Let me just start off by explaining what I had won. I won a 2 night trip for 2 to Las Vegas that included flight, hotel, $500 spending money and a Richard Petty driving experience, collectively valued at $5,000.
Upon hearing this, a lot of people will ask me how I won such a prize, simple, I entered a contest. Their immediate response usually is – “I never win anything”. To which I reply with “Well, do you ever enter contests?” Most of the time they’ll say no, go figure!
I told myself that the next time I get a WynnCore room comp; I’m going to invite my parents, so that they can experience it firsthand. Well this wasn’t quit it, but close enough! I chose my Mom as my guest for this prize. Then once the flight details were finalized, I simply purchased an additional ticket for my Dad. His ticket was close to $800, but I had a $150 travel voucher that I won from a different contest in the past, so that softened the blow.
After many months of waiting, the day finally arrived, and we were headed to the airport, at first, we were gonna ask my sister to drop us off and then pick us up, but then decided against it, since it was only for a few days and it’d be more convenient if we just parked the car there.
11:30AM Westjet direct flight to Las Vegas, we get there with plenty of time, park in the Value Park Garage, ride the tram over to the outbound terminal, check in and wait. The average speed of the plane was about 450MPH. Uneventful flight, so I had to observe stuff to keep myself occupied, what I did observe was that the 3 ladies sitting in the row in front of me were French, they chatted quite a bit, from the information that I gathered, they were talking about the Spice Girls and Posh Spice. How do I know this? Because they said Spice Girls and Posh Spice.
I must have been sitting around some guys that were on a business trip or they were just simply ballers! When the flight attendants walked around asking if they wanted to buy ear buds and blankets, a lot of ear buds and blankets were sold. Then they bought sandwiches and several cans of booze, one guy even had 3 “bottles” of red wine.
I don’t get it. Why spend five bucks on ear buds and five bucks on a blanket when you can bring your own. Why spend $6 on a CAN of Molson Canadian when you can just wait a few hours and get a Corona for a dollar, and these guys just didn’t stop at one can, they bought several cans each. I guess they wanted to start the party early!
*Side Note: One other thing I don’t get is the whole online check-in process, they have you check in online, print your boarding pass, but when you get to the airport, you still have to check-in again using the kiosk, scan your boarding pass, scan your passport, and they issue you a luggage tag and a new boarding pass. So what was the point of me checking in online? I just had to do everything over again, minus a few buttons.
Even though I only got around 5 hours of sleep the night before, I didn’t sleep much on the plane ride. To kill time, I watched the entire Step Up Revolution movie from my phone. I was planning to just watch a bit of it, then doze off. After that, I practiced some BlackJack on my phone, practiced counting cards, practiced JacksOrBetter, I was preparing for a big haul!
We arrive on time, depart the plane, as we’re leaving the flight attendant says “baggage claim to your left” but as soon as you walk out a sign in the sky says “baggage claim” and points right. A lot of people followed the sign, but I figured she must have been saying it for a reason and she works here, so I’ll take her word for it. Turns out she didn’t disappoint. What probably happened if you took the right was that it would have brought you to an escalator to take you down, and then make you walk in the ‘left’ direction anyway.
We collect our bags, make our way over to the shuttle. We’re taking the shuttle because our package includes round-trip shuttle transfer, hey why not, saves us an extra $40-$50 on cab fares. Since my package was meant only for two people, we had to pay an additional $7 each time for the third person.
Took us a while to find the correct bus, since most of the shuttles we saw were for car rentals, but we finally found it, I get on the bus, turn on my phone, look at the time 2PM not bad, uh-oh, missed call from my uncle. My dad’s brother, lives in San Jose, so him and his wife drove down from there to meet us in Vegas, the missed call was probably just them telling us that they’ve arrived. They wanted to pick us up at the airport, but I told them that meeting at the hotel lobby would have been much easier.
The shuttle would be making several different stops dropping people off at various hotels, luckily, our hotel, the Monte Carlo was the very first stop! We get to the lobby, I prepare my $20 sandwich and I line up to check in, not a very long line, there were about 4 people working the counters. I’m next in line, I spot a rather cute looking girl who was working the counters, so I’m secretly chanting under my breath “cute girl, cute girl” hoping that I get her. She looks up and calls me over, yes, secret chanting does work!
I hand her my $20 sandwich, she sets everything down and pretends not to see the $20 bill, she punches some stuff into her computer and says “I can get you a higher floor strip view, it’s usually $20 extra a night, but I can waive that for you, and how does that sound?” I said sure, I’ll take it! (Even though, on my reservation it already said higher floor strip view. I didn’t care, I was just happy that I finally got the $20 trick to “work”. The last time I tried doing this at Excalibur, it didn’t work, the lady said I was already upgraded, and gave me back my 20, so much for that experience). So I’m on the 29th floor, she’s handing me back my driver’s license, my new MLIFE card (I had the old MGM card, she changed it out for me), and goes “oh, thank you” and pockets the 20 (she did that in a very cute fashion) and finally the credit card.
So while she’s processing, I ask her for an extra room key card, for my dad. She probably thought I wanted it for the hooker, but who could blame her, I’m so attractive that hookers just throw themselves at me. We make small talk and I ask her “what’s good around here” and she tells me Haze (that’s a club) and I say I’ve never been and ask her what else is good, then she tells me that Marquee is pretty good too (that’s another night club), so I’m guessing this girl like to snort her paychecks and party!
By the time we get up to room, it’s already 3PM. 30 minutes behind schedule, but no worries. I call my uncle and he says he got there around 1PM; they’ve checked in at the LVH and will be right over! Perfect. We’re hungry so we’re gonna go get some McDonald’s at the food court, meet us there! Before heading over to the food court, I make a quick detour to the MLife desk to redeem my MyVegas reward, I had a $50 Food Comp at the Monte Carlo, and everything went smooth and easy. Over at the food court, we easily locate the renowned golden arches, 20 nuggets for five bucks, how can you go wrong?
We meet up with them, sit around for 10 minutes talking, look at some maps, then we’re off to the Hoover Dam. He wanted to show up the new concrete bridge they built connecting Nevada to Arizona? Cool beans with me bro! It’s suppose to be a quick 25 minute drive, but we get a little lost and have to double back, so it took us almost an hour to get there. We get there, there’s still some light out, but not much, we park, get out, walk the bridge. Walk from Nevada all the way to Arizona, and then back again. Not bad. Hop back in the car, this time we drive around the underpass so that we can see the bridge from the side view.
It’s a concrete bridge built in the middle of a dry dam that connects two states. Iono, I still think the Confederation Bridge is more impressive. That shit was built on water!
Alright it’s getting late now and we haven’t really eaten anything since this morning, so off to find food. Where to? The Rio’s All You Can Eat Seafood Buffet of course! $45 per person, BUT! With the Total Rewards card, it’s only $40 per person, plus! I had $85 in TR credits to spend ($55 from a TR contest win, and $30 from SocialRewards) so we use that, and it worked out to about $25 per person with tax, not bad!
I think it was pretty delectable, I ate two plates of the lobster tails, piled with shrimp and crab legs, a plate of oysters, and a plate of sashimi, as well as various other seafood choices. It was noted that the lobster didn’t seem the freshest, but it’ll do. Yes, I would eat there again.
I know what you're thinking, not the prettiest arrangement, I know. But I just don't get how you can be #Jelly and #Hatin at the same time #smh
After that, we headed back to the Monte Carlo to park the car and then walk the strip. First stop, the M&M store. My aunt wanted to go there to look for something for her daughter who they would be visiting in San Diego tomorrow (we would have gone too, but we were pressed for time, since our trip was so short). While they were in the store, I saw a commotion gathering outside, naturally I had to look, turns out this guy had a sign up where it said you could kick / punch him in the nuts for $20, no cup, and no trick! Some girl did pay him to do it, and either he’s a really good method actor or it genuinely hurt. I guess one demonstration is enough for the crowd, since after that no one else paid him to do it again, so we all moved on.
After the M&M store, we drop by the Coca-Cola store, since it’s right next door, do some more perusing, then begin to make our way to the North end of the strip. My uncle wanted to show my parents the Venetian. We get to a traffic light, we stop and wait for the light to change, duh! While we’re waiting, I get approached by a guy in a suit. He’s handing out wristbands for a club over at the Monte Carlo, all I had to do was take the wrist band, put it around my wrist, duh! Show up, and I would be taken to the front of the “line”, pay a $20 cover and I would be in. Ladies get in free and get free drinks. Ugh! What’s the opposite of penis envy? I looked at him with skeptical eyes, and asked what’s the catch, he said no catch, you don’t pay me for anything, he’s just out there trying to create a buzz, creating awareness for the club, and trying to draw customers away from the competition, that’s all. So I take the wristband and tell him that I’ll check it out. I would have gone, but I didn’t want to pay a $20 cover just to “check out” a club and hang around by myself. I would have rather taken the $20 over to the high limit room and done one slot pull.
As we’re making our way North, I tell them to get a good look at Bill’s, ‘cause next time they’re around, it won’t be there, they’ll be tearing it down on Monday for renovations. Then as we pass O Shea’s I tell them about the LINQ project and the world’s tallest observation wheel. We walk by Carnival Court, I tell them about flare bar tending. Maybe it’s due to the construction going on around it now, but it seems really closed off, whereas I remember it use to be pretty open. It also seemed like they were checking ID and charging cover in order to get in.
We finally make it to the Venetian, snap a few pics of the outside, head in to use the washroom, then cross the street to begin our journey back to the hotel. We walk by the Mirage and just as I feared, the Volcano is “closed due to maintenance”. I wonder how long it’s been closed for. Continue walking and continue to ignore the porn slappers, man that’s a long walk, lots of overpasses and bridges to cross. We finally make it back to the hotel, decide that we’ll meet back up at 8:30AM tomorrow morning.
You would think that this would be the end of Day 1, but it’s not! As soon as we hit the lobby, I turn to my parents and say, you guys go get ready for bed, I’ll be up in a bit! Head straight for the blackjack tables, $15 limits, not bad, I was expecting $25 tables since it was Super Bowl weekend, but I make my rounds and I find a somewhat empty table, two guys are playing, I see that the shoe is almost done, so I pull out my $200 and say i’ll wait till the next shoe, in case they’re on some sort of heater. One of the guys turns to me and says, feel free to jump in, she’s killing us, we could use the help. I tell him, naw, I’ll just wait till the next shoe, then the dealer turns to me and says, they might not last that long. I reply with: What? Then why would I jump in?
She cleans one guy out, so he leaves, then the other guys starts betting big, $100 a hand, he wins, presses his bet, he wins, bets $200, he wins, he won four or five hands in a row. Enough to color up to a purple. He loses one hand, but then he would win the next four five hands. He loses another hand, and he says he’s done.
So now there’s no one left at the table, and the shoe is still not finished. He seemed to be on some sort of a hot streak, but he didn’t want to continue it, and without anyone else playing, there’s no chance for a new shoe, so I sit down with my buy-in of $200, $100 in nickels, $100 in quarters. I’m thinking alright, one on one with the dealer is the way to go, I’m going to ride his hot streak then, if he doesn’t want it. As soon as I place my bet, he places his bet, F****ER, so now we’re back to 2v1. I would lose 2 hands, win 1, lose 2 hands, push 1, lose 2 hands, win 1. You don’t need to be a mathematician to figure out that at this rate, I won’t last very long. My drink hasn’t even arrived yet, and I’m already down $100 playing $15 a hand. My drink finally arrives, and I quickly leave the table with $50 left. That 1 Corona cost me $151.
I take my two $25 chips and head for the cage, thinking this isn’t my night. On my way to the cage, I pass by a roulette table, alright, I’ve got some “lucky” numbers, time to try some roulette. Once again $15 min, I change my $50 into chips and start betting. Start out “heavy” with $5 on #20, and $5 on 17, then placing the remaining of my chips on numbers surrounding it. I have one chip on the corner of #26 and I hit that, hmm, payout is not that much on 1 chip with a corner bet. I place a couple more chips on #20 and #17, then the remainder of the chips on various other surrounding numbers. I don’t hit my “lucky numbers” but I do hit 1 of the other ones, okay, better payout, but still not enough. Let’s try it again, spread some more chips around, this time 1 chip in each number, still covering 20 and 17 and it’s surrounding, Single zero? Why not. I hit it! Hmm, these winnings are climbing but very slow, this is going to take forever, so I color up, before I end up giving it all back. I make my way to the cage and leave with $69 in cash.
Maybe I lost that $150 because it was karma coming back to haunt me, because I didn’t want to sit down and “rescue” those two guys who were playing blackjack when they asked, and that I was trying to ride the end of that guys heater. Then maybe the small roulette win was the good deed I did while I was at the MLife desk getting my comp, I helped an elderly lady attach her players card to her lanyard.
I head back up to my room, only to find that my dad was missing from the room, turns out he also went back down to gamble. He later comes back up to tell us that he lost $20 playing slots. By the time I make my way to my bed it’s already 3AM.
Okay, end of Day 1, finally. I know! Tell me about it, I’m the one doing all the writing.
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