As luck would have it, I get another chance to visit and cross a few more items off my Vegas to-do list.

On that list:

• Play in the 7pm No limit poker tournament at Venetian.
• Visit M Resort – didn’t know about this place until recently, reviews look good, might take the drive down the highway to check it out.
• Bellagio buffet – Heading there on the first day for the lunch buffet, can’t wait!
• Rent a Harley for the day – This is on my to-do list, it costs a lot so we’ll see how we do at the tables first.

UPDATE – April 27th

Only 10 days to go till Vegas, I’m starting to get more exciting each day especially with the weather here today in Ottawa.

Some more items have been added to my to do list including:

• Dinner at Vic and Anthonys
• 3 rounds of golf
• Outlet mall shopping
• Vinnie Favorito comedy show

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Already booked my tickets for the final round of the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Finals at Sam Boyd Stadium and I’m glad I booked early because they are already sold out 12 weeks before the race.

I was at this event last year and it was the best supercross I have ever been too.  I have been following the Supercross series closely this season in anticipation for a great season finale in Las Vegas.

2010 Supercross standings after week 6: (from Supercrossonline.com)

Dungey 123 pts – Hill 123 pts – Villipoto 120 pts

I’m cheering for Dungey to take the title, and to do it in his rookie year would be very impressive.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.