Las Vegas guide and MSE thread 2015

vanilla8

Goggle flights is currently my favourite over skyscanner.
My next trip is booked for March flying from Dublin via Gatwick. Thought I would save the miles for another day and got VS Upper for £1100 each, we are in Ireland anyway so the trip works for us.

Just got to book hotels. Got two mlife comp offers for 3 nights in Mirage or 2 nights in Madalay Bay. Thinking of taking the Mirage comp at the start of the trip and then moving to Aria. I can get Aria for £330 for ROH room on travelrepublic with a £1 deposit and free amendments (not cancellation)
I can book direct for $750 with $200 f&b credit which would be refundable so we might do that in case a better deal pops up

StuieUK34

Duchy, I looked at the Dublin scenario, but its a ballache, and 2 stop flight....
I had found flights from Dublin to Vegas in June for £325, which is great... But then using Ryanair to get to Dublin might only cost £50, but then add another £50 for the suitcase, and its 20KG compared to the 23kg with the major airlines, and due to flight times, we would need to stay in a hotel over night in Dublin at a cost of £38 each.....

Its easy to spot super cheap deals flying from outside the UK, but add on the other costs, or ballache, and it can work to be a pain in the bum!
Plus, wife banned me from doing 2 flight stuff!

I need to focus on flying to LA really, as want to go back to Six Flags theme park, then drive to Vegas like we did last year...
Exclusing Norwegian Air, any of u guys recall seeing direct flights to LA from LON/MAN around the June period for costs between £400 - £450 ????

blindman

StuieUK34 wrote: »

Duchy, I looked at the Dublin scenario, but its a ballache, and 2 stop flight....
I had found flights from Dublin to Vegas in June for £325, which is great... But then using Ryanair to get to Dublin might only cost £50, but then add another £50 for the suitcase, and its 20KG compared to the 23kg with the major airlines, and due to flight times, we would need to stay in a hotel over night in Dublin at a cost of £38 each.....

Its easy to spot super cheap deals flying from outside the UK, but add on the other costs, or ballache, and it can work to be a pain in the bum!
Plus, wife banned me from doing 2 flight stuff!

I need to focus on flying to LA really, as want to go back to Six Flags theme park, then drive to Vegas like we did last year...
Exclusing Norwegian Air, any of u guys recall seeing direct flights to LA from LON/MAN around the June period for costs between £400 - £450 ????

You could use ITA Matrix to price flights. (How to use ITA Matrix)

Ex-UK flight savings are better in Business as opposed to Econonomy.

I'm planning an UC trip with Virgin next year and it's £1300 each as opposed to £3400 each :eek:

Connecting flight To DUB can be on BA using 4,500 Avios and £17.50 each and that includes luggage.

And you do not have to catch the return LHR-DUB flight at the end of your holiday

bobbyhibs

vanilla8 wrote: »

Just got to book hotels. Got two mlife comp offers for 3 nights in Mirage or 2 nights in Madalay Bay.

hi there
May i be so nosey and ask how often you get comp offers from Mlife?

My brother and I often check once a week for offers and the best we get is special rates!

currently we are both on the *pearl* teir of mylife so not really too high which maybe counts for something.

are the Mlife offers pretty hit and miss ? do people often wait til nearly the time to check for offers or book pretty early... checking for offers in novemeber for like june the next agian year?
As you can tell i wanna save money and if we can get free rooms(excluding the resort fees) then it would work for us !

many thanks

vanilla8

bobbyhibs comps have been discussed quite a lot on this thread, search mlife or comps.

We got up to pearl in our trip in May, but have received comps before we got to pearl too - we spent 3 nights in monte carlo with f/p in May. My account is linked to my husband, but we have read that it is better to focus more spend on one card.

I will keep checking to see if a better offer appears, as they do change them(have other offers in account at the moment that only go up to dates in Jan)

Stuie explained before about how to increase your rating at the tables by betting high stake when the pitboss is looking and then lowering your stake.

bobbyhibs

vanilla8 wrote: »

bobbyhibs comps have been discussed quite a lot on this thread, search mlife or comps.

We got up to pearl in our trip in May, but have received comps before we got to pearl too - we spent 3 nights in monte carlo with f/p in May. My account is linked to my husband, but we have read that it is better to focus more spend on one card.

I will keep checking to see if a better offer appears, as they do change them(have other offers in account at the moment that only go up to dates in Jan)

Stuie explained before about how to increase your rating at the tables by betting high stake when the pitboss is looking and then lowering your stake.

hi and thanks for the feedback, For all the times i have read this thread you know i never realised there was a search option?
thanks for the feedback thoguh, i will try work the search option !:D

vanilla8

I use it for searching the old threads too, lots of great info in them

flybynight

have impulse booked us 2 weeks flights manc to vegas in may. woohoo
so am now gonna hit the myvegas thingy and see what we can accumulate between now and then ( not even booked a hotel yet, altho we may do a few days away from vegas in san fran etc.

nvh

StuieUK34 wrote: »

But then using Ryanair to get to Dublin might only cost £50, but then add another £50 for the suitcase, and its 20KG compared to the 23kg with the major airlines, and due to flight times, we would need to stay in a hotel over night in Dublin at a cost of £38 each.....

Its easy to spot super cheap deals flying from outside the UK, but add on the other costs, or ballache, and it can work to be a pain in the bum!
Plus, wife banned me from doing 2 flight stuff!

I know Duchy has mentioned it before, but don't treat it as two flights the good thing about separate tickets is you can spend 48 hours in Dublin / Madrid / Copenhagen / Brussels / Oslo on the way and have a 'euro-break' at the same time. The Dublin US Immigration 'pre-clearance' also feels more effective then (though if you want warm weather en-route, then Madrid is usually a winner, especially taking into account cost of booze )

I have a stash of Avios I earmark for locator flights too, so can RFS my way on a Oneworld flight to the ex-EU location, costing £35 p/p, and have a luggage allowance at the same time

Horses for courses tho - as Blindman says, it's usually a better deal for non-economy classes and I can see why it wouldn't be appealing if you didn't have much holiday time or desire to visit those countries

PS - re: flights to LAX in the £400+ region - Air New Zealand seem the best bet from what I've seen historically for the 'non-winter' months or keep checking '(not so) secretflying.com' and hope something pops up for your dates

ACG

I have just returned and thought I would give a quick review.
We flew through immigration (from Manchester). Literally 2 minutes at the desk taking a finger print and a ouple of questions. Infact there were more checks going back (sniffer dogs etc).

We went to LV for 2-3 days, LA for 5-6 days and then back to LV for 5 days.

I have not come back thinking LV was amazing I want to go back.

The first place we stayed was a place called Rita Suites up near Wynn. It was basically cheap and cheerful for a couple of days whilst we got over jet lag and had a look around ready for when we came back after LA. The place itself was at the quieter end of the strip but it was quite nice. It had everything you would need, good decent staff. The room had recently had a lick of paint and carpet - nothing amazing but nice and clean.

When we returned to LV we stayed at Luxor. Again very nice, after a couple of days we were given an upgrade so we moved from 6th floor in the pyramid to the 16th floor in the tower. The difference was quite significant. The room was bigger (and had a fridge for the beer and milk) and nicer and just more modern inside, the halls were much plusher and newer. If I was going again I would definitely pay for the upgrade from day 1.

The gym and pool at luxor were very nice. The gym had everything you would need, seems quite modern was quiet and cool. The pool was pretty quiet really. 3 pools, loads of sun beds and the food was reasonable - I was expecting it to cost a bomb.

LV itself - nothing like I expected. The heat is just unforgiving. Unless you spend your time walking through the hotels you need a bottle of water for anywhere. The strip is also very long, I would say maybe 4 miles, difficult to do in a day with the heat. Unless you are used to walking I would say split it up over a few days or get the bus - $8 for 24 hours! Bargain!

When looking on google maps I never realised how far everything is from each other. You think, walk past 2 hotesl and you are there but the hotels are huge. they take best part of 10 minutes to walk past them.

I realise this is probably quite obvious but unless you are wanting to walk around shopping centres or spend all day in a casino there is very little else to do. Yes there are shows and things to do but none of them really take up any great length of time.

We went to see the dolphins and lions - which was pretty good, Freemont which was a great experience, the Ballagio fountains (these were awesome, I cant explain how much better these are in real life and they do vary from one show to the next), also did the CSI experience and a few other things but 6-7 days in Vegas just seemed too long.

Im still undecided on the place. If I was going again it would need to be with a few mates and for a long weekend. I have to admit by the time I was due to come home I was glad.

There are a lot of homeless people/beggers. They are no harm and not pestering for money, but there are a lot and something I was not expecting.

The other thing is in some of the hotels (Excalibur, Luxor and another which I cant think of) they have people at intersections offering "free tickets" for one thing or another. By the end of the 6 days I was ready to lamp them. When I said No before they had even finished their sentence you would think I had shot a puppy infront of them, I was abrupt but I was getting a bit P'd off with it.

The other thing to note is that everyone is genuinely nice. At first I thought it was just to get tips or sales but I seen a street cleaner go out of his way to help someone find something and then a woman pull out her phone get up google maps and guide someone to where they wanted to go because she did not know where it was.