The Homage Trip Report
Homage, noun [hom-ij, om-], respect or reverence paid
If you enjoy trip reports as much as I do, you no doubt realize that some reporters are simply better at it than others. I really enjoy several people’s reporting style and decided that I would pay homage to three of them in my own report. I would like to honor Westie, Stungazed and Sionow whose detailed and regular reporting really helps fill the gaps between our trips. Each of them is a far better writer than I am and provide a wealth of useful information. They are also kind enough to regularly post so here’s to you Westie, Stungazed and Sionow.
Preamble:
Our last trip took place in September when we and another couple took our retiring CFO and his wife to Las Vegas on a surprise trip. It was fun but when you entertain others, it does cut into your gaming/drinking time. Unlike most of our trips, I am only checking into one hotel, The Stratosphere, where our host has us all set up- so let us pack out bags, gather our cash and let the good times roll.
Day One:
Allegiant has the best fares out of our area and I was able to get round trip air for $751.00 for both of us or $375.50 each. Of course it was not that straightforward so the break down was $501.00 for airfare, $36.40 in taxes, $16.00 in segment fees, $18.00 PFC (passenger facility charge), $22.40 Sept 11 security fee, $64.00 carry-on bag fee, $70.00 seat selection fee and $40.00 in carrier usage charge. I got a discount of $16.00 for using a debit card. Why this can’t just be a single ticket charge is beyond me but I guess the airlines are learning from the cell phone companies on how to pack on additional and confusing charges. Still, all in all, I’m OK with the charge since I’m going to Las Vegas. This trip we will be flying out of Moline, about an hour and twenty minutes from where I work. Flight 433 leaves Moline at 12:44 pm and arrives in Las Vegas at 2:18 pm crossing two time zones and has a total flight time of about three and a half hours. My plan is to work until about 9:30 am and then have my wife meet me at work and drive to Moline.
The drive down to Moline was easy and we were soon at the airport. We parked our car in long term parking and hustled our carry-ons through security and the gate area. I decided to spring for “priority boarding” at five dollars extra per person per trip. This meant my tickets actually cost $385.50 each. It was money well spent as we got to board early, stash our stuff without the aisle being clogged with our fellow travelers and get settled before taking off. The flight was uneventful and we actually arrived about 20 minutes early. One nice touch was the Riveria casino provided coupon books on our flight including $20 in free play, $25 match play and a two for one at the steak house.
The Stratosphere sent a limo for us and our driver was Terry, originally a long haul trucker. He told us about various celebrities he has driven around include Ms. USA, MS. Universe and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Not all at the same time)
Las Vegas seemed busier which was nice to see, and Terry confirmed that they were seeing more activity.
We were dropped off at the Stratosphere and went to the VIP area to check in. We were given room 15036 in the select tower. I also got some information about the blackjack tournament I was scheduled to play in. These are comfortable rooms for our purposes- king sized bed, large bath with shower and jetted tub (that we never use), table and chairs, couch, coffee table and tv. We also had counter unit with a small single serve coffee pot, small refrigerator stocked with water and pop, and a sink. The room and furniture are starting to show some wear with scuff marks, and dings in the walls and carpet starting to fray a bit.
The Strat does not have a good video poker inventory. We would be playing some short play stuff in my quest to renew my red card. I needed 72 tier credits and attempted to find out how tier credits were earned. The “answer” is that time, machine type and coin in went into the calculation and that it was better to stay on one machine than to keep moving. Keep moving is generally what I do when I don’t feel the mojo. Like most places, I figure that the tier points are earned faster on the shorter pay machines. I don’t know why the actual formula for earning tier credits is more secret than Russian nuclear launch codes, but they are. I suspect that the lack of transparency allows the casino to arbitrarily change the program whenever they feel like it.
We had made dinner reservations at the Top of the World for 5:30 pm Vegas time (7:30 pm our time) and played some triple play deuces and bonus poker outside the high limit area. These are 98% +/- machines and we didn’t hit anything. We each bought in for $300 and managed to salvage about $100 each after just under an hour of play.
It was already dark when we went up to the Top of the World and the waiter pointed out a full moon coming up. It was impressive and I was also taken aback by how busy the strip was. Traffic looked like the old days- bumper to bumper and barely moving. The restaurant revolves so we checked out the inevitable changes. The SLS was a big change and the Fountainbleu is still as dark as a tomb. I started dinner with my usual Bombay Sapphire Martini- up, dry and dirty. Sonya opted for a glass of Malbec. She had a salad and I had the shrimp/lobster appetizer. We both had 10 ounces filets and ordered a couple of sides. This was a very relaxing and pleasant dinner. We decided to split a crème brule for dessert. The total bill was $222.31 after a 10% discount for my red card. This was fully comped and my martini was $17.00 of the total bill- I am going to savor them more in the future at that price. Normally we go the observation deck to observe people on the rides but decided to go downstairs and play a bit more. The machines were no more generous than they had been pre-dinner so we called it a day.
Day 2:
The in room coffee maker provides not very good coffee, but it does caffeinate me sufficiently to go downstairs to Starbucks for some industrial strength brew.
We were now up with both eyes focused in the same direction so decided to visit the Bellagio and cabbed over. Supposedly there was some $1 8/5 BP spinpoker near the Hermes store but I couldn’t’ find it. There was some spin poker variants but the bank was occupied with some power puffers. We played a little and decided to use some residual comps we had with MGM by having breakfast at the Bellagio Café.
The Bellagio Café had a line but we got to enjoy seeing some large apples being created out of flowers by the Bellagio gardening staff. We walked in and were seated. I had seen an “English Breakfast” on the menu once consisting of three eggs, bangers, rashers, hash browns, baked beans and brown bread. We both ordered this with coffee and orange juice. Set aside the eggs and hash browns that nobody can screw up (not even the Army during my time) and we had a disappointing and expensive meal. The rasher seemed more like Canadian bacon than the true rasher (made from the pork loin with some fat still intact) and the brown bread was actually very dry and cold soda bread. The baked beans consisted of some undercooked white beans served in a thin flavorless tomato sauce. The orange juice tasted fresh squeezed and the coffee was good, but otherwise this was not a very good offering. The bill was over $56.00 which was comped, but still- I expected more from the Bellagio.
We went back to the Stratosphere so I could play in the black jack tournament. My table assignment was table one, position five. I had a name tag that made me official, although I had not played in a tournament like this before. I think I had a stack of funny chips worth nothing, but with denominations like $1,000, $500 and $100. I may have had $5,000.00 face value. We were also given two “hit me again chips” that allowed us to exchange a dealt card once for each chip. My son had counseled me to go big early, the complete opposite of my normal cautious basic strategy approach to black jack. There was a button with a number that rotated through each player so there was no particular advantage to being seated in any position. We were to get dealt through 24 hands. I lost both first hands and played survivor for the remaining hands getting a total of zero black jacks. At the end of the 24 hands, I was out of chips and obviously not headed towards the semi-finals.
I was given a nice bag with the Stratosphere logo and a couple of buffets so it was worth my time. I think I should have used my hit me again chips earlier on my larger bets…..
We played and lost at the multi-game machines again and decided to enjoy the buffet at the Stratosphere. This is a very serviceable buffet and our server was excellent; bright, cheerful and attentive. As I recall, my first plate had a slice of turkey, two California roll sushi, orange chicken chunks, pickled beets and some shredded pork on a tortilla with guacamole and cheese. Sonya opted for far healthier choices with fruit and vegetables. We got some bread pudding with bananas foster sauce to cap it all off.
We made one last run at the multi machines and I did manage to hit four deuces for a grand on one line after being dealt three deuces on the bottom line. It was getting smoky, loud and late so we decided to call it a night. We were joined on the elevator by a very intoxicated young man who decided to pull out a wad of hundreds to show us announcing, “f*ckin’ A, man!” He staggered off at a lower floor obviously enjoying himself. I was impressed that he managed to be drunk but retained enough sense to bring his (presumed) winnings back to the room.
Day 3:
Breakfast the next day was at Roxys, the 50s theme diner at the Strat. I had steak and eggs to build up my strength and Sonya had an eggs Benedict capprezio. This was also comped and rang in at $35.94 including coffee and juice at $2.99 per. Today we were headed off to the Premium Outlets near down town. I like the Brooks Brothers outlet here since I can usually find some significantly marked down clothes suitable for me to wear to work. Of course a Brooks Brothers shirt marked down by 60% is still about twice the cost of a Lands End shirt but I appreciate the quality.
I found some socks and undershirts suitable priced and sized.(cheap/extra large)
Sonya had mistakenly packed a mismatched set of Crocs on this trip for herself and fortunately there was a CROCs store there to help address the situation. We packed all of our stuff into a single bag and took a cab to The Gold Coast.
We left our shopping bag with the bell desk and went over to the upright multigame machines with $1 NSUD. We got considerably more playing time here but no wins. The Gold Coast has an Asian restaurant called Noodle Exchange (exchange for what?). It always seemed packed with Asians which I took as a positive sign similar to seeing some Diner with many big rigs parked outside. We both ordered shrimp pad Thai which was good enough but we were fascinated by many tables having a small gas grill with a pot boiling away.
It looked like you cooked your own noodles at the table- which in a sense defeats the purpose of coming to a restaurant in the first place. “We will now let you bus your own table and wash the dishes.”
We went into the high limit lounge and fired up the triple slant tops with 8/5 BP at 50 cents or $7.50 a twirl. We were actually doing pretty well here and managed to come out up about $800.00 after a while. According to the B Connected website, I added 10,024 points to my account giving me a solid “sapphire” level with a total of 185,852. To make the exalted “emerald”, I need to reach 250,000 points. That means I need another 64,148 points between now and August of 2015. Right now I get regular offers for two nights along with some minimal free play and dining credit. I’m not sure if emerald status would improve the offers that much- but I’ll bet someone can tell me ? Boyd appears to be in one of their periodic comp ratcheting down times but still has plenty of the games I like to play.
We grabbed a cab and headed back to the Strat. Our driver was a wonderful, chatty birdlike grandmother who said that she always wanted to move to Las Vegas, and here she is. She won a progressive jackpot at one point in her life and was able to buy a modest home outright. She was also the most adept driver we had and able to quickly get us to the Strat.
We were still pretty full from our late lunch so passed on dinner while taking one last futile run at the triple play machines. No joy. I did earn over 170 tier credits during the trip so easily kept my red card status and earned bonus points for the year. The Strat had some kind of promotion where I also earned a $50 voucher each day when I swiped my card at the kiosk. I apparently also earned a free pack of cigarettes daily- but I don’t smoke so didn’t cash in this particular incentive.
We had an early flight out in the morning and needed to pack so we headed up to the room. I now had an extra bag from the BJ tournament which was perfect for the dirty laundry. Our limo was scheduled for 4:45 am and after a fitful night of sleep (sleep, wake up, look at the clock, go back to sleep); we were downstairs and ready to fly home. The return flight was uneventful and I don’t have a return trip to Las Vegas planned yet- I had better get right on it.
Cheers.
Homage, noun [hom-ij, om-], respect or reverence paid
If you enjoy trip reports as much as I do, you no doubt realize that some reporters are simply better at it than others. I really enjoy several people’s reporting style and decided that I would pay homage to three of them in my own report. I would like to honor Westie, Stungazed and Sionow whose detailed and regular reporting really helps fill the gaps between our trips. Each of them is a far better writer than I am and provide a wealth of useful information. They are also kind enough to regularly post so here’s to you Westie, Stungazed and Sionow.
Preamble:
Our last trip took place in September when we and another couple took our retiring CFO and his wife to Las Vegas on a surprise trip. It was fun but when you entertain others, it does cut into your gaming/drinking time. Unlike most of our trips, I am only checking into one hotel, The Stratosphere, where our host has us all set up- so let us pack out bags, gather our cash and let the good times roll.
Day One:
Allegiant has the best fares out of our area and I was able to get round trip air for $751.00 for both of us or $375.50 each. Of course it was not that straightforward so the break down was $501.00 for airfare, $36.40 in taxes, $16.00 in segment fees, $18.00 PFC (passenger facility charge), $22.40 Sept 11 security fee, $64.00 carry-on bag fee, $70.00 seat selection fee and $40.00 in carrier usage charge. I got a discount of $16.00 for using a debit card. Why this can’t just be a single ticket charge is beyond me but I guess the airlines are learning from the cell phone companies on how to pack on additional and confusing charges. Still, all in all, I’m OK with the charge since I’m going to Las Vegas. This trip we will be flying out of Moline, about an hour and twenty minutes from where I work. Flight 433 leaves Moline at 12:44 pm and arrives in Las Vegas at 2:18 pm crossing two time zones and has a total flight time of about three and a half hours. My plan is to work until about 9:30 am and then have my wife meet me at work and drive to Moline.
The drive down to Moline was easy and we were soon at the airport. We parked our car in long term parking and hustled our carry-ons through security and the gate area. I decided to spring for “priority boarding” at five dollars extra per person per trip. This meant my tickets actually cost $385.50 each. It was money well spent as we got to board early, stash our stuff without the aisle being clogged with our fellow travelers and get settled before taking off. The flight was uneventful and we actually arrived about 20 minutes early. One nice touch was the Riveria casino provided coupon books on our flight including $20 in free play, $25 match play and a two for one at the steak house.
The Stratosphere sent a limo for us and our driver was Terry, originally a long haul trucker. He told us about various celebrities he has driven around include Ms. USA, MS. Universe and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Not all at the same time)
Las Vegas seemed busier which was nice to see, and Terry confirmed that they were seeing more activity.
We were dropped off at the Stratosphere and went to the VIP area to check in. We were given room 15036 in the select tower. I also got some information about the blackjack tournament I was scheduled to play in. These are comfortable rooms for our purposes- king sized bed, large bath with shower and jetted tub (that we never use), table and chairs, couch, coffee table and tv. We also had counter unit with a small single serve coffee pot, small refrigerator stocked with water and pop, and a sink. The room and furniture are starting to show some wear with scuff marks, and dings in the walls and carpet starting to fray a bit.
The Strat does not have a good video poker inventory. We would be playing some short play stuff in my quest to renew my red card. I needed 72 tier credits and attempted to find out how tier credits were earned. The “answer” is that time, machine type and coin in went into the calculation and that it was better to stay on one machine than to keep moving. Keep moving is generally what I do when I don’t feel the mojo. Like most places, I figure that the tier points are earned faster on the shorter pay machines. I don’t know why the actual formula for earning tier credits is more secret than Russian nuclear launch codes, but they are. I suspect that the lack of transparency allows the casino to arbitrarily change the program whenever they feel like it.
We had made dinner reservations at the Top of the World for 5:30 pm Vegas time (7:30 pm our time) and played some triple play deuces and bonus poker outside the high limit area. These are 98% +/- machines and we didn’t hit anything. We each bought in for $300 and managed to salvage about $100 each after just under an hour of play.
It was already dark when we went up to the Top of the World and the waiter pointed out a full moon coming up. It was impressive and I was also taken aback by how busy the strip was. Traffic looked like the old days- bumper to bumper and barely moving. The restaurant revolves so we checked out the inevitable changes. The SLS was a big change and the Fountainbleu is still as dark as a tomb. I started dinner with my usual Bombay Sapphire Martini- up, dry and dirty. Sonya opted for a glass of Malbec. She had a salad and I had the shrimp/lobster appetizer. We both had 10 ounces filets and ordered a couple of sides. This was a very relaxing and pleasant dinner. We decided to split a crème brule for dessert. The total bill was $222.31 after a 10% discount for my red card. This was fully comped and my martini was $17.00 of the total bill- I am going to savor them more in the future at that price. Normally we go the observation deck to observe people on the rides but decided to go downstairs and play a bit more. The machines were no more generous than they had been pre-dinner so we called it a day.
Day 2:
The in room coffee maker provides not very good coffee, but it does caffeinate me sufficiently to go downstairs to Starbucks for some industrial strength brew.
We were now up with both eyes focused in the same direction so decided to visit the Bellagio and cabbed over. Supposedly there was some $1 8/5 BP spinpoker near the Hermes store but I couldn’t’ find it. There was some spin poker variants but the bank was occupied with some power puffers. We played a little and decided to use some residual comps we had with MGM by having breakfast at the Bellagio Café.
The Bellagio Café had a line but we got to enjoy seeing some large apples being created out of flowers by the Bellagio gardening staff. We walked in and were seated. I had seen an “English Breakfast” on the menu once consisting of three eggs, bangers, rashers, hash browns, baked beans and brown bread. We both ordered this with coffee and orange juice. Set aside the eggs and hash browns that nobody can screw up (not even the Army during my time) and we had a disappointing and expensive meal. The rasher seemed more like Canadian bacon than the true rasher (made from the pork loin with some fat still intact) and the brown bread was actually very dry and cold soda bread. The baked beans consisted of some undercooked white beans served in a thin flavorless tomato sauce. The orange juice tasted fresh squeezed and the coffee was good, but otherwise this was not a very good offering. The bill was over $56.00 which was comped, but still- I expected more from the Bellagio.
We went back to the Stratosphere so I could play in the black jack tournament. My table assignment was table one, position five. I had a name tag that made me official, although I had not played in a tournament like this before. I think I had a stack of funny chips worth nothing, but with denominations like $1,000, $500 and $100. I may have had $5,000.00 face value. We were also given two “hit me again chips” that allowed us to exchange a dealt card once for each chip. My son had counseled me to go big early, the complete opposite of my normal cautious basic strategy approach to black jack. There was a button with a number that rotated through each player so there was no particular advantage to being seated in any position. We were to get dealt through 24 hands. I lost both first hands and played survivor for the remaining hands getting a total of zero black jacks. At the end of the 24 hands, I was out of chips and obviously not headed towards the semi-finals.
I was given a nice bag with the Stratosphere logo and a couple of buffets so it was worth my time. I think I should have used my hit me again chips earlier on my larger bets…..
We played and lost at the multi-game machines again and decided to enjoy the buffet at the Stratosphere. This is a very serviceable buffet and our server was excellent; bright, cheerful and attentive. As I recall, my first plate had a slice of turkey, two California roll sushi, orange chicken chunks, pickled beets and some shredded pork on a tortilla with guacamole and cheese. Sonya opted for far healthier choices with fruit and vegetables. We got some bread pudding with bananas foster sauce to cap it all off.
We made one last run at the multi machines and I did manage to hit four deuces for a grand on one line after being dealt three deuces on the bottom line. It was getting smoky, loud and late so we decided to call it a night. We were joined on the elevator by a very intoxicated young man who decided to pull out a wad of hundreds to show us announcing, “f*ckin’ A, man!” He staggered off at a lower floor obviously enjoying himself. I was impressed that he managed to be drunk but retained enough sense to bring his (presumed) winnings back to the room.
Day 3:
Breakfast the next day was at Roxys, the 50s theme diner at the Strat. I had steak and eggs to build up my strength and Sonya had an eggs Benedict capprezio. This was also comped and rang in at $35.94 including coffee and juice at $2.99 per. Today we were headed off to the Premium Outlets near down town. I like the Brooks Brothers outlet here since I can usually find some significantly marked down clothes suitable for me to wear to work. Of course a Brooks Brothers shirt marked down by 60% is still about twice the cost of a Lands End shirt but I appreciate the quality.
I found some socks and undershirts suitable priced and sized.(cheap/extra large)
Sonya had mistakenly packed a mismatched set of Crocs on this trip for herself and fortunately there was a CROCs store there to help address the situation. We packed all of our stuff into a single bag and took a cab to The Gold Coast.
We left our shopping bag with the bell desk and went over to the upright multigame machines with $1 NSUD. We got considerably more playing time here but no wins. The Gold Coast has an Asian restaurant called Noodle Exchange (exchange for what?). It always seemed packed with Asians which I took as a positive sign similar to seeing some Diner with many big rigs parked outside. We both ordered shrimp pad Thai which was good enough but we were fascinated by many tables having a small gas grill with a pot boiling away.
It looked like you cooked your own noodles at the table- which in a sense defeats the purpose of coming to a restaurant in the first place. “We will now let you bus your own table and wash the dishes.”
We went into the high limit lounge and fired up the triple slant tops with 8/5 BP at 50 cents or $7.50 a twirl. We were actually doing pretty well here and managed to come out up about $800.00 after a while. According to the B Connected website, I added 10,024 points to my account giving me a solid “sapphire” level with a total of 185,852. To make the exalted “emerald”, I need to reach 250,000 points. That means I need another 64,148 points between now and August of 2015. Right now I get regular offers for two nights along with some minimal free play and dining credit. I’m not sure if emerald status would improve the offers that much- but I’ll bet someone can tell me ? Boyd appears to be in one of their periodic comp ratcheting down times but still has plenty of the games I like to play.
We grabbed a cab and headed back to the Strat. Our driver was a wonderful, chatty birdlike grandmother who said that she always wanted to move to Las Vegas, and here she is. She won a progressive jackpot at one point in her life and was able to buy a modest home outright. She was also the most adept driver we had and able to quickly get us to the Strat.
We were still pretty full from our late lunch so passed on dinner while taking one last futile run at the triple play machines. No joy. I did earn over 170 tier credits during the trip so easily kept my red card status and earned bonus points for the year. The Strat had some kind of promotion where I also earned a $50 voucher each day when I swiped my card at the kiosk. I apparently also earned a free pack of cigarettes daily- but I don’t smoke so didn’t cash in this particular incentive.
We had an early flight out in the morning and needed to pack so we headed up to the room. I now had an extra bag from the BJ tournament which was perfect for the dirty laundry. Our limo was scheduled for 4:45 am and after a fitful night of sleep (sleep, wake up, look at the clock, go back to sleep); we were downstairs and ready to fly home. The return flight was uneventful and I don’t have a return trip to Las Vegas planned yet- I had better get right on it.
Cheers.
