Las Vegas thread and MSE guide 2009 part 2

Trets and Ferf gave me some advice back in January and March about my upcoming Honeymoon to Vegas in August, i would like to take the opportunity to give you some appreciation so that you know your advise is valued and share my experience to help others.

I get married on the 15th August and travel down to Gatwick to spend a night at the Hilton. This is costing around £160 including car parking for 17 days. I aim to get there before 6pm in order to take advantage of the twilight check in - my flight leaves around 9 am on the 17th August £500 with Virgin.

Hotel bookings:

17th - 21st Aug (4nts) The Hotel at Mandalay Bay - The Suite (Summer Escape Deal) $107.50 per night
21st - 23rd Aug (2nts) The Venetian - Luxury Suite $173.31 per night
23rd 1st Sept (9nts) MGM Grand West Wing King Room $75.04 per night

I originally had booked The Bellagio at $162.68 per night instead of The Venetian, but obviously later decided that we would perfer to stay at The Venetian.

I have booked tickets to see The Lion King on the 18th Aug (section D $63 per ticket), Kings of Leon 19th August ($60 per ticket) and Love 23rd Aug (Level B $70.40 per ticket)

We want to take the heli trip to the canyon but will probably wait till we get to Vegas unless anyone knows of any better deals

tully

sounds good... especially the hilton which seems a cracking price considering you have the 17 days parking as well! - plus it's directly connected to the terminal that Virgin use so very handy for twilight check-in (you have from 12noon till 9pm for this incidently!)

if you haven't already, sign up to the HHonors card - it's free and means you get to use a 'special' check-in queue (that's usually shorter!)
http://www.hilton.co.uk/HiWayWeb/appmanager/portals/customer?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_hhonors_content_category&_ref=About

(you also get points for stays etc, but for us is worth it just to be a queue-beater! )

the only thing out of everything you say you're doing, that I would possibly question is staying in the West Wing room's on the last sect of your itiniery - HOWEVER, i've never stayed there, this is based purely on what others say - you might be disappointed when comparing to the rooms at venetian + TheHotel. Just a heads-up...

No matter what tho, enjoy your honeymoon anyways!

I finally got around to writing something up about our trip to Vegas in May/June this year. The people on this trip were me, Tony and, for two weeks, Jobey, Tony’s 26 year old grandson. Jobey had been to the USA before, but never to Vegas, so this trip was slightly different because we had a newbie to show around.

Flights – These were with Continental. We travelled from Manchester UK, to Las Vegas via Newark. First leg was on a 757-200 and second was on a 737-800. On the way back it was a 757-300 then a 757-200.

I dinged the bell on the screening thing on the way through security at EWR. I always do because of my hip replacement. Well, they couldn’t find a female TSA person to pat me down, so I had to wait for a long time. I was very concerned that I might miss our connection because I had to wait so long. I started to complain loudly and they finally found someone. I think that they had forgotten about me. Luckily (?) our second flight was delayed slightly, so we caught it with time to spare. Caught up time in the air, so we were only a few minutes late arriving in Vegas.

Cost for the flights was $992.92 or $496.46/£344.50 per person.

Hotels – we spent a total of 39 nights in Vegas, just short of six weeks. This cost us a total of $1481, or $740.50 per person. Tony is hoping for 7 weeks next year because that is the maximum that he can get travel insurance for. I haven’t decided yet, we’ll see.

Excalibur –We had a widescreen room in tower 2, which was really handy for the pool. No need to trail through the hotel to get there. Six nights here cost us $356.

Rio – Our second hotel. Ipanema Tower, pool view. Five nights here cost us $218.

Flamingo – Our third hotel. We had a standard room facing Flamingo Road. Two nights here was $98. We moved here for the weekend because the Rio was asking silly money for the rooms.

Rio – Fourth hotel was Rio again. Ipanema Tower, pool view. Six nights here was $376.

Imperial Palace – Our fifth hotel. Eighteen nights here was $348.

Golden Nugget – Our sixth hotel. Two nights here was $85.

Flights and hotel cost us $1237 each, or $31.72 per person per day. Not too shabby since we were there over a big holiday weekend.

Getting around

Took a taxi from the airport to Excalibur when we arrived. The driver tried to tunnel us, but I resisted. Fare was $13.80 before tip. That was the only one we took the whole time we were in Vegas.

Used the shuttles from Rio to Harrah's/Paris and from the Gold Coast/Orleans to Bill’s a few times.

Hitched a ride from Kiddo (WBTALV) two or three times.

Our friend Norm took us on a few outings in his car. We went to Death Valley, A hike to a spring in the Red Rocks area and Tony went to see Sin City Kitties at Primm with him too.

Bought a day pass for the bus a few times and did a lot of walking.

We had three separate reservations with Dollar. This was for two days, ten days and eight days at various times during our stay. We booked through Netflights, who have the full insurance package required for UK drivers.
First rental period we had a Subaru Impreza. Second, we had a Jeep Liberty. Third was a Dodge Caliber. These were all by booking the bare minimum economy package.


Entertainment and attractions

Checking out casinos - We did more of this than we would normally because Jobey had not seen any of them before. We visited a lot of casinos. Too many to mention, it would be easier to list the ones we didn’t see.

Fremont Street Experience - Saw a couple of the light shows. Liked Queen the best. Used up all our coins in the slots that still take cash. Didn’t win anything, but after being in Vegas for a while, you tend to get rather a lot of loose change, so it was a fun way to get rid of it and we had a few free drinks too.

Big Elvis. - Thoroughly enjoyed hearing him singing all the old Elvis standards. Tony likes it when he does those gospel type tunes too.

Mirage Volcano – Now that this is only in action once every hour, we missed it several times. It was far too warm to stand too close to it; I’ll check it out again in October. At least Jobey finally got to see it.

Bellagio Fountains - I always like to see a few fountain shows. I think Jobey was impressed.

Stratosphere Tower - I didn't do any of the rides on there, although Jobey would have liked to go on one if he’d had a companion. There was no way Tony or I would do that. Far too scary for us! The view over the city is spectacular. I still prefer the VooDoo lounge area for nighttime views though.

Shows

Jersey Boys – We got the tickets on an offer that was $99 tickets with a free upgrade to from orchestra seats. I thought the show was great. We both really enjoyed it and I’m looking out for offers for October so we can take the family.

Nathan Burton – Good early show. I’m not really into magic, but the show was funny too and I did enjoy some of the magic. We had VIP seats and you still couldn’t tell how he did the stunts.

Blue Man Group – Thanks to Norm for the tickets. He gave them to Tony and Jobey because he had seen the show several times already. I think it would have been too loud for me.

Sin City Kitties – Tony went to see this with Norm and they both seemed to enjoy it. It’s a burlesque type show and is very entertaining is what Tony said, so I’ll take his word for it.

Mike Tyson movie at Suncoast – Tony and Jobey went to see this. I just hung out in the casino while they were in there.

We didn’t get around to any other shows. We had a look at tix4tonite a couple of times, but we couldn’t decide what we wanted to see. We’ll probably be doing a few shows in October with the family, so I wasn’t too bothered about it.

Food

We mostly ate at buffets, Coffee Shops or Ellis Island. We had the BBQ at Ellis Island four times. It’s currently Tony’s favourite and Jobey really liked it too.

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, Suncoast, Harrah’s, Silverton, Red Rock Station, MSS and Excalibur.

We also used a couple of Restaurant.com certificates. One was for Tacone Flavour Grill in the Miracle mile and the other was for McCormick and Schmick’s just off Flamingo Road East. I would recommend McC & S. They do a mainly seafood menu and it changes daily depending on what fresh fish they have that day. They also have a happy hour menu that is only available at the bar during the afternoon. We’re planning on trying that out next trip. It looked good.


Meetings

MSE meet - Our first meet was with posters on moneysavingexpert.com - Luci and her husband, Lorraine (Tangobunny) and her husband and Richard (funkyfin) and his wife.
The plan was to meet before a Big Elvis set and chat for a while, and then watch a bit of his show. Luci and hubby had bought Cher tickets that evening and couldn’t stay long, so it was just the six of us for most of the meet. I’d already met Lorraine in Benidorm earlier this year, and it was nice to put names and faces together with the others.

777Brewpub with SHF (WBTALV) – We had lunch here one Saturday.

Tapas at Cafe BaBaReeBa – Tony and I met with B7’s (WBTALV) and his family. Unfortunately, we misjudged the timing for eating earlier in the day (Memorial Day) and had eaten later than planned because there were lines to get in everywhere. We didn’t eat any Tapas; I just had a couple of glasses of Sangria.

Breakfast at Suncoast – Historian, Norm, Tony and I met for breakfast before they on a hike to the Muffins. I just hung around and played a few slots and read my book while I waited for them to return. The traffic on the highway back to Vegas was dreadful. It took us forever to get back.

VooDoo Lounge – This was a WBTALV meet. We went up to the VooDoo lounge while it was still daylight and watched the sun setting over Vegas and all the lights coming on. I think that is the best sunset view in Vegas. We all had a good time.

Breakfast at Peppermill – This was a WBTALV meet. There were Pebbles (me) and Tony, Vegasbaby and John, B7’s, Mychal, Kiddo, MrBigPants, Historian and Mel. Sorry if I missed anyone out. I should have made notes.

Poker/Soccer match - This was a WBTALV meet. I was going to play, but I chickened out. Players were Kiddo, Historian, Airball, Cory, Hawaiian Mark, Mr BP, Mel and B7’s. While this was going on Tony and John watched the football match between Barcelona and Manchester United. They were both very unhappy with the result. I kept popping back and forth between poker and football. Alora, Brigette and Mychal turned up during the game.

Bally’s Tequila lounge. - This was a WBTALV meet. We didn’t spend a lot of time here, maybe an hour or so, because we had a prior engagement to meet with Norm and Andrea for dinner.

I met with Doxie for a coffee in a small place inside the Flamingo. DonQ and Bunnykat came too and DonQ gave me a signed bookmark to go with his book. It was good to catch up with Doxie again and also to finally meet the author in person. We all had other people to meet, so after chatting for a while we parted ways.

Gambling.

As some of you know, we don’t do much in the way of gambling. We had coupons for $10 free play at Hard Rock and 2 x $10 at El Cortez. I also had a coupon for $25 free play at Planet Hollywood once I had got one point. I had heard that it was no longer being honoured, but I thought I’d give it a go anyway. I got the free play, no problems at all. Tony likes to run the exact amount of his 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 tried the Planet Moolah slot that Zombie mentioned and did quite well with that one too. I have to say my favourite is still Outback Jack.

I played a little bit of video poker again this time. Tony and Jobey tried it out too. Of course they both did better than me.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.

The bits I forgot. On the way back from Death Valley we visited a date farm and had a lovely date milkshake.

We went to see Fleetwood Mac in the MGM Grand Garden Arena. I got our tickets for $25 from an offer someone posted. That place is huge! We were so far away; we could hardly see a thing. Thank goodness for big screens and good acoustics.

We went to see Richard MacDonald and his sculptures one day. They were giving out champagne and soft drinks. He came over and started chatting to us and he was a really nice person. He had been in London recently, working with the Royal Ballet, and he was telling us where in Scotland his ancestors were from. Out of nowhere, Tony asked him if he’d considered adoption. He explained that he was an orphan and would like to be adopted. After a moment of disbelief, Mr MacDonald cracked up laughing, thank goodness. I was embarrassed, but I should be used to Tony’s antics by now.

Hi all.....just checking in to see how we all are....not been around for a bit....family problems which I wont go into at the moment.....
Just got back from a week in Tenerife....last minute thing took my 18 year old daughter with us .....it was hot hot hot but not so hot as Vegas

nvh wrote: »

tully

sounds good... especially the hilton which seems a cracking price considering you have the 17 days parking as well! - plus it's directly connected to the terminal that Virgin use so very handy for twilight check-in (you have from 12noon till 9pm for this incidently!)

if you haven't already, sign up to the HHonors card - it's free and means you get to use a 'special' check-in queue (that's usually shorter!)
http://www.hilton.co.uk/HiWayWeb/appmanager/portals/customer?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_hhonors_content_category&_ref=About

(you also get points for stays etc, but for us is worth it just to be a queue-beater! )

the only thing out of everything you say you're doing, that I would possibly question is staying in the West Wing room's on the last sect of your itiniery - HOWEVER, i've never stayed there, this is based purely on what others say - you might be disappointed when comparing to the rooms at venetian + TheHotel. Just a heads-up...

No matter what tho, enjoy your honeymoon anyways!

luci wrote: »

My only concern with this it the West Wing rooms at the MGM. You are in for a shock, especially coming from the Venetian, as the rooms are TINY!! You would be much better with a Grand Tower room as they are much bigger.

Funkyfin posted photos of the WW rooms in the previous LV topic and they confirmed what we saw as we passed them.

Thanks for the advise i have joined HHonours and will keep an eye out for a deal that can compete with my MGM booking price wise.

Failing that i will have to try the 20 dollar trick when booking in