Las Vegas guide and MSE thread 2016

Samarkand

Has anyone tried this prepaid card, you get £18 free if you go through Money Supermarket and it says no ATM fees if you withdraw over $300 which is my daily budget.
Does anyone know if this is a decent card as they are offering rates of $1.31 at the moment.

bobbyhibs

ali-t wrote: »

If you have any inspiration about a less painful way to do things please let me know.

hi
last year we went from vegas>chicago>edinburgh and i was worried we d miss our connecting flight as we had something like 55mins to get to the gate in chicago and you know what it feels like everyone is taking there time(whilst im always in a amd rush in those sorta situations!)

As silvercar has said its a long flight to the us.i think thats why we(for us) we like to do new york, it splits up the time, but thats not for everyone.The only *direct* flight (for us scots!)is from glasgow, with thomas cook(braehead travel i believe use thomas cook flights)

I keep meaning to do the avios points/card thing!
is is mostly via tesco?

silvercar

bobbyhibs wrote: »

I keep meaning to do the avios points/card thing!
is is mostly via tesco?

Can only advise on British Airways. We have the BA American Express card to earn Avios on our general spending (and we do shove everything we can onto the card). That gives you a 2-4-1 voucher every year when you total spend on the credit card reaches £10,000. So we only need the Avios for 1 return flight to get 2 return flights. I also shop in Tesco and convert all the clubcard points to Avios. Add to that OH travels for work and trys to fly BA, pay with the credit card to get Avios for the spend and for buying BA flights on a BA credit card. Then we try and book a year in advance (reward seats become available 355 days in advance and they guarantee 2 business class seats on every flight).

I know that you can do similar with a Lloyds (?) credit card and Virgin airmiles, but don't know the exact details.

Misty_Blue

You can get Avios in many ways. Filling up with Shell petrol, for example. The website will tell you all the ways you can get the points.

I convert my Tesco points into Virgin airmiles and I always use their Shops Away click-through site whenever I buy anything online, if the store is listed there.

martmonk

Just to add that https://www.headforpoints.com is a great resource for CC and avios tips.
Bonus sign ups, best cards for collecting points, short term deals to maximise avios return etc.

As an example I earned over 1500 tesco club card points this week, which will become 3,600 avios, just for buying £60 of Lego. Some of it will go on eBay, some will go as presents at Christmas.

Re the 'Amsterdam' discussion earlier, I've looked at that for us from NCL but I don't think I've ever found a direct flight from AMS to LAS.

photome

ali-t wrote: »

I am near Dundee and the travel was a killer. There are now flights from dundee to Amsterdam so although it would be more expensive it should be possible to do a quick hop to Amsterdam and direct to vegas. Im going to look into that option for next time.

bobbyhibs wrote: »

hi
and a bit hi to you then!
and i guess going to amsterdam would be an option,
kind regard!!

I travel to Vegas from Norwich via Amsterdam fairly often.
it is sometimes cheaper than going from London

BUT there is no direct flight from Amsterdam to Vegas.

you would need to do 2 stops , one in Amsterdam and then a stop somewhere in the USA, there are pros and cons doing it that way

ali-t

Thanks for tnat info. Looks like glasgow is the closest to me where i cluld get direct flights with virgin. Thanks everyone.

bobbyhibs

ali-t wrote: »

Thanks for tnat info. Looks like glasgow is the closest to me where i cluld get direct flights with virgin. Thanks everyone.

hi

As far as i could recall, virgin were doing a *trial* between glasgow-vegas direct for a few months but that was a while back, though i am unsure if they have committed to continuing the service.
thomas cook are the main *direct* flights for glasgow-vegas (I think breahead travel do use thomas cook flights)
Going direct from glasgow does have alot of pro's,When we did it back in 2014(our first trip to vegas !!) we were lucky our dad could give us a lift(even on the return) we tavelled to glasgow to edinburgh (about an hour) in the car, so prehaps thinking how d you get to glasgow in time for the flight( and getting back to dundee) would be a good idea.
kind regards

Mich81

Misty_Blue wrote: »

It's worth remembering that the star rating just refers to the hotel facilities and not really how nice the rooms are.

I haven't stayed in any of the above, but for me it would depend what the upgrade was at the four star. If it was only a one-step upgrade or so, I'd probably go with the five star and try and get a comped upgrade on check-in.

Is this a honeymoon? You could maybe look at the Monte Carlo instead of NYNY. That's more honeymoon-ey, to me. NYNY I would think of as more of a family hotel. Or, there is the MGM Signature, which is set back from the Strip but is a lovely hotel. 5 star, and you can get some great prices.

If you went for Ceasar's, research carefully as apparently some of the rooms/towers are very outdated and pretty grim, whereas others are really nice.

It's either just a honeymoon, or a wedding and honeymoon as we're contemplating cancelling the wedding over here and just doing it in Vegas.


I'd read that about Caesars - which put me off a bit - I did like the look of Signature though, just not the location.


We're even contemplating Bellagio if we cancel the wedding, even their basic rooms look nice.

Smudge's_Lot

Hi Mich, that's what I was told, that the Bellagio, is pricey but the usual addage,you get what you pay for!
I have found the Run of the House room, bed type allocated at check in, but looking at the spec, doesn't look too shabby:D and for our dates, the upgrades look well worth the $20 sandwich!!!!:rotfl: