The Las Vegas Thread and MSE guide

Steveswift

August

Hi all,

Going out Aug 4th for 10 days, i know i am late for booking cheap flights for a "A book early " point of view. But do you think i shouls wait a while before paying the virgin price of approx £650 Each.?

Regards

Steve

pennylane99

May

wdyw wrote: »

With no offers about as its so far in the future booking a fly-drive flight and a standard room in the TI separately comes out at 1650. Labor day holiday is Sept 1st this year so you won't be affected too much by it so I'd hope to get the hotel room a lot cheaper.

wht would get me interested is why there are no flights on Sept 3 .......whats on? ...and may it adverselfy affect Sept 7th flight prices in the near future?

there are BMI flights on 3rd, just not direct flights

PAUL7331

Mardrew wrote: »

Paul

Is the booking you have with Last Min one that can't be changed? I'm guessing it is. My only concern is that the Stratosphere is at one end of the Strip and you may spend a lot of time/money either getting taxis, waiting for the Duece bus or having a fairly long walk to mid-strip.

I can't comment on your flight prices. We went just after Easter but went indirect from Manchester and paid £700 including all charges for the two of us. (The slight hassle of this was worth the savings to us. As you are only there for 4 days I agree that direct flights are the best.)

Mardrew

Yes booking cant be changed now unfortunately .

Ive checked a few reviews on trip advisor and there is a monorail which goes from another hotel (close to the strastosphere) which we can take to where all the action is on the strip I believe?

I wanted somewhere more central but was struggling keeping it under £650. My only other option was Circus Circus, but as there is 4 guys all in our mid twenties, we decided the strat would be the better option. Hopefully it turns out ok!

PAUL7331

ferf1223 wrote: »

How many people are going? or rather, how many per room?

4 People going, 2 rooms. So total price was just over £2600!

wdyw

PAUL7331 wrote: »

Yes booking cant be changed now unfortunately .

Ive checked a few reviews on trip advisor and there is a monorail which goes from another hotel (close to the strastosphere) which we can take to where all the action is on the strip I believe?

About 500m walk between the Strat and the Sahara (and the monorail). THe monorail is great and far better than the bus though a bit nore expensive. look out for deals for the monorail such as the current $9 for a 24 hour pass.

ferf1223

March

PAUL7331 wrote: »

4 People going, 2 rooms. So total price was just over £2600!

You didn't get a bad price based on current flight and room prices. Chances are you would have seen better hotel rates closer to your dates and at $9/day for the monorail per person that can start adding up...but ultimately what matters is I am sure you will have a great time.

You can sometimes find vouchers for buy-one/get-one-free tickets on the monorail and sometimes they are good for the 10-ride tickets...may be worth considering as the 10-ride tickets are sharable whereas the daily tickets aren't (so on the daily tickets each of you would have to have one).

With 4 of you, you may find that it's better value to take a taxi than the monorail - will really just depend on how much you use the monorail. If it's 2x each day each (when you leave the hotel and when you come back to the hotel) for 4 a taxi may very well work out cheaper for you and be more convenient..if you use the monorail many times a day then that would be a better option in terms of cost.

ferf1223

March

PAUL7331 wrote: »

4 People going, 2 rooms. So total price was just over £2600!

OK, I've thought about it some more and it may be worth 1 or 2 of you joining the Las Vegas Advisor's online membership...the Pocketbook of Values does include the Buy-One/Get-One voucher and it is good on the 10 ride ticket which is normally $35.

So for each of you who had the voucher you would get 20 rides for $35...if one of you had the coupon then that would be 5 rides for each of the 4 of you - one ride for each day and would cost each of you $8.75...if 2 of you had the coupon then you would have 10 rides each - 2 rides per day - for $17.50 each person...

Plus then you would have 1 or 2 POVs and all the coupons it has...the online membership is $37, so if the monorail voucher is worth a full $35 to you, then you only have to find another $2 in value to make it worth more than it cost you.

http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/whyjoin-pocketbookofvalueslist2008.cfm

We do like the monorail but due to the location of the stops it's really not a hop-on/hop-off thing...especially given that it's not located at your hotel and so there's a walk to or from Sahara...I'm sure some people use it loads of times during one day, but we don't - so the daily passes aren't the best value for us, the sharable ones are...the sharable ones are also good for a year from the date they were first used and so can be saved for another trip or sold on ebay if you don't use them up...partial POVs also sell well on ebay.

Worth thinking about, at least!

PAUL7331

wdyw wrote: »

About 500m walk between the Strat and the Sahara (and the monorail). THe monorail is great and far better than the bus though a bit nore expensive. look out for deals for the monorail such as the current $9 for a 24 hour pass.

Thanks mate, we'll do that then. Is the monorail open 24/7? Also roughly how many minutes does it take to get from the sahara to where all the action is on the strip on the monorail?

wdyw

PAUL7331 wrote: »

Thanks mate, we'll do that then. Is the monorail open 24/7? Also roughly how many minutes does it take to get from the sahara to where all the action is on the strip on the monorail?

It's about 15 minutes from one end to the other, runs from 7am to either 2am or 3am depending on day of the week and the shuttles come every 10mins or so. There is a website for the monorail
www.lvmonorail.com

It stops at about 5 or 6 different places, probably best bet is to use it to get to the MGM and work your way back along the strip to see where you like the best and on other days judge the best place to get off.

Gina

March

Thanks for all the useful posts.

I'm planning to visit vegas either March or September 2009, although probably March because I think it'll be cheaper. I know it's a long time away but I'm hoping there will be at least 6 of us going and it will take a lot of organising!

I was wondering if anyone knows what kind of price we'll be looking at? It'll probably be sometime between 15th to 31st March 2009 for 6 people for 7 nights. We'd like to stay on the strip in a mid priced hotel, maybe 3 people in 2 rooms. Preferably flying from London (I've seen that flights should be about £350 with virgin if I pay partly with points).

I was also wondering what the best time to book would be as I know the flights are likely to go on sale soon.

I need to get an idea of prices so I can persuade all my friends to come! Thanks in advance for your help.