The Las Vegas Thread and MSE guide

bargaindoctor

haha i like that. smooth. now i just gotta decide between the 2. i must say i'm swayed to caesars since i'll save $50 a night, which i can use towards other stuff

sod it, i'm going to go with caesars! bellagio when i'm a rich man someday

pebblesmax

November/December

Don't panic, it's not a day by day, blow by blow account of our month in Vegas. I hope it doesn't bore you too much. Sorry it's a bit late. I had to go to Spain almost as soon as we got back from Vegas.

Hotels

Orleans - four different reservations here to take advantage of assorted (cheap) offers.

Reservation 1 - Standard prices for this one. No offers, no free play or food credit. There was also no resort fee, which was nice.

Reservation 2 – $25 per night offer including of $20 free play and $20 food credit. This followed on from the first one and I just went down, checked in and out and kept the same room. No resort fee on the bill for this one either.

Reservation 3 – Another $25 per night offer. No free play or food credit, but we did get Thanksgiving for $25. Not bad considering we paid over $100 for last years Thanksgiving nights. We had the resort fee added to this bill. (I think a supervisor checked me in, probably why we were charged.)

Reservation 4 – Yet another $25 per night offer with the free play and food credit. (No resort fee.)

Barbary Bill’s – Stayed here for nine nights. The prices dropped for some of our nights so I called and got the better rates. Some had also risen, but they let me keep them as they were.

Venetian – Two nights on the $149 per night offer including $50 slot play per day and $50 bar credit for Lavo at Palazzo. Didn’t take long to spend that. A bottle of Estrella that we buy for € 0.60 was $9!!! I know it’s imported, but really!

Shows

Tom Jones - 10th November - $93.65 each
Tom Jones at the MGM Hollywood theatre. I really enjoyed the show. I definitely think he was more than slightly tipsy though and he’s had far too much surgery. There were the obligatory knicker-throwing women at the front. Tony was sure they were plants. Tony Curtis and LV Norm from LVRJ were in the audience. Tony Curtis spoke to me when he passed our table as they were leaving, (he spoke to a lot of others too, but this was my first real celebrity sighting.)

Vinnie Favorito – 15th November - $27 each (2 for 1 coupon)
Good show. Don’t go if you’re easily offended. He picks on the audience mercilessly. Tony had tears rolling down his cheeks at one part. (Laughing, not crying.) He asked us who we were and where we came from, but he can’t have any Brit jokes in his repertoire because he left us alone. We used the two for one from the POV and the Flamingo honoured it even though it was for Oshea’s. Tony wanted to go to see him again this trip, but I persuaded him to leave it until next time.

Neil Sedaka - 16th November - $15 each (2 for 1 coupon)
This was a good show. Tony liked it more than me because he knew more of the tunes. His voice is still very strong considering he’s getting on a bit now. He did a video duet with his daughter and a couple of tracks from his new album. Thanks to Norm for the half price voucher that he sent us.

Mamma Mia –20th November - $44.75 each (with link from Cheapskates forum. Thanks Skybank.)
I was surprised to learn that this show was 2.5 hours long. I don’t suppose you can shorten it much, but they seem to manage with a lot of other shows. It didn’t feel long at all and it was a great show. We both enjoyed it, me more than Tony, but he preferred the Neil Sedaka show.

Ka – 22nd November - $79.40 each
We really enjoyed Ka. This was our first Cirque show. We were greeted by Panto, who used to post as GVNV on Las Vegas Talk. I introduced myself as pebbles, but I’m sure he didn’t remember me. He was very nice though, and said he didn’t post much anymore because of work commitments. We were in the cheap seats, but there really isn’t a bad seat in the house. Got to see almost everything, but sometimes there was so much going on I didn’t know where to look.

Commodores - 29th November - $25 each
It was a crap show. I knew I had made a mistake going to it when the lights went down and the bass notes started booming out. It was rattling my kneecaps! I didn’t recognise many of the songs they sang, they weren’t the ones that made it across to the UK. We were in the fourth row centre, so leaving early would have been difficult.

Meetings

Tuesday 4th
Met with Historian (WBTALV) on the day we arrived. He took us up to the VooDoo lounge. We arrived too early for VooDoo and went for a coffee before going up. The glass lifts were out of order so we will have to go up again to experience that. The view from up there is awesome. We were impressed. It will be another thing on our to do list for every visit in future.

Thursday 6th
Met Tom (WBTALV) at around 11:30 and drove to an Italian place on Tropicana that he had heard good things about. It was closed, so we drove to the Crown and Anchor. Tony and I had heard of this place before, but had never visited. They had football on Man City v a Dutch team. We ate there instead. We had steak and kidney pie and Tom had bangers and mash. It was OK, seemed reasonably authentic British pub grub. The thing that certainly wasn’t authentic was the free refills on our soft drinks. That would NEVER happen in the UK. Went to airport to collect our car. Got a dodge Caliber in dark blue. Took a while to adjust the seat to suit me but got sorted.

Monday 17th
Met with MookyBarGirl and her fianc! at Bill’s lounge. (MoneySavingExpert) They were staying at Bally’s while we were at Bill’s. The plan was to meet before a Big Elvis set and chat for a while, and then watch his show. They had never seen him before. Well, Big Elvis had called in sick so they didn’t get to see him. We were the first to know about their engagement. He hadn’t told anyone back home that he was going to propose and they still hadn’t called to tell anyone. Anyway, we had a nice chat and a few quiet celebratory drinks.

Sunday 23rd
Went downtown this evening and met up with Kiddo (WBTALV) for a short visit. Watched a couple of light shows and had a chat.

Monday 24th
Should have been meeting Kiddo, Mr BP and Vegas Diva (WBTALV) for breakfast at Peppermill. Didn’t happen because Mr BP wasn’t well. I hope he’s OK. Just met with Kiddo, who had also invited can2do from Blonde’s board. I just had toast and coffee because I knew what the portion sizes were like.

This evening we met “Slogger” (John) and Richard at the Crown and Anchor. They are a father and son who used to live in the same (tiny) village that I was born in. Slogger worked for Tony when he first left school and Richard is an old friend of my brother’s. We waited until about 10:30 pm, (06:30 am UK time) when Colin would be getting up to go to work and I phoned him, then handed over to Richard. They hadn’t kept in touch much since Richard went to America, but they had a good chat and have arranged to keep in touch more often. Richard brought a friend along who also went to the same high school (and lived in the village for a while although I can’t remember him - old age creeping up!). Starkey has been living in Vegas for about three years; he was in New York before that. Richard has been in Vegas for about 6 months, although he previously spent time there whenever there was some boxing event on. He’s the official artist for the boxing hall of fame, and does stuff for the UFC too. Website here.

Tuesday 25th
It was Kiddo’s birthday today. We met at Orleans and had dinner at the buffet. The group was Norm, Andrea, Dusty, Kiddo, Tony and Elaine. Kiddo gave us all a chocolate Turkey for thanksgiving. They looked very professional and tasted good.

Saturday 29th
I met with Doxie (WBTALV) for a coffee in a small place in the Canal Shoppes. We had a nice chat, but could only spend a short time together because she had to meet her family for dinner and I had to go to see the Commodores.

Tuesday 2nd Dec
Met with Norm at Red Rock Station buffet for dinner. We had a nice meal and good conversation. Tony will be going on a hike or two with Norm and Tom next time we go to Vegas.

Wednesday 3rd Dec
Met with Slogger and Richard again. This time we went downtown and had a few drinks at Hennessey’s. The cowboy hat brigade were in full force on Fremont Street because there was the Downtown Hoedown going on. This was our last evening in Vegas, and I really didn’t want to go home.

Gambling

As many of you know, we don’t do much in the way of gambling. This time we did have a bit of free play included in our hotel reservations. We also had coupons for $10 free play at 4 Queens and 2 x $10 at El Cortez. Tony likes to run the exact amount of free play through and then cash out to find out how much he has actually won off the original stake. I don’t know what difference it makes, but he seems to like doing that.

Didn’t get anywhere with Wizard of Oz this time, Goldfish was OK, but not as good as previous times, my old favourite Texas Tea was quite kind to us but all in all no wins, just quite a bit of play (and $1 drinks) for not much money. I have to say my new favourite is Outback Jack. There are several bonus rounds and every one seems good fun. There weren’t many of them around and they were often being played.

I actually played a bit of video poker this time. The best I did was on a deuces wild machine where I got a Royal Flush with a deuce for 125 credits. My best hand ever! I know it’s nothing to some of you but I was well happy. I did get a couple of 4OAK’s here and there, but it was when I was only playing 5c (25c total) so not much to shout about there.

We had a bet on the Ricky Hatton fight. I wanted to put $50 each on, but we ended up doing $50 between us. It all goes in the same pot so it wasn’t a problem. Since the odds were well in Ricky’s favour, there was no point in betting on a win, so we went for the “Won’t go 12 rounds” and as some of you may know, the fight was stopped in the 11th round. A win for us! We picked up $190 and Tony said he wished we’d done the $50 each. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Food

We mostly ate at buffets, Orleans Coffee Shop or Ellis Island. We had the BBQ at Ellis Island three times with a 2 for 1 coupon. It’s currently Tony’s favourite. We had quite a few 2 for 1 and $5 off coupons and used them when we could. The buffets we ate at (in no particular order). Orleans, Rio, Harrah’s, Silverton, Red Rock Station, MSS and Fremont. I have to say we ate less this time than we usually do, and felt better for it.

Car hire

We had a car for most of the time we were in Vegas. I think we will be more selective next time, it was extremely convenient, but we did use it just of the sake of it sometimes. We had two separate reservations with dollar. We booked through car hire 3000, who have the full insurance package requires for UK drivers. We are both Dollar express members and it’s easy to get your car. The girl in the office remembered us from last May and was really nice.

First rental period was easy and painless. Dodge Caliber almost brand new. Good seat adjustment (I’m short) and Digital radio.

The second was not. Disaster! We had the Caliber to begin with and I just chose another. We didn’t have luggage; this is significant. We decided to drive to Silverton for lunch. Halfway there I noticed that the gas tank wasn’t full. When we parked, we looked at the car and it was obvious that it hadn’t been checked properly. There were two coats in the trunk. I called the dollar help number, the woman was no help at all, and so I took the car back. Unfortunately I left the paperwork beside the phone in the Silverton! Nightmare, but finally we sorted it all out (the nice girl in the Express booth was awesome) and ended up with a Hyundai Sonata, which was better for me to drive because it had even more seat adjustments.

This is just a short one. If you'd like more info about any of the shows, I'm sure I can give you a better review of them. If you got this far, thanks for reading.

duchy

I really like the Orleans -big rooms-and yet to pay full rate there, very nice buffet for a low price-not keen on their coffee shop though had more than one bad meal there on different trips as well as good ones there. The Showroom there is always good value for Vegas too.
I like the Rio buffet too-although the Palms is good too.

pebblesmax

November/December

Orleans is one of our favourites too. Didn't get to the Palms this year, although we usually have at least one meal there.

Thanks for reading Duchy. (I do envy your frequent trips.)

PandaPants_2

September

My brother and his wife and son are spending a few days in Vegas in January, but all the sites I'm looking at are giving prices for rooms. We would ideally like a 2 bedroom suite, am I best to book direct through the hotel?

I've always found better deals from a 3rd party. Can anyone please suggest sites than do suites??

pebblesmax

November/December

Here is a basic breakdown of our costs for the month in Las Vegas.

Flights - - - - - £756.40

Hotels - - - - £1,331.66

Car hire - - - - £452.04

Shows - - - - - £348.75

Total - - - - - £2,888.85 which works out at £ 48.15 per person per day.

I hope that it helps someone.

gordylad

This was posted on fatwallet:

Bellagio
20% - 25% off lowest rates
DPRV20 & DPRV25
DPRV20 valid 2/1 - 5/25, DPRV25 5/26 - 9/10
Expires 9/11/09

Managed to change our standard room to lakeview room at the same cost $199 per night. Standard room with the discount is now $159 per night.

We did think about cancelling as we didnt have a view but this makes the difference now for us.

Check out fatwallet for the link.

gordylad

Could anyone comment on the following shows that we are thinking about taking in when we visit Vegas:

Jubilee

Lion King (starts May and is supposed to be the standard Broadway show)

Chris Angel Mindfreak (Not sure if this will still be on at end April).

Any other recommendations?

Thanks...........

TangoBunny

October

anyone know when the virgin sale starts.I can get flights for £367.50 with miles+money.....do u think I could get them cheaper ???

ferf1223

March

gordylad wrote: »

Could anyone comment on the following shows that we are thinking about taking in when we visit Vegas:

Jubilee

Lion King (starts May and is supposed to be the standard Broadway show)

Chris Angel Mindfreak (Not sure if this will still be on at end April).

Any other recommendations?

Thanks...........

Jubilee was good for an old-style Vegas show...it was extraordinarily cheesy in places but you have to expect that...my in-laws agreed they were very glad they saw it before Love and Mystere as they were extremely impressed with Jubilee at the time, but after the other two realised that it wasn't really that special in comparison to what is out there...but worth seeing for an old-school feel.

Lion King was brilliant in London and I'd be surprised if it wasn't brilliant in Vegas.

Mindfreak has mostly terrible reviews, but personally if I could get a cheap ticket (not singular as my husband would refuse to see it) I would go just to be able to have my own opinion.

As far as other recommendations, we like Cirque shows and have really enjoyed all that we've seen...Love is probably our number 1 with O or Mystere following it up and then Ka and LeReve (the latter not actually a Cirque show but same designer worked on it, so). We also liked Penn & Teller, Bette Midler, Mac King (afternoon show)...but shows are really relative - some people love one and others hate it.