Reason: Every Vegas trip has a reason/excuse. This one is because of the
gift wrap up promotion that Harrah's is running.
Originally booked this trip about 3 months ago and the group was going to be
Gerry, Karen and me....Gerry had to cancel the Thursday before we left
because of some medical problems, so now we are down to the two of us. I told
Karen that I would pick her up for the trip to the airport - go outside to load
my car and I have a flat tire, no time to call AAA, so I call Karen and she
drives (fortunately she only lives about 10 minutes away from me, so it's not a
time problem).
Get to BDL with plenty of time to spare....Southwest is on time, we have A
boarding passes, get on the plane and the two seat exit row is still empty,
yay! About fifteen minutes into the flight we are not quite as happy -
passengers in the seats directly in front of us and across the aisle are traveling
with 4 kids, one of which is about 18 months old and is seated (misnomer here)
directly in front of us. This kid bounced, screamed, dropped stuff over the
seat on us, crumbled cookies on everyone and stared at us when she got bored
with all the rest of the activities. In the meantime, Dad, who I'm assuming is
supposed to be in charge of this kid, played with his computer and dozed!
Those 5 1/2 hours felt like a month and we were delighted when we finally
arrived!
Head to Dollar to pick up our rental and we are out of there and in Caesars
in less than 15 minutes. Valet is a zoo, but they take care of us quite
promptly. We are up in our room in the Augustus Tower in a few minutes. Great room
#3774, right near the elevators and ice machine and with a wonderful view of
the Bellagio fountains. Find a fruit basket in the room, but it doesn't have
my name on it - call downstairs and they tell us to keep it, they've
delivered it to the wrong room. If any of you reading this are 7 Stars, now you know
why your basket isn't there when you arrive! We can't wait to get downstairs
and start losing money<g>, but we do stop in the Diamond Lounge and have a
drink and some snacks there.
I zip right over to the garage area where all the VP is - my favorite STP
machine is not being used, pop in $100 and hit the menu...no JorB...I could
have sworn that I played JorB on this the last time I was here, but maybe I'm
wrong and I was playing Bonus Poker. I select Bonus Poker, and have lost almost
all of my $100 when I realize it's a 7/5 pay schedule. Hey, what is this? I
run around like a loon and look at all the machines, all the pay tables have
been reduced...I am now in the throes of depression:( We do play that night,
but I feel like Big Julie stabbed me right in the back! I've been staying at
Caesars for about 20 years, now I really have to start thinking about a new
place. Every time I get a full house I go through another whining session.
11/11
Head to the Diamond Lounge for breakfast - it's perfectly fine for us -
eggs, fresh fruit, etc. and the service is always good here. Got our win finders,
based on last night's play - Karen's starts blinking about 20 minutes before
the two hours is up - we hustle to the TR desk and she wins 25,000 points!
It's a great win for her, because she plays minimally and this is probably the
most points she is ever going to have in her account.
Walk over to the Flamingo and get my free tickets to see George Wallace
tonight. We both play on Karen's card so she can get another win finder (I don't
want to screw up my average by playing at Flamingo) and she stays there in
case it goes off. She meets me an hour later and she's won again....10,000
points this time! This is pretty much it for any kind of wins at any Harrah's
property this trip:(
Tonight we have dinner at the Empress Court. We've never tried this
restaurant before primarily because there is nothing there that Gerry would eat when
she is with us. We had the Emperor sampling menu - beautiful room, great
service and we really enjoyed the food. It was a very nice experience.
Head over to the Flamingo for George Wallace - sold out show and we laugh
until our faces hurt. First time I've ever been to a Vegas show where an
audience member was escorted out by security, though. A woman from Texas was
heckling the opening act and continued when George Wallace came out...he let her
run her mouth for a few minutes and warned her to shut up but she didn't,
called security and out she went. He gave a set of diamond earring to a lady in
the audience that was in her 80s, looked like she was in her sixties, dressed
in sequins like people used to dress for Vegas shows and wearing a belt with
an LED display with George Wallace's name on it.
When we got back to Caesars, I stopped to see my host, primarily to complain
about the pay schedule change. She said a lot of her clients are
complaining, but I'm guessing that it's going nowhere, because I don't see Harrah's
changing because of a few disgruntled people. She asked why we were only staying
3 days this trip and I told her I had reservations at Paris on the gift wrap
up promo....she said I could continue staying at Caesars and still qualify so
she canceled the Paris reservations and extended my stay at Caesars for the
other two days. Hey, finally something good happens to us...we're happy we
don't have to pack up and move across the street tomorrow. Head upstairs after
this - Saturday night in Vegas is always my early night - the casino is pac
ked and smoky and I would rather skip that.
11/12
Back to the Diamond Lounge for breakfast and then a little play at Caesars,
more losing. Decide to head down to Wynn as I would like to give them a
little serious play in the hope of getting some decent offers from them. This is
much better - some winning, some losing, but at least it's not a steady blood
letting, plus the ventilation is better here and I'm not getting bloodshot
eyes from the smoke.
Tonight we are having dinner with a large group of friends from Henderson,
Their suggestion is that we have dinner at Buckman's at Anthem. What a view!
Absolutely spectacular - the valley is below us and glittering. After dinner
we follow one of the members to their house for coffee and dessert. When it's
time to leave they tell us to turn left at the corner and just follow the
road out to Anthem Parkway....of course, Karen and I are busy talking and we
miss the turn - we got to tour much of Anthem, before we found our way
out<g>...took us 45 minutes to get back to Caesars.
11/13
This morning we do our favorite breakfast - Paris buffet - as always, very
good and so much better than their lunch or dinner buffets (in my opinion,
anyway). Decide to drive out to Red Rock as I didn't get a chance to get out
there when I was here in July. What a nice property! What nice machines <g> -
finally I know what it's like to collect instead of just keep throwing that
money in. I play DDB for a couple of hours and I get many 4 OAK and happily cash
out with a nice little profit. This place merits a return visit on my next
trip in January.
Head back to Caesars at 4 PM and our room has not been cleaned...what is
this? Call housekeeping and they tell us they have until 6 PM to clean the room.
When we come back late that night, the beds are somewhat made but no
cleaning has been done, only two towels left in the bathroom, sinks obviously not
cleaned - we call downstairs again to complain but tell them to just send extra
towels up - we're not sitting up waiting for them to clean the room.
Housekeeping brings up enough towels for a week, there, that will show us<ggg>.
We decide to walk over to Mirage to get in the standby line and hopefully
see Love. On our way out of Caesars into the Forum shops we pass some type of
Monopoly bank of machines. We stop to play with twenty bucks, we had more fun
and laughs then anything else we played. The machines didn't have any of the
usual Monopoly graphics - one had Egyptian things like a Cleopatra machine,
the other one had some kind of maritime symbols on it. The Monopoly part was
triggered by some event that we never did figure out - every time we tried to
cash out a countdown would show up and we were winning while trying to get
our money out. A couple of other people were playing, too and they knew about
as much about it as we did - on a bonus it did pay out to everyone playing -
we walked away from there with twenty or thirty bucks profit and didn't know
how we did it!
At Mirage, they assigned standby numbers at the ticket desk, then you had to
go stand in line. Our number was 43 and we were pretty sure we weren't going
to make it in, but decided to give it a shot anyway. I think the system they
used was kind of weird - I've bought stand by tickets at other Vegas shows
before - all of the other ones were simply a standby line - you got in it, and
the next person in line got tickets if available. People kept drifting in
and out of line....the show had already started and they were still seating
people - they finally ran out of tickets about 15 minutes into the performance.
We decided that we would not take tickets then, even if available, because we
couldn't see paying $136 for a ticket and missing 15 minutes of the
performance. We'll have to plan ahead next time we're in town and book this a couple
of months ahead.
11/14
Today is our ritual lunch at The Palm. I think this is one of the best
luncheon deals going (I still have not gotten to Commander's Palace, so I can't
comment on that) - we both have filet mignon for $18, how good is that! Enjoy
our leisurely lunch, then Karen gets to spend some of her winning points on
some cute stuff for her grandchildren. She still has lots of comp points left,
so when I make the January trip, I have to run a few bucks through on her
card to keep it active.
We head down to Wynn, by way of Harrah's for the gift wrap up. On the way
out, we have our only celebrity spotting - Mayor Oscar Goodman getting in his
car at the Caesars valet. The set up for the gift wrap up is easy to use -
they have a bunch of the items set up in one of the convention rooms with
business size cards next to each item - you just pick up the card for the items you
want - things not on display could be located on lap tops scattered in the
room. Bring your cards to another room for checkout - I've already received two
of the items I selected!
Wynn again proves to be a good place for me to play - I spend a couple of
hours and again cash out a winner. Had an interesting little conversation with
a lady playing a couple of seats away from me....she asked me "if it's Jacks
or Better, does that mean I should keep just a jack if there's nothing else".
I told her she should keep any face card if she didn't have a pair or other
winning combinations (there wasn't enough time to explain the whole game to
her<g>)...she then said "well I've only been keeping straights and
flushes"....groan....and then Caesars feels they have to cut paytables? Some of these
people have absolutely no clue - somewhere they read that VP pays well and they
decide to play it knowing absolutely nothing about the game.
11/15
Time to go home - we're always sad the last day, however I know I'll be back
in 55 days:) Shuttle driver from Dollar tells us the airport is slow
today, we get to Southwest and they are backed up on the sidewalk for curb check
in, the inside is worse, so we just get in line. Doesn't take too long, about
15 minutes to get our bags checked and security isn't too crowded so we are
at our gate in about 25 minutes. This was for the flight that left at 10:30 AM
on a Wednesday and we always allow ourselves two hours for the airport. Had
time to pick up a sandwich to bring on board and off we went. Home on time,
hubbies are happy, they are finally having hot meals tonight<g>.
Looking forward to the next excursion which is 1/17 to 1/22. This is going
to be a very special trip - I'm bringing my nephew, Weston, who turns 21 on
1/6. I've promised the various nieces and nephews that my 21st birthday present
to them is a trip to Vegas and he's so looking forward to it. Offered to
give him the trip on his own as I thought he might like to go with friends, but
he opted to do his newbie trip with me.
Sandy
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