the Santa Barbara Strawberry Ice cream along with some strawberry short cake and that still leaves us about $2 short, but i'm hoping he lets it slide. 
At this point we're both stuffed, annoyed about having to keep ordering more and tired. I didn't bother taking a picture of the strawberry short cake, because we asked for it to go. He comes back and jokingly tells us that we're $2 short, but said it's okay, so after tax and tip, I still paid about $100 for the meal. Finally, we can leave! But i'd probably be willing to do it again next time. Even though we were both very full, i'll have to admit it was kind of fun for someone to tell you to keep on ordering food.
MGM started charging for parking the week before we got there, so we had to pay $5 for parking as well. I paid for my ticket and upon exiting input it into the machine, but it just kept spitting it back out, luckily there was someone standing there, who took my ticket and just pushed a button for me to get out. I guess they're still working on some of the kinks.
Woke up at 5:30AM EST and now it's almost 11:00PST, which is 2:00AM EST, it's wayyyy past my bedtime, so back down the strip we go and back to our room. I set the alarm for 2:20AM because they're blowing up the Riveria at 2:30 and we don't want to miss it! There are people out there who re-arranged their trips and stays just to see this and we just so happen to have a front row seat to this, so we're not going to miss it!
I naturally woke up at 2:15AM and when the alarm went off at 2:20AM, she woke up too, and we sat by the window for God knows how long just waiting and waiting and waiting, until we were both wondering if they did it earlier and we missed it or something. From our window we could see that Las Vegas BLVD was jammed because that section of the strip was closed off and there were police cars with their lights on blocking the streets. After who know how long of waiting, we finally see some fireworks go off.
It would have been nice if they had the fireworks shoot off 3. 2. 1. that way we would know when it was about to happen instead of asking ourselves "is it about to happen?, what about now? how about now?". And when it finally happened, all we heard was a loud boom and just watched as a building crumble followed a very large cloud of smoke slowly drifting outwards and towards the BLVD. The smoke reminded me of the Smoke Monster from LOST. Did we ever find out what that thing was?
After that we just sat there and kept on waiting for more to happen, waiting for them to blow up the rest of the Riveria, because we could still see the Riveria standing there. So we came up with a bunch of theories, maybe they didn't tie the dynamite properly? and it only blew up one section of the building? Maybe they need to wait for the smoke to clear first before they can see and blow up the rest? but it never happened. And from there we just people watched, once the smoke cleared we could see sooooo many people begin walking back up the strip, had no idea there were so many people down there. I wonder what it was like down there inhaling all that dust/smoke in.
END of Day 1 - Total Distance Walked - 10.77KM or 6.69M
