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Where to go on National Happy Hour Day in Las Vegas

Las Vegas Advisor Happy Hour. National Happy Hour Day

If there was ever a holiday made for Las Vegas, it’s this one. November 12th is National Happy Hour Day. A day to raise a glass (or two) to that sacred window of time when the world slows down, the prices drop, and life just feels a little lighter.

Vegas is the envy of the foodie world with more happy hour options than most cities could dream of. From family-friendly deals to global flavors that transport your taste buds, there’s literally hundreds of great places to get together, unplug, and eat and drink really well.

Here are a few great deals to celebrate National Happy Hour Day the Vegas way.

holsteins happy hour

Holsteins Burgers & Shakes Happy Hour

After 15 years on The Strip, Holstein’s moved to the udder side of town in the Arts District. For National Happy Hour Day, Holsteins is extending its happy hour from 11 AM to 10 PM for an all-day celebration. $5 drafts and a $16 Happiest Meal (burger, fries, cocktail). emooojis here:

Spy Ninjas HQ – Retro Bar Happy Hour

PacMan and Pumpkin Martini for National Happy Hour Day?It’s on like Donkey Kong at The Retro Bar with 80’s themed drinks & bites from $4-$11 and a seasonal happy hour menu. Plus, the Cabbage Patch Kids get to zip, jump, climb and crawl around the huge indoor park. Happy Family Hour!

MGM Grand 24 hours of Happy Hour

MGM Grand is taking National Happy Hour Day to a whole new level with 24 hours of rotating happy hour deals. Try $7-7-7 wells, wines, beers across multiple MGM Grand venues including BetMGM Sportsbook. Sip and celebrate all day, all night and all the time where happy hour never sleeps. Yep, that’s Vegas!

Scotch 80 Prime Happy Hour – Palms Casino

Scotch 80 Prime new social hour menu items including 30% OFF the really good stuff. Try steak tartar, shrimp cocktails, wine from the gods and signature cocktails for $11-$18. Today and every Mon -Thurs 5-7 PM.

Bottiglia Cucina & Enoteca Happy Hour

Giornata Nazionale dell’Aperitivo! Happy Hour Day Deal! Half-off the regular $8 happy hour menu. From 4 to 6 PM Wednesday, Nov. 12, guests can enjoy $4 dishes including mozzarella & tomato caprese, zucchini chips, meatballs and pizzettes with $4.5 specialty cocktails and wines.

Enjoy National Happy Hour Day and check out Happy Hour Vegas for more Las Vegas Happy Hours everyday.

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New Promotion on Norwegian Cruise Lines

Bob Dancer

As I write this, Bonnie and I are spending two weeks aboard the NCL Bliss having set sail Sunday, October 26. We tour the Mexican Riviera (Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán) on back-to-back cruises. This is our “go to” itinerary for three reasons.

First, I have extended family near our departure port, so after a 200-mile drive from Las Vegas, we get to have a place to spend the night before, a place to park the car while we’re cruising, transportation to and from the port itself, and a chance to visit family I don’t see very often. In exchange, I buy everybody dinner Saturday night — and many of my family members accept this bribe.

Second, the Bliss has a Texas barbeque specialty dining option. While Bonnie and I are not barbeque fans, Texas-style or otherwise, the venue also has a country-western band playing every night next to a nice dance floor. And we are fans of that. We are better than average dancers and Bonnie never tires of compliments we receive from other passengers.

Our third reason will resonate with more of my readers than the first two. The last time we were on the Bliss, in the fall of 2024, the casino offered a sizeable number of persistence slot machines, many of which I knew how to beat. There are many fewer of these slots than there were a year ago, but there are still 11 Super Star machines which include Ultimate X (UX). 

These UX machines have three games (Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Deuces Wild), in Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play configurations. Each of these come in five different denominations, yielding 45 different combinations per machine.

Since cruise ship gamblers tend to be less sophisticated gaming-wise than those found in Las Vegas, these UX machines may frequently be found with unplayed multipliers. I don’t seek unplayed UX multipliers in most casinos I frequent because several casinos remove players who do so. I do look for those unplayed multipliers aboard the Bliss because it is both lucrative and if I get kicked out of the casino, it’s relatively small potatoes. Especially since I plan to give up gambling in a few months anyway.

Plus, the casino’s smoking section is behind sealed glass which makes the rest of the casino relatively smoke-free. Not completely, because some smoke escapes whenever one of the doors between the smoking and non-smoking areas is opened, but it is far less smoky than many casinos. Which is a huge plus for me.

In the casino, you earn points for your play. One point for every $5 coin-in for slots and one for $10 coin-in for video poker. The points are redeemable for free play, at a miniscule yet non-zero rate. As near as I can tell, it’s 0.01% for video poker and twice that for slots.

Starting in early October, they began a fairly lucrative promotion called “Points to Paradise.” According to the slot club boothling I spoke to, this promotion is valid on most NCL ships, and they plan to run it indefinitely. 

If you earn 500 points, you receive $250 off your next cruise. One thousand points gets you $500 off, and 2,000 points earns you a free cruise. After you earn these benefits, you must book a cruise within 60 days and sail within a year or the benefits evaporate. If you stay on the ship for two or more weeks back-to-back, insofar as this promotion is concerned, and you end up with, say, 450 points on the first week, those points do not carry over until the following week.

For the mathematically challenged, if you are planning on, or at least willing to, cruise again on NCL within a year, playing on slots gives you a 10% rebate, and playing video poker gives you a 5% rebate — assuming you stop playing when you reach exactly 500, 1,000, or 2,000 points.

If you play nothing other than vulturing UX machines, it’s unlikely that you’ll earn 500 points. You are, after all, only playing one hand at a time whenever you find a good situation. And the number of good situations you find largely depends on how many other UX vultures there are on the cruise. There are some persistence slots which earn points much faster than vulturing UX, simply because you often play a lot of hands on such machines until it becomes unplayable, so I’ll end up with close to 1,000 points each week. I’m writing this in the middle of our first week of cruising, so I’m not sure what my balance will be.

The best non-UX video poker I found was single-line 8/5 Jacks or Better in denominations between 50 cents and $10 — which returns 97.3% if played correctly. I don’t think I’ve ever played 8/5 Jacks or Better before, but I know 8/5 Bonus Poker perfectly and that strategy is “close enough” to play for a few hands. A a machine with a casino edge of 2.7% paired with a promotion that returns 5% is definitely playable. If I end up with, say 800 points by the time the cruise ends, I’ll earn the remaining 200 points by playing $2,000 coin-in worth of 8/5 Jacks or Better, with an expected loss of $54. This will allow me to receive my second $250 discount for the week. I plan to do this for both weeks. If the competition for unplayed UX multipliers during the second week of our cruising is greater than it is the first week, I might end up with only $250 in cruise discounts for the second week.

Bonnie and I have already qualified for our highly discounted NCL cruises for 2026 that we’ve earned by maintaining Seven Stars status. I may well not be gambling after January 2026, but I will be cashing what I earned prior to that. We’ll probably reserve two back-to-back Mexican Riviera cruises on the Bliss again next fall.

While we won’t have the casino as a reason to go on the cruise, I’ll still have family in Southern California and there will still be country-western dancing on the ship (we hope). Those two reasons are sufficient.

I won’t make the mistake of picking dates during the World Series like I unwittingly did this year. I’ve been a Dodger fan since the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958, and if they’re in it again next year I’ll want to watch the games at night in preference to going dancing. Which won’t be to Bonnie’s liking.

While the Dodgers are longshots to make it back again to the 2026 World Series, they probably have better odds than any other team. And we can just as easily go the week after the Series.

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Midwest flexes, ESPN Bet folds

Illinois casinos were booming in October, up 21% … or 7.5% once second-place Wind Creek Southland and last-place Fairmont Park were subtracted to make an apples-to-apples comparison. The headline for J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Politzer was the loss of the novelty factor at Hollywood Joliet, which has trended downward from August through October. Darn, the sheen came off that casino fast. Normally we don’t put much stock in sequential comparisons, but still … dang! We had hoped for better.

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Election Special

It’s always too soon to celebrate the demise of smoking in Atlantic City. However, clean-air advocates (and customers) have reason to feel guardedly optimistic today. Ally Mikie Sherrill (D, pictured) smoked status-quo champion Jack Ciattrelli (R), 56% to 43%. Despite character flaws and serious bread-and-butter concerns by voters, Sherrill prevailed. It was predicted to be a nail-biter and ended up a laugher.

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A Look at Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness, by Tim Grover

Bob Dancer

The book Winning was recommended to me by a friend. Since I think of myself as a winner, at least in my most confident moments, I thought I knew most of what the book was about. I was wrong. Whatever winning I do is junior varsity stuff. The winning this book talks about is World Championships!

Tim Grover is an athletic trainer, trained in kinesiology, who, when he was 25 years old, sent letters to all the Chicago Bulls except Michael Jordan applying to be their personal trainer — an uncommon position in 1985. Jordan saw the letter in the locker room, had Grover checked out, and hired him for 30 days as a sort of tryout. 

Jordan had played one year in the NBA at that point, done really well, but was bullied by the bigger, stronger players. He knew he needed to bulk up without losing his speed, quickness, and other skills, and was willing to give Grover a chance to help him.

Grover was with Jordan for 15 years, through six world championships, and a not-so-successful two-year stint trying to be a professional baseball player. After Jordan retired, Grover helped a number of other players, including Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Charles Barkley, and others. Most of you know these were top basketball players of their era, and Michael Jordan is largely considered to be the GOAT – Greatest of All Time. Today Grover mostly consults with business CEOs.

This book doesn’t tell you what to do. It tells you how to think and how to approach winning. If you’re not already motivated to succeed, this book won’t help you. The book is about adding that critical extra edge to people who are already successful.

Grover lists 13 steps to winning — all of which he labels number 1 because they are all necessary. I’m not going to go through all 13, but I will mention a few.

  1. Winning is not a marathon — it’s a sprint with no finish line.
  1. Winning takes you through hell — and if you quit, that’s where you end up.
  1. Winning makes you different, and different scares people.
  1. Winning makes war on the battlefield of your mind.
  1. Winning is selfish.

I could discuss what Grover says about any of these points, but I’ll just look at the last. If you’re going to win, you have to go all in. This often means lack of balance in such things as family and relationships. We’ve all heard of people who work too many hours, and their marriage suffers. Grover says that if you want to be a winner, this is par for the course. 

Grover strongly dislikes motivational cliches such as “You’ve got this!”, “You’re crushing it!”, and “Play hard until the final whistle blows!” These are junior high expressions, in his mind, and every competitor already knows these things without having them yelled at by a coach. True winning is much different.

There are lots of anecdotes in the book, especially about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, on how their will to succeed was far beyond that of most people. But this will to succeed is what it takes to be a winner.

Grover says four things are needed to be a winner: talent, intelligence, competitiveness, and resilience — and the most important of these is resilience. This is what makes you get up and keep going after you’ve fallen on your face. 

And falling on your face is definitely going to happen. Nobody has clear sailing to championships over and over again. It’s very hard work and there are always setbacks.

Nobody wins all the time and when you do win, as soon as it’s over you start from scratch and have to work hard to make it happen again. You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect to succeed. You have to come back better because your competition will have analyzed what you have done and will make adjustments to counter what you did before.

I found this book inspiring. Perhaps I would have had more success in my life had I come across this book earlier.

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Lotus of Siam (Happy Hour)

When forming a top ten list of all the restaurants in Las Vegas, including the best in the casinos, Lotus of Siam is a favorite to be on it. At one point the original in Commercial Center was named by one top critic as the best Thai restaurant in America. We’ve always felt that the praise was justified. If you’ve read LVA for a while, you know that we rarely run out to try something new. But after reporting on the Lotus happy hour last month, we made it a point to try it for this issue. Note that this is the Lotus on E. Flamingo, across from Silver Sevens, The original remains closed, though they still say it will reopen. We don’t put the casino location at Red Rock in the same category as the non-casino restuarants, since it isn’t overseen by James Beard Award winning chef and founder Saipin Chutima.

The Deal

The happy hour runs Mon.-Fri. from 3 to 5 p.m. in the bar area, with $4 sake, $5 beer, $6 wine, $8 specialty cocktails, and $7 small plates.

The Food

We wondered about the food selection. Lotus has a vast menu, so what would they choose. Was it possible the famous appetizer nam khao tod would be on the list? Amazingly, it is, though it’s called crispy rice lettuce wrap. Another of our favorites, khao soi, a Thai version of steak tartare is also on the menu as steak tartare cups. Also offered: calamari, papaya salad, satay, and garlic tofu. All are priced at $7, and the portions are good. Honestly, it’s not quite the same as getting the larger portions that you prepare yourself, but they’re representative for sure.

The Drinks

You can order the sake hot or cold and it’s a heck of a deal for $4. However, the star of the show was the White Lotus cocktail, a smooth mix of bourbon, lime, peach schnapps, passion fruit, and aquafaba.

Ambiance

Nothing will ever match the original, but the Flamingo location is clean and comfortable. Friendly and helpful bartenders. A good HH setting.

The Verdict

This is a top notch happy hour that pretty much met our high expectations. There were only a few other people at the bar, which was surprising, but maybe the word’s not out. At these prices you can get your drink on in the process. Be sure to try the crispy rice lettuce wrap and the tartare. Our bill for two was $49.

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Best of the Rest

“Solid” was Wall Street‘s consensus on 3Q25 at Station Casinos. The company came in slightly under Deutsche Bank‘s targets but analyst Steven Pizzella still seemed pleased. Revenue was $486.5 million and Station was noted to have weathered construction upheavals at several properties, as it upgrades its product. Restaurant business was good, with F&B revenues hopping 2.5%. Thanks to room disruption at Green Valley Ranch, hotel revenues sagged 8%. And, for the first time, we heard that debility on the Las Vegas Strip might start dampening locals-casino results.

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Bobby Vegas — Thanks to Slot Players, Apologies to Casinos

Bobby Vegas: Friends Don’t Let Friends Play Triple-Zero Roulette

Another mea culpa. In a recent post I said, “Happiness is positive cash flow. Ours not theirs!”

I’m updating that to, “Happiness is positive cash flow. Ours and theirs,” with apologies to all the — well, many — casino operators presently bleeding money like a river.

We need you to be here. We need you to make a profit.

Without you, there are no games, no fabulous meals, no outlandish and unforgettable shows, no wild nights, no parties till dawn. I don’t hate to say it; in fact, I admit it readily: We need you.

So please, for God’s sake, get it together! Bring back the value and not for a week, but ALWAYS.

And then there’s the other underappreciated group, slot players, the backbone where all, or at least the vast majority, of the profits lie.

Every day, you come to Vegas to play, to drink, to forget for as long as the cash holds out (and hopefully you don’t go to the casino ATM and drain that, too, chasing losses) and for that I want to thank you. Also, thanks for being okay that you most often lose. Are you? I like to think that you’re happy with your gaming experience and the comps that go along with it.

So please, keep feeding the Benjamins into the slot maw, because without you, we couldn’t squeeze out the advantages. There’d be no advantages to squeeze. You allow us to do what we do. And thank you. Really. Keep playing Golden Dragons, Buffalos, and Wheel of Fortune Cash Link Big Money Mega Tower Super Spin. Whatever.

I love Vegas. It’s unique. Yes, I have a local casino, but I don’t go there. I feel captive.

I like the depth and breadth of Vegas. The back alleys, the places where the club girls hang out afterwards, Ellis Island at 3 a.m. for steak and eggs under $10. I like searching, experimenting, treasure hunting all kinds of experiences only Vegas can provide, from rubbing shoulders with Bruno Mars to Rainbow’s Triple B Diner in Henderson.

So thank you, slot players; without you, I couldn’t do what I do. And thank you, casinos, for letting us, the weird 2%ers, the advantage players and even the wannabe APs, the scufflers or even just the well-read, give it our best shot at near full pay. Sure, we often lose, too, but at least we have a fighting chance of winning and can still have as good a time as the slot players.

Casino operators, I know you read this. Many of you have told me so. So do the slot players, the APs, the scufflers, and yourselves a big favor and get your friggin’ act together, okay? Bring back the value. Make NRF (no resort fees) and free parking as common next year as free drinks, free spectacles, and free play are this year. And please, dump triple zero.

You’ll still get our dollars if we feel like you’re giving us a shot. If you do, we’ll be back. In droves. Trust me. I’m Bobby Vegas and I approve this message.