Please ADD your own Las Vegas Trip Report. Date of Trip: July 31, 2005 to August 03, 2005 Hotel Stayed At: Wynn, Wife's Birthday Trip III Report by: ktinca <> From: Bay Area, Ca

Wednesday: Our final day.
I woke up before my wife, and wanted to let her sleep. The message light on our phone was lit, so I got dressed and went downstairs.

Went to the concierge to thank them for their help with her birthday.
Was given an envelope containing the receipts for the items purchased (they had charged the gifts to my credit card so my wife wouldn’t see the charges on the hotel bill) and a note that said “Thank you for allowing me to assist in your birthday plans for your wife; please let me know if I may be of additional help.” Nice touch. It’s the little things that are appreciated.

I asked her to print out our boarding passes as we were leaving that night.
I also explained the message light on our phone, that I hadn’t called because I didn’t want to wake my wife, and asked that she check and see what it was.
I was told we had a package waiting at the business center.

Next stop, business center. Was told there was a package in that morning’s mail addressed to my wife. I asked: “how big is it?” they checked and said it was a letter sent by express mail. When my wife called they would have it delivered to our room.

Wasn’t ready to wake the wife yet so went back to the JOB and put in $60. Amazingly enough caught a 4OK played 20 minutes and actually cashed out with $105. This was a HUGE WIN. It finally broke my 2 day losing streak.
When you’re only there 4 days you can’t afford too long of a bad streak.

My wife was now up. I told her about the letter so she called and had it sent up. My sister had sent her a birthday card at the hotel, a truly thoughtful gesture, and a nice surprise for my wife.

BTW: It cost my sister $13 to send this card by Express Mail. And I know she would really feel terrible if she found out we were billed $6 by the Wynn business center. Add the $5 tip I gave to the guy who brought it to our room, and it cost my wife $11 to receive her own birthday card.

It was now past 10:30 and we wanted breakfast. Both the buffet and Country Club Grill stop breakfast at 10:30 so we went to the Terrace Point Café. This is Wynn’s 24-hour coffee shop. We had been there for lunch before. My wife had an omelet and I had bagel, lox and cream cheese. Cost was $35.

We both agree that the food was fine. We also agree that this is the only restaurant at Wynn that we feel is overpriced.
Understand, there isn’t anything wrong with the café, it’s just that it isn’t special, and from Wynn we expect special. We think that Café St. Louis at Paris as a casual café, and Raffles at MB as a high-end café are better.

After breakfast wife wanted to play some VP so we went to a bank of quarter machines, 8/5 JOB. Played for an hour, she lost a few dollars and I made $40. OK bad luck streak officially over.

On my wife’s very short list of things to do this trip was a visit to the Wynn art gallery, so it was our next stop. Audio tour took around 30-45 minutes for 15 paintings all by different artists. I’m not qualified to review the quality of this collection, but personally the Renoir was my favorite.
The last exhibit in the museum is a large Andy Warhol piece with Steve Wynn as the subject. This is definitely a man with a very healthy ego.

After a little gift shopping at the gallery shop (not too early for my wife to start thinking of Christmas) it was back to the room to pack. We had a 7:50pm flight so we were planning on leaving at 6.
Our last few hours were spent at the machines.

Decided it was time to use my $100 free play, so it was over to 9/6 JOB. When it comes to free play I want the best possible odds. Turned my $100 play money into $68 real money, not as good as my wife who got $70 for her free play.

An interesting pattern then developed. I took my $88 voucher and went to quarter 8/5 machine, got lucky made a profit. Took this money and went back to $1 9/6, played a while losing a little money. Cashed out went back to 8/5 quarter made a profit, which I then took back to $1 machine and lost.
It took 3 tries of losing at the 9/6 machines, before I was smart enough to stay at the 8/5 machines that were bringing me luck.
So much for only playing at machines with the best pay tables!

During our stay, playing mostly $1 VP, I had earned a total of 660 points on my Red Card (worth around $12). My wife, playing mostly nickel video WOF, somehow amassed almost 1100 points.
Because Wynn has a “players rate” of $159 a night for anyone with 750 points in their Red Card account, we decided just to leave the points there, instead of taking the small amount of credit.

Had to go down and check out at 5:30, you can’t use TV checkout when using a free offer.
Then called down for our bags to be picked up. This is something we learned on a previous trip. Your bags are brought down to the valet section and a cab is called over, so you avoid the long cab line.

One great thing about flying home on a Wednesday night—no lines at the airport. But 4 days is just a little too short for us.

Final Thoughts:

Came home with about $400 less cash than we left with (meals were either charged to room or credit card). This means after cabs & tips I probably lost a couple of hundred gambling. Not bad considering the long bad streak.

I was immediately comfortable staying at Wynn the second time (of course it was only 2 months ago), I knew where everything was right away. Some hotels take a few days to get used to again, you always seem to be turning the wrong way, or walking in the wrong direction.

Inputting birthdays into their computer system to wish guests a happy birthday is a brilliant idea, and one of Wynn’s many small nice touches.

Wynn is well on it’s way to becoming a first class hotel. It’s doing so by doing a lot of the little things right. Little things like; giving out free bottles of water at the pool, helpful & friendly concierge service, pleasant staff, and excellent housekeeping service.
Evening turndown service. A maid comes in during the evening, turns down your bed removing most of the pillows, places your slippers by your bed, fills the ice bucket, turns on soft music, and leaves chocolates by the bed.

You notice none of these things have anything to do with the casino or gamblers.

The idea is to make your HOTEL GUESTS feel special. These are the people that will be coming back. Wynn is well on the way to achieving this goal.

When we travel to Las Vegas we stay at hotels, not casinos.
Wynn will now be on our list of hotels to consider when planning LV trips.
But THEhotel will probably still be our top choice and first option.

It was around 100 degrees with 30-40% humidity during our stay. I know most people will find this strange, but it was very uncomfortable for us. So we didn’t walk around outside too much.
I know! Most of you would love this kind of weather in LV during the summer, but it was 77 degrees with 10% humidity here today, and this is what we are used to.

Every trip to Las Vegas is different, and we very much enjoyed this one.

Next trip for us will be early October, when the weather will be more to our liking.

Thanks for reading, hope it was interesting or a little informative.
Will gladly answer any questions if we can help make your next trip a little more enjoyable.


ktinca <> - Bay Area, Ca    2621

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