Please ADD your own Las Vegas Trip Report. Date of Trip: November 04, 2007 to November 12, 2007 Hotel Stayed At: Bally's, Wynn Report by: Jen & Jamie <> From: London, UK

This is pretty hideously long as normal…my apologies!

4th November to 12th November 2007

Myself and my husband, Jamie (both 37)

Flights on Virgin Atlantic were unremarkable, I think the flight time was a bit over 10 hours. Stayed the night before our outbound flight at the Gatwick Hilton and took advantage of twilight check-in as usual. We love this as it allows us to check our bags and get our boarding cards the night before the flight thereby avoiding the hellish check-in lines the morning of the flight. A much more gentle start to the holiday. Jamie somehow got a gold HHonors card (we think it had something to do with our Virgin credit card) and so were upgraded to an executive room with access to the executive lounge. This is great as the complementary continental breakfast is much better than faffing around with something in the terminal – and again, a much more gentle start to the holiday.

We made our way to the terminal a bit early as we wanted to sign up for the IRIS program which would allow us to get through immigration quickly on our return to the UK. Plus, it’s all very high tech and exciting to me! For Jamie this isn’t as much a benefit as me as he has a UK passport. My American passport generally results in me getting stuck in a queue upon returning that can take an hour or more. Of course, the IRIS office in our terminal was having technical problems and though we checked back several times, things were never up and running. Annoying, but on with our trip!

We got lucky and got a pair of seats at the back of the plane – 63A & C. OK, got lucky may be stretching things – maybe booked 11 months in advance and so got these coveted seats would be more accurate. We LOVE these seats as there’s no element of the random stranger next to us and Jamie gets a bit of extra room in his window seat area. Food was OK. I don’t think I watched any in-flight entertainment but instead caught up on Grey’s Anatomy on my handheld. I think I dozed a bit but not much as too excited!

Arrival was good. It didn’t take Jamie too long to clear immigration (one bad thing about our favourite seats is that they are at the back of the plane) though our bags too ages and ages to be spit out onto the carousel so they arrived almost at the same time Jamie did.

And here is something that really, REALLY annoys me. At most airports if you look at the floor around the baggage carousel there is some sort of demarcation – a line, a series of dots, something. If people would all take a few steps back and stand behind this line instead of cramming together right on top of the carousel, at least 3x as many people could see the bags coming around, step in, grab theirs and step back. Instead, mass chaos ensues and people get snappish. Annoying. My biggest travel pet peeve.

Cleared customs and headed over to the waiting point for the shuttle to the new rental car facility. I was a bit worried about this as change is never a good thing with me, but all was OK. There was plenty of room on the shuttle which arrived fairly quickly and after a stop at Terminal 1 we were on our way.

Having read about the new facility I knew where the Dollar area was, though it would have been easy to spot without prior knowledge of the location. Again from this board, I knew that we needed to head down the escalator to the Express pick up. All went fine, but I do think I preferred the old system. It seems a bit odd to me that we have to go to the booth to get our contract and then stand in the line with everyone else to be lead to our car or choice of cars – seems a bit of a step back from the previous procedure, but was quick enough. After being offered a mini-van (no way), a PT Cruiser (ditto) we thankfully settled on a Hyundai Sonata which was just perfect for us. Total was about $166 for 8 days (discount obtained from the deals section of the board – thanks again!)

And we’re off. We had planned to go up to Tropicana and then jump on I-15 to exit at Flamingo for Bally’s as was suggested here, but the nice lady in the booth suggested that we just go straight up the Strip. Thinking that she must be clued in, we took her advice and of course, got stuck in traffic. Ah well, we’re in Vegas.

Where we stayed:

Platinum check-in at Bally’s was a breeze and we tried the $20 trick for the first time (though we were really nervous as the room was comped for 8 nights – 5 on my husband’s account and 3 on mine). Not a major score, but we got upgraded to a diamond room in the North Tower (2452) which had the diamond coffee maker (never used as we resorted to spending almost $20 most days on fancy coffees at Java Coast – totally wasteful, but completely tasty) and the room did seem slightly larger than the other North Tower rooms we have stayed in but that may have been our imagination as the rooms at Bally’s are massive, relatively speaking. Being on a high floor was nice as it made for a bit of a nicer pool/mountain view than we were used to on the 9th-12th floor we are used to. The girl who helped us was very grateful for the tip and very nice overall.

We also had one night at Wynn. Hotels.co.uk were offering a RIDICULOUS rate some months back and we jumped on it – just to try the place out. Panoramic View Room for slightly less than £42/night – so about $85. Every time we checked Wynn’s website this room was selling for $350-$450 the night we were there (though we never hunted for any deals), so we felt we got a significant bargain. This was confirmed when we saw the room. Strip view, room 58XX maybe 5824? We were about in the middle of the floor so the Palazzo did block some of the view (sometimes I couldn’t help but think that Steve Wynn shakes his fist at that building on a daily basis) but we had a view of the Lake of Dreams, TI, Paris and various other notable landmarks.

The room was fantastic. I didn’t think that the decoration would be to my taste based on photos but it was OK. The bed was the best bed in the world – slightly better than our awesome bed at home which is saying an awful lot. The linens were just like we have at home and sooo much nicer than most hotels. And the pillows – good god I wanted to stuff the pillows into our overnight bag. Nice flat screen television, TV in the bathroom (hey, it’s novel if somewhat unnecessary). Great room all around. And one of the best things to us was the fact that the bed faced the windows and with the floor to ceiling windows, it was amazing lying in bed and looking out (and playing with the controls for the drapes). We stayed one night at Bellagio in a fountain view room on a previous trip and while I think that the fountain view itself gives the rooms at the B a slight edge, in every other respect Wynn wins in our opinion. We aren’t high rollers (but got a lot of looks in the lifts when pressing the button for the 58th floor) but we didn’t feel like we were out of place even though we are rather common folk. Most people at Wynn were very nice to us. The exception being a rather snappish man at the player’s club booth who had an accent so strong I didn’t understand that he was saying my PIN couldn’t start with 0 so I did the same thing twice. Anyway.

Where we ate:

First and foremost I have to give a mention to Austin’s Steakhouse at Texas Station. It was recommended here (I think by mr21 and ktinca?). We had a $25 restaurant.com voucher for the place and had read a lot of reviews and the menu beforehand. As such, I went into it knowing exactly what I wanted – the house chopped salad, ribeye and white cheddar and truffle macaroni and cheese (you can take the girl out of the Midwest but you can’t take the Midwest out of the girl). Jamie had bacon wrapped shrimp, the filet, asparagus and fries (I know, weird!). All was amazing. The ribeye was the best steak I have ever had. It’s marinated in all kinds of good stuff, and served with some sort of cilantro butter or something similar. Absolutely fantastic. I could only manage about ½ of it – it was massive. Jamie’s filet could be cut with the back of his knife (i.e the non-sharp side) it was so tender. Service was excellent. As for dress code, I was unsure as I saw conflicting info and so I went with a nice pair of trousers and a top. Jamie stuck with jeans and a button down shirt. Given the large group wearing track suits, I would say that you can get away with pretty casual here. We went on a Thursday night and had made reservations, but could easily have walked in. Our bill after the restaurant.com coupon and before tip was just about $100. Will be back many times, I suspect.

Mon Ami Gabi – as great as the first time. We waited for patio seating (about 30 minutes and I think it was a Friday night). Got a table along the railing though to the right and sort of around the corner a bit, so one of us had our back to the fountains (we switched places at one point) and the other had a fabulous view. It wasn’t a problem for the one facing away as easy enough to shift around for the fountain shows. I had the crab cake (excellent) and Steak Roquefort (awesome). Jamie had the pate to start and the Steak Classic. Total with tip seems like it was around $100 but that may be a bit low, I cannot really remember. We didn’t charge to the room as we are saving up our TR credits to use on a later trip.

In-and-Out Burger – we went twice. Once in Laughlin and once after a trip to Boulevard Mall. I have to say that a Double-Double Animal Style and fries is quite possibly one of God’s most perfect meals.

PF Changs – also twice, both times for dinner. Learned that it’s better to make reservations and doing so even a few hours before results in being seated quickly vs. waiting for almost an hour…so worth calling ahead. We really like this place and I know it’s a chain, but we don’t have them here. I also know it may not be authentic Chinese but it’s the closest I have found to the Chinese I grew up with – so I love it.

Wynn Buffet – again, twice. Having earned 50 points each we had 2 buffets each to use and were originally told that they had to be used within 7 days or so. The dinner buffet had been on my to-do list anyway so made sense to give it a try the night we stayed there. Fabulous. Loved it even if there was no risotto station when we went. – there was a pasta station, but just not the same. May be my favourite buffet in Vegas but I haven’t been to Spice Market for a few years so want to reserve judgement. No, the selection isn’t as big as Carnival World, etc., but the food quality was fantastic and there were some more unusual options to choose from and one thing I like about buffets is trying a few new things. We loved it so much that we decided to try out breakfast the next morning (also – hey, free!). I know this is likely to cause a bit of a ruckus, but I think I prefer the Wynn breakfast buffet to Paris. I know, I KNOW! The eggs Benedict did it. I do prefer Wynn’s to Paris’…only slightly, but still, there it is. Jamie declared the room at Wynn slightly less appealing than Paris, but I think I disagree. The ONLY negative I could see with Wynn was that the tables were slightly too close together. It didn’t affect us as we were on a table by the aisle both times, but it was hard for people with hot plates of food to navigate between occupied chairs to get back to their tables.

Paris Buffet – for breakfast. Though Jamie is only platinum, we used the diamond line as there was no one in it and had previously been told in those situations it was OK. Good thing as the regular queue was quite long (long enough that I wouldn’t have waited because I am impatient normally, moreso when I am hungry). Good as always though I skipped the omelette and crepe stations as they were just too crowded. Instead I tested the eggs Benedict…extensively. I think our waitress was new as she took our drink order twice and seemed a bit flustered but she was very nice and did a good enough job for us.

MSS Buffet – for breakfast again. Great as always, and so cheap! Really good food at a really nice price, and the room is very pretty – loads to look at and very open and airy.

Hilton Buffet – had the ACG 2-for-1 and were at the Hilton, early afternoon, having had no breakfast…so let’s try it. It was OK. We really aren’t that big on buffets generally – though I know this isn’t quite evident from the list above (to be fair we had about 4 trips worth of buffets this time around). We wouldn’t make a significant effort to go back, but it was good enough at the time.

Cold Stone Creamery – love this place. None near home, fabulous ice cream. I really love the pecan/caramel/graham cracker concoction. We always order a size too big here – and we always tell ourselves to remember that for next time. One day we will.

Nathan’s Hot Dogs – NYNY Excalibur entrance. Good dogs, and served their purpose of tiding us over between Cold Stone snack and PF Chang’s dinner (no proper breakfast or lunch, mind). ACG 2-for-1 served us well.

Café Isle St Louis at Paris – really like this place, but noticed it’s not 24-hours anymore. Assume that means that Sidewalk Café at Bally’s is back to being the 24-hour offering between the two properties. Shame as when they changed the hours for Sidewalk Café we discovered the Paris café and prefer it – must remember not to expect it to be open at 3 am. Had the chicken salad croissant and it really hit the spot – didn’t want anything too heavy at the time and it was perfect.

And I tried two new drinks – the Lava Flow at Paris which was really, really tasty but it arrived about 30 seconds before our buzzer went off for MAG – so a bit of brain freeze was had trying to suck it down as we couldn’t bring it in. Also had the pineapple mojito at Wynn. The first 2 sips were fantastic, but the last two I had were horrid – really bitter, terribly bitter. Will try it again sometime as I don’t think that the one I had was a good example.

Things we did

We wander a lot. We visited several new casinos including Texas Station, Cannery, and several downtown casinos which we may or may not have visited before and made a quick trip to Sam’s Town which we had not visited for several years. We hit a good number of casinos on the strip though did not make it to Monte Carlo, Stratosphere, Circus Circus or Rivera. We also managed to miss Hooters this trip (somewhat unsurprising, I suppose).

I really enjoyed Texas Station and Cannery. I used to think that I would never end up being someone who liked to stay off strip but I’m thinking that at some point I may get there. Coming back to the strip after Texas Station especially made me realise that it is quite nice to spend time in a bit more relaxing environment. However, I do like staying on strip and being able to walk out of the hotel with a whole host of casinos spread out before us.

We also made a day trip to Laughlin and that was enjoyable, though will probably go back to Primm being our day excursion just due to the travel time involved. We liked the casinos well enough (they didn’t like us) and the water taxi was a nice thing to do. The outlet mall was OK – got a few things, but overall, probably a bit too far to go unless we need to kill some time outside of casinos.

We had the opportunity to meet up with some fellow board members at MSS buffet for breakfast. In attendance were Tom/historian, Norm/LV_Norm who we had had the pleasure of dining with previously, as well as Pebbles and her husband who we had not met before. Was really great to see Tom and Norm before and to meet Pebbles and her husband Tony – great people all of them.

Vegassi/Simon had kindly picked up a pair of one-day monorail passes this summer when they were on sale for $8 and we used them to wander up to Sahara and back to MGM one day, making some stops in between. We also bought another 6-ride ticket during our stay and have 2 rides left. The monorail isn’t our first choice – usually we’ll have the car or we will walk, but sometimes it is a nice option.

We saw 2 (well, technically 3) movies while we were there. I know most of you think this is a ridiculous concept, but we like it. We like US cinemas, we get to see movies before they are out in the UK and it’s a nice relaxing diversion. I have to say that the cinema at the Cannery was amazing. We have not been to a DLP cinema before and I swear I spent ½ the movie thinking ‘THIS PICTURE IS AMAZING OH MY GOD! Oh, right, pay attention to the movie itself, stupid.’ We saw Fred Claus here as it was one we both wanted to see – it was OK…was one of those ones where the trailers had most of the funny bits, but a good enough way to waste a few hours not playing the slots. We decided to go to another movie another day at the Palms to keep us away from the slots for a bit. It was supposed to be Bee Movie but after I read too many reviews with ‘lots of insect puns’ in them (puns and I are not friends) I opted to see Martian Child while Jamie checked out Bee Movie. The theatre was very nice, but I kept thinking ‘THIS PICTURE IS NOT AS GOOD AS CANNERY!’ I am so easily distracted.

We won silver strikes from the 4 casinos we didn’t already have that were listed on http://members.cox.net/silverstrikes/ - Four Queens, Sam’s Town, Wynn and Freemont. All were won with less than $10 from each of us invested and most were won with less than $10 total invested. So that was nice. We have a little curio unit that we put our silver strikes in and we need 4 more to fill it…hopefully we’ll happen upon a few that we don’t have – otherwise we may have to resort to ebay.

It happened that we were in town for Harrah’s Great Gift Wrap-up which was nice. Though we hadn’t played in Las Vegas at any point during the year, we managed to earn a little over 10,000 points during the trip and chose a pair of Sony noise reducing headphones to replace mine which are broken. Funny thing was that we had bought 2 identical pairs of headphones earlier in the trip for Jamie’s parents! Still, as a result we know that they cost $50+ so we felt like we got a decent gift from Harrah’s for our play that trip.

Our one show was Ka and thanks to westie2’s post in the deals section we managed to get tickets for ½ price before the trip (thanks again for that tip). We knew our seats might be a bit too close (we were row D seats 11 and 12 which were the first two seats on the left-hand side of the aisle from the centre section) so we were prepared for that. We enjoyed the show, but possibly not as much as we had hoped (stupid expectations). The stage was amazing and the performances were great, but I think I have determined why I sometimes get bored at Cirque shows in places: Because at some points what is going on on stage is so completely and utterly amazing…when what is going on on stage is not quite so completely and utterly amazing (but instead just simply amazing), I find myself wondering when the next completely and utterly amazing bit is coming. That may only make sense to me and I blame it on being a child of the 80s and needing to be constantly entertained. Still, we were really happy with the deal we got and were glad to see the show as it was the top of our list of shows to see. In my personal list of Cirque shows I think my preference would go: O, Mystere, Ka, Love – and Love gets the 4th place spot only because I’m not a Beatles fan and we had front row seats. When we see Love again further back my opinion may change.

At Hawaiian Marketplace there is a place that does foot and back massages. Being a firm believer in the power of foot massage, I really wanted to do this. It was so worth it. I think it was $12 for 10 minutes (Jamie was waiting for me or I would have taken her up on the offer of another 10 minutes when she pushed me – heck, I would probably have stayed there all day if given the chance). I went back later in the day for a 20 minute back massage for $15. That was great and next time I will plan to do a bit longer I think. It was a bit painful at points as I have a lot of knots in my shoulders most times and the guy was determined to work some of them out, but I felt like I floated away from the place and back to our hotel. This will become a must do earlier in the trip from here on out as I imagine it would be the perfect thing shortly after getting off an international flight and not really being one for spa massages (get naked in front of strangers?!?!) this was perfect for me.


We come from the UK so we must shop – it’s practically a law. We hit Boulevard Mall, WalMart, Sephora, Best Buy and Circuit City in addition to the outlet mall in Laughlin. Got some Christmas presents sorted and a few things for ourselves so that was good. We didn’t get anywhere near as much as normal, but still it was a shopping success.

Incidentally, if you are on the Strip, looking for Christmas wrapping paper at 4:30 am on an early-November morning, as near as I can tell, CVS near Monte Carlo is your only option. Walgreens was no help at all.

We also used Bally’s business centre to buy and then ship a big box of Christmas presents to my sister in Illinois. Yes, they charged us a $10 fee for using their services, but as UPS ground was an option, I think we still came out better than having taken the box to the post office ourselves and saved the hassle. Even with the $10 fee, it only cost us $29 to send – 16x16x16 box weighing 15 pounds. We checked when we got home and the same box would have cost us about $190 to send from the UK (£94.30). Bargain!

And we got Jamie to platinum again this trip, which is nice. We don’t get a lot of benefit out of it as we normally book so far in advance that we don’t get much in the way of offers, but platinum check in is nice as is the ability to skip the long lines at some of the restaurants. We were also there for a double rewards credit day at Bally’s/Paris. So it has some benefits that we use. We wouldn’t chase it, but as we made it without altering our play at all it’s a nice thing.


And as for the gambling…

We’re slot players – we don’t like table games and we enjoy the slots…they may be a bad bet, but we like them – we look at it as buying entertainment. For the first 5 days or so my luck was horrid. Jamie’s was somewhat better though he spent most of his winnings bailing me out of my hole. Had he been on his own I think he may have ended some or all of those first several days up – but as it was, with my losing streak, it was a much worse picture.

Jamie did have some great luck on the 3rd night at Wynn. I had gone to the room to rest for a bit as I wasn’t doing well and thought a break made sense. As it happened, I fell asleep about 9:30pm. While I woke up briefly when Jamie came to the room around 10:30 before heading back out again, the next thing I knew it was 6:30am or so. Stupid really, REALLY comfortable beds. After we woke up he told me of his run on a nickel Wild Taxi slot machine. He said that by the end of it he was convinced it was broken and a team of slot techs would shortly be descending to tell him that the machine was being put out of service and that they would take his winnings. He played it for about 40 minutes and thinks he had at least 12 bonus rounds. Some weren’t great, but many were decent enough. He started playing all lines at 1 credit per line, then when he had a significant win he moved up to 2 credits per line, bonus, increase and repeat. At the end he had several spins at 10 credits per line to test whether the pattern would hold and it didn’t, so he cashed out about $700! That was great as with what I had not spent the night before having fallen asleep before I could run my daily bankroll down to nothing and what he still had from that day’s money we were even on the day. First time we could say that this trip.

Then the luck shifted and I attribute it to the Rio beads that hit me in the leg during a Show in the Sky. They scared the hell out of me when they hit me (I wasn’t watching – I was playing a Get Nuts slot) but I retrieved them from the floor and they were kind to me for the rest of the trip.

The following day we went back to Wynn to change something on Jamie’s players club account and I decided to try a Blazing 7s $1 slot while he was waiting in line. There is a bank of them near one of the slot club booths and I picked the one with the highest progressive (before you get excited, no, I did not win the progressive). I think it was about $1058 or so. I put $21 in (I always add the $1 for 3-coin dollar slots on the rare occasion I play them so I have 7 full spins). On my fourth spin I got 3 regular 7s for $300! I was so excited. I trotted back to Jamie (still in line) with my ticket and he was very excited too. When he was done, I decided to go back to the machine (after he warned me about getting hooked) – another $21 in, $200 out. Yay!

The Blazing 7s dollar slots were good to me the rest of the trip at various casinos – several $100 and a couple more $200 wins. And I hit for $400 on the $1 Quack Shot machine at Bally’s where I previously won $400 (exact same winning spin too).

Of course I repaid Jamie’s previous kindness and shared the wealth. I felt a bit bad that his luck seemed to get much worse just as mine got better – but at least one of us was doing OK!

Overall I think we came back with about 30% of our budget. Not the 50% we shoot for, but we’re learning that that target may be unachievable and may need to be revised.

Some new slots we tried included The Wizard of Oz (only saw it at Bill’s), Alien vs Predator (one at Harrah’s, a few at Texas Station), Pong (at MGM), Lucky Lemurs (like Lucky Lemmings but some differences in the feature – really fun), one called Thai Princess (I think – played it downtown and somewhere else – fun free spins feature where each time you get a winning combination in a spin that combination’s multiplier goes up for subsequent spins – can be a lucrative feature). I finally had a feature on Turkey Shoot – will wonders never cease?! Get Nuts continued to hate me, though on one feature I got all the free spins and all of the multipliers…yet still only won 500 credits (nickels). I should write off the squirrels completely, but I can’t seem to.

We also played one new and rather weird one called Cherry Bomb at Wynn (saw it somewhere else as well, but cannot remember where). It was different from most as you have a screen with several columns and rows of tiles and you choose 5 (I think it was 5). These tiles are bombed and symbols are behind each. In some cases, you get the little cherry bomb guy and he throws additional bombs to additional tiles – so reveals more symbols. Once all the bombing is done, if you matched enough symbols you win. We quickly gave up on choosing the tiles ourselves and went with the auto-pick option. It was kind of fun, our money seemed to last for a decent period of time at least!

It was pretty busy in a lot of the strip casinos. The kind of busy where you and someone else arrive at an open slot machine at the same time and then have to figure out how to deal with it. We experienced some pretty rude people in this respect – like at Flamingo where Jamie went over to a Cleopatra, put his arm on the back of the chair and turned to give me a smooch before I went off to find a machine I liked and in the meantime a woman came up behind him, threw her bag on the seat and proceeded to squeeze in behind him. Nice. Similar thing happened on Top Gun also at Flamingo. 9 times out of 10 we’ll defer to the other person if we arrive at the same time, but this was a bit ridiculous.

We’re back over Easter - on 20th March for 9 nights this time. Bally’s is booked and we’ll be watching deals from Wynn as I know they normally do mid-week deals for relatively cheap once you take out the free slot play. I’d also like to have a night at Sunset Station one trip – as we always hit the WalMart in the area, and normally hit Galleria Mall (though not this trip) I think that staying at Sunset Station the night of our shopping excursion would be a nice change. Plus we really like the casino, but have only spent a bit of time there.

The other thing already on the list for next trip is to check out Lake Las Vegas. We have meant to before but have never made it. The Easter trip will also include some reconnaissance as the following trip will likely be with my in-laws as we plan to give them a trip to Las Vegas as a combined retirement/40th wedding anniversary gift. As the in-laws aren’t too much on gambling (they’ll play a bit, but nothing like us) we want to check out some options of places to take them. We plan to visit the Grand Canyon and stay at least one night as well though we’ll not be making a trial run, I don’t think.

I think that’s about it. Sorry it’s so long as normal.
Jen & Jamie <> - London, UK    4112

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