Las Vegas guide and MSE thread 2015

John259

It depends what you mean by expensive but a lot of people do it. Try Alamo who are usually less expensive than Avis or Hertz but perfectly ok in my experience (and that of most other people).

Here's a list of some places you could go, with distances:
Day trips:
Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, Nevada 23 miles
Hoover Dam, Arizona/Nevada 32 miles
Mount Charleston, Nevada 43 miles
Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada 56 miles
Possible as day trips but only just:
Zion National Park, Utah 164 miles
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah 264 miles
Grand Canyon National Park (South Rim), Arizona 275 miles

calash

John259 wrote: »

It depends what you mean by expensive but a lot of people do it. Try Alamo who are usually less expensive than Avis or Hertz but perfectly ok in my experience (and that of most other people).

Here's a list of some places you could go, with distances:
Day trips:
Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, Nevada 23 miles
Hoover Dam, Arizona/Nevada 32 miles
Mount Charleston, Nevada 43 miles
Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada 56 miles
Possible as day trips but only just:
Zion National Park, Utah 164 miles
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah 264 miles
Grand Canyon National Park (South Rim), Arizona 275 miles

Brilliant, I'll have a look

John259

Some links to official sites:

Red Rocks (Bureau of Land Management)
http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/fo/lvfo/blm_programs/blm_special_areas/red_rock_nca.html

Hoover Dam (Bureau of Reclamation)
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam

Mount Charleston (commercial site)
http://www.gomtcharleston.com

Valley of Fire (Nevada State Parks)
http://parks.nv.gov/parks/valley-of-fire-state-park

Zion (National Park Service)
http://www.nps.gov/zion/index.htm

Bryce Canyon (National Park Service)
http://www.nps.gov/brca/index.htm

Grand Canyon (National Park Service)
http://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm

In addition, Wikipedia has articles on each of the places, often with good photos.

You can look up road routes with Google Maps. All those places can be reached on good quality paved roads.

StuieUK34

Hiring a car expensive ????
where you hear that ?!
the US (to me this is), is the best and cheapest place to hire a car...
No need to worry about excess and staff finding the smallest paint flek missing from the car so they can charge you £500 to fix it, etc etc...
An example:
I paid for a standard SUV with Alamo, for 1 day, 1 way (LA to LV), with a full tank of fuel included (drove 320 miles in total).. Cost to me was £45..... and slipped a guy $20 to upgrade to the GMC Arcadia !

ferf1223

pebblesmax wrote: »

I'm assuming this is a surprise. I promise not to mention it when we see you on Saturday.

my mother-in-law knows...well, she knows where we booked and that I screwed up on the date, she does not yet know that they fixed it and currently thinks we're going to CC steakhouse which was our back-up booked yesterday before it got sorted. FIL just knows he's getting steak.

Looking forward to seeing you guys! Weather looks like it might be a bit interesting at the weekend...air race is currently at significant risk unless it changes.

nvh

Only mentioning this as I'm sure it will appeal to someone!... Some interesting BA talk over on Flyertalk.

Effectively, ex-EU (Dublin / Copenhagen) deals in Business Class to Vegas coming out a good deal if you part pay with Avios. This means you spend avios, but also earn Avios at higher rates (ie. recouping your Avios spend). It also means you earn Tier Points, (which leads to status), you have (by default) a larger luggage allowance on the flights, get priority checkin, and the opportunity to be horizontal on a plane without lying on the floor.

Because they are part pay with Avios deals, and you earn Avios, this means that your "net" spend of Avios is quite low (though you need the initial amount to pay out with anyways!), and you could be looking at Business Class flights costing circa 10k-15k Avios (net) + £450 return.

True, you have the hassle of locating, missed flights etc etc, but IMO this is a good deal taking into account the benefits and the opportunity to 'explore abroad' (...well, Dublin )

Ex-DUB dates:
25 JUN THROUGH 22 AUG OR
23 NOV THROUGH 30 NOV OR
18 DEC THROUGH 04 JAN OR
28 MAR THROUGH 12 APR
ON THE OUTBOUND TRANSATLANTIC SECTOR. SEASON IS BASED ON DATE OF ORIGIN.

The above deal is of no interest to me at present as we have no plans to go back to Vegas, so I haven't tried it (and therefore fares may vary etc etc!) I'm sure if it's of interest to you, the above is enough to set you on your way for now

edit: to clarify, what happens is you get a £500 discount on your plane ticket, for 30k Avios, but you would earn approx 15k-20k Avios back as 'earnings' from the flights. It appears to work for some other destinations other than Vegas (ie. San Francisco)

CM66

nvh wrote: »

Only mentioning this as I'm sure it will appeal to someone!... Some interesting BA talk over on Flyertalk.

Effectively, ex-EU (Dublin / Copenhagen) deals in Business Class to Vegas coming out a good deal if you part pay with Avios. This means you spend avios, but also earn Avios at higher rates (ie. recouping your Avios spend). It also means you earn Tier Points, (which leads to status), you have (by default) a larger luggage allowance on the flights, get priority checkin, and the opportunity to be horizontal on a plane without lying on the floor.

Because they are part pay with Avios deals, and you earn Avios, this means that your "net" spend of Avios is quite low (though you need the initial amount to pay out with anyways!), and you could be looking at Business Class flights costing circa 10k-15k Avios (net) + £450 return.

True, you have the hassle of locating, missed flights etc etc, but IMO this is a good deal taking into account the benefits and the opportunity to 'explore abroad' (...well, Dublin )

Ex-DUB dates:
25 JUN THROUGH 22 AUG OR
23 NOV THROUGH 30 NOV OR
18 DEC THROUGH 04 JAN OR
28 MAR THROUGH 12 APR
ON THE OUTBOUND TRANSATLANTIC SECTOR. SEASON IS BASED ON DATE OF ORIGIN.

The above deal is of no interest to me at present as we have no plans to go back to Vegas, so I haven't tried it (and therefore fares may vary etc etc!) I'm sure if it's of interest to you, the above is enough to set you on your way for now

edit: to clarify, what happens is you get a £500 discount on your plane ticket, for 30k Avios, but you would earn approx 15k-20k Avios back as 'earnings' from the flights. It appears to work for some other destinations other than Vegas (ie. San Francisco)

Ooh do you have a link to it on Flyertalk, i cant seem to find it?

duchy

It'll be in either the BA forum or the mileage run forum

nvh

CM66 wrote: »

Ooh do you have a link to it on Flyertalk, i cant seem to find it?

Sure - it's post #5474 (and then just read onwards): http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1642006-ba-tier-point-runs-2015-master-thread-365.html

Vegas, SFO etc are mentioned within this post (which you'll come to reading the above anyways!): http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25557559-post5491.html

See here for the official detail re: the 'double' part payment offer:
http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/executive-club/spending-avios/part-payment

As I say, I've not looked at this at all as I don't need it - so the cash price may not tie up with the 'cheapest' fair (which appears to be £450 to JFK), but feel free to let us know how you get on

edit: a very quick check, and flights appear to weigh in at £1200 at the moment (-£500), so a good couple of hundred from the £450 level but I haven't tried variations (ie. fly into LAX, back from LAS etc)

duchy

calash wrote: »

I love views and scenery etc, not sure about hiring a car, I've heard that it can be very very expensive, not sure if that's true though

I can be if you want a convertible or some kind of boy racer car but a standard economy with all insurances is around a hundred quid all in prepaid for a week.

I don't think that's expensive especially as petrol is cheaper than here.