Siona (of the AC list) and I visited Wynn yesterday. We found that it takes
$3 to earn one point for reels and $9 to earn one point for VP. We found
the "good" machines near the crap tables. Siona played the 9/6 JB and was
shocked when she was dealt a straight flush and got 450 coins. I got killed on
10/6 DDB when I got 2 Straight flushes but no quads in a couple of hours of
play. Also the machine has that strange Dueces that pays 55 for a Straight
Flush, 20 for a FH, but only 75 for 5 of a kind, 15 for Flush, 10 for Straight,
125 for Wild Royals. 10/7 DB was also on the multidemonination/multigame
machines.
Can someone tell us the exact house percentage for these games?
I believe you may get free play after 500 points, but we couldnt seem to
access ours. We are going back tomorrow for the buffet and will double check on
that. We each earned 500 points, so we are looking forward to 4 free
buffets.
We were told that for out-of-town people your comps expire at the end of the
trip. Locals keep comps for 3 months.
We are not certain of the cashback or comp rate, but cashback is in the form
of free play. Apparently you can access your cashback via your pin on
"reel" slots.
One interesting thing is that all machines are equipped with a "Bingo Bonus"
feature as long as your card is in. About 2-3 times an hour the "bingo"
starts to work, and you could win a cash prize that could be low (maybe $30-70),
medium, or high (over 8000 while we were there) on a progressive. You don't
have to do anything to play the Bingo Bonus, except have your slot card in.
I don't know how likely it is to win, but I did talk to one VPFREE member
who had won about $66. I don't know if you could just sit and not play and get
the bonus or not. We couldn't quite figure out the bingo thing, but it is
free, and you don't have to do anything to have it work. You can change the
card they are showing for you.
We also saw AVENUE Q - it was excellent. Basically the plot is a world in
which humans coexist with muppet-like puppets. The muppets are controlled by
humans we see during the production (but you are to imagine that the humans
aren't there). The cast was uniformly excellent, especially the guy who plays
several of the main characters, and the woman who portrays Kate Monster and
others. It takes a little getting used to a first, to see the same human
portraying several different muppet characters, but you quickly suspend your
disbelief. The musical is satirical in tone, with some funny songs slinging
barbs at non-politically-correct things like Racisim (everyone is a little bit
racist and maybe if we acknowledge that we can all get along better), and the
Internet (the internet is for porn...primarily...according to the singers).
Although signs are promoting Avenue Q as having "Full Puppet Nudity" - the
show isn't pornographic or sexy. The puppets only have the upper half showing
(and in the "nudity" - no boobs). The idea of puppet sex is portrayed in a
funny way, not a pornographic one. Still the show is more or less Sesame
Street for adults. Songs are funny and interesting, but not great songs you'll
remember days later.
The theater has good seats for all, but closer to the stage is always
better.
At any rate, we enjoyed it, and are thinking about buying the cast
albumn/CD. I'd like to see it again sometime.
We also tried to see the show on the Lake, but they wouldn't let us out onto
the patio, saying it was "full" despite lots of room to stand. From what we
could see, the show only runs a few minutes, and didn't seem very
spectacular. I find it surprising that publicity has stated how great this show was
going to be, but that Wynn didn't put in a lot of locations to see the show
from. The music for it was quite loud, and if you are eating dinner somewhere
with a view of the show, I wonder if the music might not be obnoxious. I
don't know exactly how you can get a view of it, or how often it happens. The
guards were not helpful to us, even though Siona has a cane and walking
problems. And when we asked a couple of people who worked there about the show, got
little information.
If the Lake show is supposed to be a selling point to bring people into the
Wynn, it seems poorly executed.
I've heard that the Wynn is making less money now that it has been in
existence a couple of months. This may be why they put in better VP - to get
people in. We had no trouble getting seats together on the "good" VP slant top
machines by the way. Also there was no line to get our Wynn slot club cards
(all this on a Saturday).
My observations of Wynn are:
Decoration is reminiscent of Bellagio - but no better. Lake show hard to
see at Wynn - I'd rather go to Bellagio's (unless we were missing something).
Lake show at Wynn is only at night - Bellagio's is from 3pm onward. Wynn has
a little flower garden inside; Bellagio's flower garden is much better.
Getting into the valet parking area is very difficult - heavy traffic and little
room. This is also a problem for taxis. This may be one reason that
traffic into the Wynn has slowed down. We parked in the self-parking, and that was
no problem, except we had driven down the strip past Spring Mountain, and
ran into trouble crossing Spring Mt. due to pedestrians (pedestrian bridges are
not finished and would help a lot) and then ran into traffic of cars turning
into the Wynn. Overall I don't know why Steve Wynn spent billions on his
new hotel/casino, and planned such a poor entrance for cars and traffic or why
his Lake Show is so hard for people to view.
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