7 Days in Vegas

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.

The countdown to Vegas is on….93 days and counting

That’s right, I finally have confirmed the date for my second trip to Las Vegas and that’s going to be on April 29th, 2009 exactly one year after my first trip there.

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:

Late flight into town arrive around 10:00pm
Grab Luggage at the airport and take the shuttles to the car rental place
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.
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).
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.
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

January 26th, 2009 | Category: 7 Days in Vegas | Print This Post | Email This Post | Leave a comment

Countdown to Vegas 165 Days….Get a Free Visitors Guide to hold you over

Well, I’m only another 19 days closer to Las Vegas since my last blog post. Time seems to go by so slowly and I know I have a freezing cold, snowy winter to get through yet before I make it back to the Hot, Sunny and beautiful Nevada Desert.

I got a nice little motivator in the mail today from the VisitLasVegas.com website. You just fill out the form and they will mail you the most up-to-date Visitors Guide, Entertainment Brochure and Las Vegas Maps, some of the key essential information you should bring with you for your trip.

Las Vegas Visitors Guide

Click here to order one of these Las Vegas Visitors Guides

After looking through these guides I’m not sure if 7 days will be long enough for my next trip to Vegas. I’m thinking I might go for 10 days so I have a few extra days to do some of the acitivities that I missed on my last trip. I definetely want to play at least 3 rounds of golf next time.

The only thing I have to worry about when going for 10 days instead of 7, is having enough spending money to last. Its expensive to have fun in Vegas and its not hard to drop a few hundred within a couple hours if you are not careful in the casinos.

I think next time when I go, I won’t even bother gambling for the first three days. I’m pretty sure I won’t even be gambling at the tables, I want to spend all my gambling time playing poker, something I regret not doing the first time I was in Vegas.

Only 165 days to go….Something to look forward to!

Countdown to Las Vegas – 184 Days.

I wish I could travel to Vegas more often but right now it looks like I can only book one Vacation per year. When I go back I’m going to travel in late April again into early May as I found this was when the weather was just starting to heat up and the pools should be open. We had perfect weather there on our last trip and I can’t wait to get there and play some poker, golf, and feast at all the buffets.

Some things I miss:

Mike from American Shooters

Firing machine guns at the local gun ranges;
Cruising down the Strip in the Rental at night;
Mountain biking through Cottonwood Valley and trying not to run over Rattlesnakes;
Going to the Bellagio buffet and trying one bite of everything. (So wasteful but who cares….)
Just the good feeling you get in your stomach knowing your thousands of miles away from your daily life and routine.

Only 184 Days to go…

Until then I’ll be slowly crossing the days off my calendar.

October 25th, 2008 | Category: 7 Days in Vegas, Trip Reports | Print This Post | Email This Post | Leave a comment

Las Vegas Overload – Too much to do in 7 Days

What is the worst part about a week in Vegas? The flight home. A close second: hangovers and herpes…. J/K

There is too much to do, too much to see, Too many casinos and resorts to visit them all within 7 days. The only thing you can think about once you get home from your trip is when can you go back.

For myself, it will be 365 days until I return to the Nevada desert for another week of freedom. I’ll be looking to get back there late April 2009 which gives me lots of time to plan my next trip and I’ll have a much better idea where I want to stay and where I want to play.

Places I want to stay when I go back:

Bellagio or Venetian: I feel liked I’ve stayed at the lower end of hotels (Golden Nugget) which was good for the price but this time I’m going to splurge and stay at a 5 star on the Strip.
Venetian

Places I will avoid when I go back:

Downtown: I can’t think of a reason to go downtown other than the light show on Freemont St. or some cheap gambling.

September 29th, 2008 | Category: 7 Days in Vegas, Trip Reports | Print This Post | Email This Post | Leave a comment

Finding a Good Wireless Internet Connection in Vegas

So your reading this blog, chances are you might own a laptop and you might want to bring it to Vegas so you can look up info on the Internet while you’re there. I know when I was there it definitely came in handy and I used my laptop almost every day. The only concerns I had about bringing my laptop was finding an Internet connection and storing the laptop when I was out of my hotel room so the maids wouldn’t steal it.

So we check into our room at the Golden Nugget and I was happy to see that they have an Internet connection right in my hotel room. Perfect I was thinking, so I went down to the lobby to go get it setup. Turns out that the hotel wants to charge me $13/day and they also want to preauthorize my credit card $700 for the week just so I can use the Internet. Are you kidding I asked? I guess they weren’t and I guess cash is no good at the Golden Nugget either. There is no way I was going to put down a $700 deposit plus another $100 just to have Internet for the week.

So I headed back up to the room, disappointed at the Nugget for their crap customer service and then I thought I would try out my wireless connection just to see if I could get lucky and pick up somebody else’s connection.

Turns out I was in luck, some company called Cheetah Wireless has wireless internet all throughout Las Vegas and the downtown. I was able to get an hour of service for free so I gave it a try. It worked fine, good connection speed and once my free trial expired I forked over the dough for the pay service.

I don’t remember the exact rates but it was around $12/day, $37/week, or $50/month. I signed up for the week and it was well worth paying $37 compared to the $800 that they wanted at the Nugget.

So now that I was connected I just had to worry about storing my laptop. Basically I just tried to find a spot in the room I could hide it since it wouldn’t fit in the safe. I ended up hiding it on top of the TV armoire whenever I left the room and it worked great.

Next time I’m in Vegas I’ll be looking out for a private wireless company so i can get some decent cheap wireless service instead of paying the $13/day that most hotels are charging. I figure they get enough money as it is why not just give out free Internet. Maybe someday..but for now, I’ll go with Cheetah and keep more money in my pocket to play with.

September 14th, 2008 | Category: 7 Days in Vegas | Print This Post | Email This Post | Leave a comment