7 Days in Vegas

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Five - Gambling at South Point, Check in at Excalibur

Day five was a relaxation day and time to have a little fun down on the casino floor. We had a 12 noon checkout time at South Point and woke up on Sunday morning, checked out and loaded our luggage in the car. Then we went back into the Casino and played Baccarat for a good 5-6 hours. The Baccarat at South Point was the best Baccarat I have played in Vegas, they have several tables running and they have great drink service.

After an afternoon on the tables we decided to head up to our final hotel destination which was Excalibur on the South end of the Strip. I had purposely booked the low end rooms @ $39/night hoping that we could do the $20 Sandwich Trick for a free upgrade but I failed miserably in my first attempts and we ended up in the medieval rooms with a semi-strip view. You can read about my attempt at the $20 sandwich trick here.

Once we got checked in at Excalibur we decided to do a little casino wandering heading through Luxor down to Mandaley Bay and back.

Some photos from Day 5:

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Four - Monster Energy Supercross Finals at Sam Boyd Stadium

The highlight of the trip was the day at the Monster Energy Supercross finals at Sam Boyd Stadium. I had been to the supercross in Detroit and Toronto before but never the series finals in Las Vegas. The race was spectacular with Ryan Villipoto winning the race and the Toyota truck. Chad Reed came 2nd after taking a good charge at James Stewart who held on to 3rd place which was enough to clinch the championship. Another great year of Supercross racing capped off with a great final race. I was equally impressed with the pit party before the races which allow the fans inside access to see the riders getting ready for the races in the pits.

The day started in our room at South Point. We saved a ton of money by staying off strip for Fri/Sat nights, and by going to the Supercross races we saved lots of money by not being around the casinos all day too!

Many Photos from the 2009 Vegas Supercross and Pit Party:

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Three - Meeting The Stars of Supercross

Photos from Day Three:

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Two - Gambling on Fremont, Outlet Malls, LA Comedy Club

Day Two: Gambling on Fremont, Outlet Malls, LA Comedy Club.

9:00am: The day started out way too early and we were still running on Eastern time. We get up around 9am and head out only to find everything is closed. I guess 9am is the crack of dawn in Las Vegas because everyone is up all night partying. So we head to McD’s for breakfast just south of Mandalay Bay and notice this is the first McD’s I’ve ever been to with flowers in it as if they were trying to be a fancy steakhouse or something. What a joke, the fast food places in Las Vegas are like night and day from Canadian fast food. I can’t believe how expensive the coffee is in the States, it’s more expensive than beer. For some reason I can get 18 beer for $15 in Vegas but it’s $2 for a large coffee at McDs….it really makes my blood boil. I’ll just start drinking Miller’s for breakfast I guess.

Vegas Breakfast

11:00am: Alright, time to head down to dirty old Fremont and start raking in the cash hand over fist. At least that’s what our intentions were is to go win a couple hundred so we could get show tickets or a cool trip somewhere. Head on up the highway to the Golden Nugget, Valet the car and get ready to throw down a few bucks on the baccarat table. Used a baccarat money management system I have been reading about and it’s nothing to write home about but I was able to turn $100 into $180 in about 45 minutes of playing very selective baccarat. I find the Baccarat at the Nugget fun and fair. The shoe’s don’t go on crazy streaks and they always shuffle the cards by hand before each shoe so It feels more authentic to me.

12:00pm: Go cashout at the Nugget and head on out to Fremont St to see what’s going on. I stand and watch as a street artist does a few paintings with spray paint and sells them to tourists.

Fremont St Spraypaint Artists

After watching this guy for a while I hit the road and walk over to Binion’s to catch up to my friend who is kicking some butt at the roulette table with his free match play coupon you get when you take a picture with the Million Dollar display.

Some more photos from Day Two:

$20 Sandwich Trick - Gotta Try This UPDATED

Wanna to get a free room upgrade on your next trip to Vegas? Check this story out:

OK, so I was browsing along the net a few days ago and came across the $20 Sandwich trick web page which pretty much tells you how to get a free room upgrade when you arrive at check in at select hotels in the Las Vegas area.

Basically you grease the front desk staff by placing a $20 between your ID and your CC when you hand it to the front desk clerk and they will do their best to see if there are any ‘complimentary upgrades’ available.

On the Front Desk Tip webpage there are some pretty good stories I would suggest you take a read for yourself and you might have found the best $20 you can spend on your next trip to Las Vegas. I’m sure this trick has been around for a long time and I’m definitely going to see if it works on my next trip to Vegas in April 09. Until then, just monitor people’s success rate on the Front Page Tip web page.

**Update**

I just got home from my 7 nights in Vegas and during that time we stayed at 3 different hotels. I only wanted to try to $20 trick at the Excalibur because I had purposely booked a crappy low-end room hoping that I could simply slip the desk clerk a $20 a get upgraded to the new flat screen rooms.

So there I was waiting in line, getting the $20 all nicely folded between my license and my CC. I walk up to the desk clerk, a middle aged women named Remosa or something hand her the $20 sandwich and made small talk, asking her in there were any upgrades available to the nice Flat screen rooms. She takes my CC, starts typing away into the computer not even recognizing the $20 bill sitting in front of her. She goes on to tell me the rooms are $30/night extra to upgrade and I ask if there is anything she can do for us and basically the best she could do was an old crappy room with a decent view. We at least had a strip view in a medieval styled room.

So after she books us into the crap room, she then bills us a $5/day ‘resort’ fee and asks to take it from my $20 or the CC sitting in front of her. I tell her to take it from the $20 and then I don’t bother tipping her at all because I don’t think she even understands the concept or she would have made a quick 3 hours salary in about 3 minutes by trying to help me out.

My standard room and failed attempt at $20 Sandiwch Trick @ Excalibur

Oh well, back to the drawing board. I guess I’ll try this trick next time at a hotel where the desk clerks are used to being tipped.

Cheers,

Alfie11

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day One

Wednesday April 29th has finally arrived, my annual trip to Vegas is here, the countdown started somewhere in the mid 200’s and now I’m all done school and ready to get back to the desert for a week in the place city on earth.

Day started in Ottawa, ON around 4:30am EST. Only got about 2 hours sleep because I was too excited knowing I would be in Vegas in less than 12 hours. Got up had a shower, called a cab to take us to the airport.

5:30am: Arrived at Ottawa International Airport, checked our bags at Westjet then headed straight to Timmy’s to get our last Canadian coffee and something to keep us awake for our two flights.

7:00am-8:00am - Flight, Ottawa to Toronto, first flight with Westjet and I was pretty happy with it, mostly impressed with the in seat TV’s with satellite service. This allowed me to watch hockey highlights for my entire flight, something that I would soon be missing for a week. Strangely the sports channels in Vegas don’t show hockey highlights 24/7 like they do here in Canada.

8:00am-9:30am - Layover in Toronto - Waited about an hour to board our flight to Vegas.

9:30am-2:30pmEST - Flight into Vegas. This might have been the longest flight ever it seemed like, I had waited a whole year for this flight and I kept peeking out the windows waiting to see the red rocks, and Grand Canyon. Time to reset the watches 3 hours back. We landed around 11:30am local time, everyone started clapping once we landed safely, ready to get the party started.

11:30am: Got off the plane, headed down to the baggage area to grab our bags, then we headed to the rental car shuttle bus.

McCarren Airport Tram Las Vegas

12:00pm: Got off the rental car shuttle bus and headed straight to the Alamo parking lot. Showed the lot attendant my receipt that I printed out before hand and he told me to go pick a car in the premium lot. Alamo and National share the same lot. There were about 5 cars in the lot, the nicest looking one was a Dodge Charger so we packed it up and went to start it but couldn’t find the key. Went back to the lot attendant and he put us in a nicer looking Charger SXT, key included.

On the rental car shuttle bus

12:15pm: Finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I make out of the rental parking garage like a bandit ready to go start making money hand over fist from the casino of my choice. So I’m cruising down Las Vegas Blvd, getting used to the feel of the rental car and taking a few pics along the way. First thing I notice is the palm trees and billboards reminding me that I am back in Vegas.

Welcome to Las Vegas

12:30pm: That feeling of excitement starts to kick in and we head straight to the Bellagio for a lunch buffet. The Bellagio buffet is the Rolls Royce of Vegas buffets and I purposely didn’t eat on the plane so I would have lots of room to eat one of everything on the buffet. Can’t really remember exactly what I ate, but this buffet had everything from BBQ ribs, Roast Turkey, Duck, King Crab Legs, 6 different types of fresh pizza, ton’s of seafood, amazing fresh baked cookies, cakes, self serve ice cream machines with real chocolate sauce, fresh fruits, and free drinks (pop, water and juice). Price for two Bellagio lunch buffets: $43 + $4 tip. Worth every penny.

Bellagio Lobby Entrance Flowers

2:00pm: Now that I had some food in my stomach it was time to take care of business as usual. Let’s head to the roulette table to see if the wheel will pay for my Buffet lunch. I feel like my first bet of the week will set the tone for the trip. Let’s see what happens…Buy in for $100. Throw down $25 on Red….2 BLACK…damn it..let’s push it..$50 on Red…..16 RED. Sweet hit the RED for a quick $25 profit, decide to get out while I’m ahead. Thanks Bellagio for the free lunch..I’ll be back next year

Walk over to the Bellagio gift shop to grab a cool money clip and then outside to walk around and check out the fountains. We were staying across the street at Planet Hollywood for the first two nights so we made our way over there to check in.

View of Planet Hollywood from Bellagio

4:00pm: Check in at Planet Hollywood, everything goes smooth and quickly, the desk clerk Adam was friendly and hooked us up with a coupon book and with some good stuff on it ($25 match play, $25 buffet coupon, lots more…) He put us on the 11th floor in one of the Hollywood Hip rooms, which is a standard room at the Planet Hollywood. The view was decent but our view of the Bellagio fountains were blocked by the Miracle Miles shop roof.

View from Planet Hollywood - Floor 11

Spent the rest of the night chilling in the middle of the strip. Played some table games at Planet Hollywood and used my $25 match play to turn $25 into $75 on the roulette table. After a long flight, and day of travel we didn’t venture too far from the hotel and just kept it simple on day one.

Sleeping was easy on the comfortable beds at PH and I would come to miss these beds towards the end of my trip.

Comfortable Beds at Planet Hollywood

Last thing I can remember was sittin down at a dead game of Poker at Bill’s and thinking I’m too tired to play so I went back to the room to crash and rest up for day two.

Countdown to Vegas 3 Days….Planning My Vegas Trip Part 3 - Booking the Car

So the pre-trip excitement levels are starting to rise and when I was reviewing my car rental agreement I came across something that really burns me up. Paying more than I need to for my trip. Let me explain….

I was just reviewing my travel reservations that I printed out back in March about 5 weeks ago and was looking at my rental car since that is the first reservation slip I’ll need once I land on Wednesday morning.

I pre-paid for my rental car with Alamo based on my experience with them last year and because they have a Canadian currency converter on their page (Wake up Travelocity). The cheapest car to rent was a premium car which could be a Buick Lucerne or similar….please give me a similar I want something a little more sporty than a Buick. Anyways I prepaid for this car for 8 days and it costs $247USD or $306CDN. I went back to the Alamo website today to see how much the same booking would cost and found that they aren’t even offering premium cars anymore, but I could have booked a regular size SUV for $211USD or $255CDN. I hope they don’t have any premium class cars when we show up and let us take a SUV, that’s what happened on our first trip to vegas last year.

We had a midsized booked (Pontiac G6) but my buddy sweet talked the counter clerk and he upgraded up to SUV (Jeep Patriot) for free since they were out of midsized cars. By the looks of it Alamo has too many SUV’s available that’s why they are low balling them off at the last minute.

I don’t want to jump the gun but if history repeats itself I’ll be hitting the road in a stylin’ SUV once I get off the plane

Vegas Rental SUV

Player’s Club Sign up Bonuses while your in Vegas

If your ambitious enough you could go casino hopping and sign up for all the player’s clubs just to get the $10 free slot play or the free t-shirts if you are looking for something to do on your next trip to Vegas.

Here is a great site that provides a list of all the player’s club sign up bonuses that are being offered at various Vegas casinos and resorts.

Glad I found this list, I’ll be there in 5 days to test it out.

Alfie11

Countdown to Vegas - 6 Days…Planning my Vegas Trip Part 2 - Booking Hotels

Well the time is getting closer and closer and now I’m less than a week away from Las Vegas. I can almost taste the Bellagio buffet and the poker rooms. At this point I think I’ve spent more hours planning and researching my trip than I’ll actually be spending there.

I’m arriving in Vegas on April 29th at 11:30AM PST and I’ll be there Until May 6 11:55pm PST giving me around 180 Hours in Vegas from arrival until departure. By taking an early morning flight into Vegas and a late night flight out of Vegas I was able to add an additional 12 hours to my 7 night Vegas trip.

In this post I want to talk about the planning that went into my hotel bookings. I spent hours and hours in the forums at Better Bidding trying to find out the best time to bid on a trip using Hotwire or Priceline. The only thing I didn’t like about Hotwire or Priceline was that you couldn’t see what hotel you were paying for until after you make the payment. Based on the Better Bidding forums you can decipher the information on Hotwire or Priceline to get an idea of the hotel you are bidding on but you aren’t guaranteed until you make payment.

In the end, I used expedia to book my hotels because I was constantly monitoring the prices and managed to get deals by booking at 3 different hotels for the 7 nights we are staying in Vegas.

The reason we did this was to cover all the prime areas of the strip and keep it within budget. When you are booking hotels for Vegas my advice is to look for deals around 5-6 weeks before your travel date. This is when the hotels were offering their best prices and generally the prices go up the closer you are to your travel date.

The 3 hotel deals we booked on Expedia:

Wed/Thu - Planet Hollywood - 2 nights $220CDN ($180USD or $90USD/night)

Fri/Sat - South Point - 2 nights $216CDN ($177USD or $89USD/night)

Sun/Mon/Tue - Excalibur - 3 nights $166CDN ($136USD or $45USD/night)

Total for all 7 nights - $602CDN ($495USD or $70/night)

The key to getting the low weekly price was staying off-strip for Fri/Sat nights. To stay at PH or Excalibur for Fri/Sat nights would have costs anywhere from $150-$400USD/night which would cut deep into our gambling and entertainment budget. So we decided to save some money and stay off strip at South Point for two nights. It works out because we have a rental car and it won’t be a problem driving anywhere we need to go.

We’ll still get 5 nights on the strip and plenty of time to explore all the places we missed on our first trip.

Can’t wait to be there,

Alfie11

Countdown to Vegas 31 Days…Planning My Vegas Trip Part 1

Everyday I am getting one step closer to the only place I want to be, LAS VEGAS BABY. I’ve been spending countless hours researching my annual 7 day trip and trying to score the best deals on the various travel websites out there.

I’m going to write about how I planned my trip for my week in Vegas and how I ended up booking each hotel, flight, car rental, shows, etc….

Booking my Flight - Booked with Westjet on March 18th for April 29th departure

So my first tip of the day would be how to stretch a 7 day trip into an 8 day trip. I’m only paying for 7 nights in the hotel and actually going to be traveling for 8 days. I’ve got my departure flight into Vegas leaving Ottawa, Canada at 7:00am EST arriving in Vegas around 11:30AM PST (7:30 travel time) with a transfer in Toronto, ON. On the return flight I don’t actually leave Vegas until 11:30pm PST on the following Wednesday May 6; arriving back in Ottawa, Canada around 10:00am EST the following morning. This soft of gives me an extra day in Vegas (Wed May 6th) because I can checkout of the hotel around 11am, leave my luggage in the rental car and go enjoy my last day in Vegas while I wait for my late night flight back home.

I also found that it was cheaper to fly out on a Wednesday and fly home on a Wednesday as well. I booked the flight directly with Westjet because my friend had a credit for a free flight, and I was able to get a return flight for $475CDN which is a pretty good price for a return ticket from Ottawa-Las Vegas.

The secret here was to sign up for the Westjet email newsletter and wait for the days when the flights go on sale. I was able to save $75 on my flight when the seat prices had a 2-day sale exactly 6 weeks from my departure date.

Westjet Flight to Vegas

So now that I’ve got a flight, I need to book some wheels and a place to stay when I get there.

Coming up next……Booking hotels for my Vegas trip.

7 Days in Vegas

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Five - Gambling at South Point, Check in at Excalibur

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Four - Monster Energy Supercross Finals at Sam Boyd Stadium

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Three - Meeting The Stars of Supercross

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day Two - Gambling on Fremont, Outlet Malls, LA Comedy Club

$20 Sandwich Trick - Gotta Try This UPDATED

Vegas 2009 Trip Report - Day One

Countdown to Vegas 3 Days….Planning My Vegas Trip Part 3 - Booking the Car

Player’s Club Sign up Bonuses while your in Vegas

Countdown to Vegas - 6 Days…Planning my Vegas Trip Part 2 - Booking Hotels

Countdown to Vegas 31 Days…Planning My Vegas Trip Part 1

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