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The course was about a 25 minute drive from Excalibur so you would likely need a rental car if you are going to playing here and staying on the strip.

Total cost for 2 green fees, 2 sets of rentals (Callaway X22 Irons and Diablo woods) and power cart: $140USD.

I think we teed off around 2:00pm and it seemed like we had the course to ourselves.  This was a fun course to play with nice conditions and I would recommend it to anyone for $70pp all in (green fees, rentals, cart).

The course was nice, probably a 7/10 by Vegas standards but for me it was a great experience.

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After losing $140 at Binions on Roulette I walk over to the Nugget and drop $160 on Baccarat in about 5 minutes. Starting to go on tilt at this point and decide that I’m gonna go play some Texas Hold Em where the outcome is more in my control.  I walk over to Fitz where my friend is still grinding it out on the roulette table and head up the escalator to the poker area upstairs. I buy in to the $1-2 NL Table for $75 and quickly piss away about $25-30 of it before I pick up AA. I put in a raise before the flop to $6 and get 4 callers. Flop comes Q, rag, rag so I get a $15 bet out there only to get re-raised all-in so I get all in with AA vs KQ and turn come K river rag. and this lucky old man busts me out of the game. I then get so pissed off that I head down to the cashier and convert the last of my Canadian money and head back upstairs to register in the Poker tournament about to start. Maybe I could redeem myself but after playing for about 45 mins I get knocked out of the tournament by the same old man who picks up AA against my JJ and ends up busting me out of the game once again. As I’m getting up to walk away he chimes in “Nice playing with ya…” At this point I’m about to explode. I’m down somewhere between $300-$400 so I decide to cut my losses since we are almost out of money we end up going to the local Walmart grocery store to get some beer and snacks to go back and chill at the hotel.

A little bit different than our first trip to Vegas when we had tons of money to blow, but you win some and you lose and it all boils down to luck sometimes but we at least played it smart and booked a round of golf for the final day.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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

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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. 

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

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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

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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.

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I’ve just started to get exicited about this trip today as it is -30 Celcius up here in Canada and all I can think about is the nice warm desert, the red sand, and all of the excitement that Vegas has to offer. I’m also using this trip to celebrate and as a chance to network for job opportunities.   I will have finally graduated from my College after 3 long years and there is no better place to celebrate than Las Vegas.   I’ve already spent 3-4 hours tonight checking out prices, and things to do while I’m there.

So far the best deals I can find for hotels are around $55-$60$CDN to stay at Imperial Palace right in the middle of the strip.  I’ve read mixed reviews about IP from TripAdvisor, some good and some bad but I’m really just looking for a place to crash and the location is ultra-central.  I could stay at Bellagio for $300CDN/night or IP for $55/night and have the extra $250/day for spending.

Based on my first trip there I have a better Idea of what to expect and here’s what I have planned out for the first night in Vegas:

1. Late flight into town arrive around 10:00pm
2. Grab Luggage at the airport and take the shuttles to the car rental place
3. Once I leave the airport I’m actually going to turn left and head away from the Strip so I can go down to the cheap liquor store and Subway that is located at the Outlet Mall…Stock up on cheap snack and drinks for the week.
4. Get back in the car and take a nice long cruise up the strip to around the Stratosphere and the turn around and start heading back to the middle of the strip and to the hotel we are staying at (Probably Imperial Palace for the first 4 nights).
5. Heading over to the Bellagio for either the Buffet or Dinner at one of the restaurants.  I’ve been craving the Bellagio Buffet ever since I had the pleasure of feasting there on the last day of my first trip to Vegas.  This was the best buffet I experienced the first time I was there and if I can remember it was around $20-$25 for the lunch buffet. Probably $40-$50 for dinner.
6. After the food I’ll see if I’m still awake and either head back to rest up for the next day or head out on the strip and see what happens.  That’s the best part of going is not knowing what could happen once you get there, you just gotta go with the flow and try to meet as many new people as possible.

I’ll be blogging more actively between now and my next trip dow to Vegas and of course I’ll be posting a lot while I’m there and once I get back.

Peace for now, Alfie11

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