Summer 2012 – Day 23
The habit of waking up around 4:30 AM is one that’s hard to break, but I suppose when you fall asleep at 9 PM it makes sense. I do like the early mornings. It’s a great time to enjoy a cup of coffee while I type these reports and while most of the rest of the city is still asleep, I find it easier to think, read, and write. I’ve mentioned this in past years, but this is SO completely different than my life at age 22 to 40 when I was a club musician playing guitar and singing for a living starting at 9 PM and going until 2 AM every night for almost 20 years. What a change.
I also want to take a moment out to talk about the housekeeping crew here at the M. When I returned to my room last night, not only did she do the usual vacuum, bed making, and general cleaning, she (yes, I’m making an assumption here) also took all my iphone, ipad, and camera cable that I had left on my desk and wound them up and placed them nicely on the desk. She also took all my toiletries and placed them neatly on a wash cloth. Not only do they take the toilet paper rolls and make a triangle out of the last piece but she also stamps the end with the M logo. Who does that? Simply put, the housekeepers are excellent. I’ll be leaving a generous tip.
Also, some of the LVA members on the paid side have asked about the Diamond monthly free show tickets. As some of you might not know, when the year began, Caesars instituted a new club of sorts and touted it as “new and improved” when exactly the opposite was true with many Platinum and Diamond perks being scaled back including the elimination of the two free tickets to their B level shows. Enough of a backlash was made by the members that they retracted the policy. I was given a list of these and was surprised that not only did they return the perk; they actually added some shows that were not on the list before. Diamond member receive two free tickets (Platinum buy one and get one free) to the following shows: Defending the Caveman; The Harrahs Improv; Legends in Concert; Jeff Civilico; Frank Marino’s Divas; Human Nature; Nathan Burton; Vinnie Favorito; Tony and Tina’s Wedding; Jubilee; Anthony Cools; Empire Comedy; and Penn and Teller. So, as you can see, they’ve really expanded the selection. Today: Better Shows – Tomorrow: Better food in the Diamond Lounges! Call your host or write those letters!
I want to take a moment to answer some comments.
Jdnicoloff: About the full pay machines at the M: you’re right. Being that I play 8/5 BP and Quick Quads the most, I should have done a little more detective work. I do know that the lady next to me was playing 9/6 DDB, but that was for dollars. My detective work needs to be improved. Next time I’m there, I’ll do a better job and look at more of the VP schedules.
jonandjanel: I really don’t know much about the buffets on the Strip because I don’t tend to go to them that often. I do know that the worst is the Flamingo, but when I’m on the Strip, I don’t tend to do buffets unless I get a sweet deal of some kind. I have also had Harrahs breakfast buffet, which is pretty good and of course, yesterday wrote about the Paris breakfast buffet.
BEAGIANT: Thanks SO much for the Padre tickets. My son and I will enjoy them!
On to today’s report: I checked out of my suite and my next stop will be Sam’s Town where I will be for the next two weekends (Sam’s Town is the only comp I get for weekends). However, first I needed to send in yesterday’s report and so I drove to Henderson to fill up at the Costco ($3.22 per gallon) and to Starbucks. I hadn’t had breakfast yet and I had a small dinner, so I drove over to Sunset Station. They have a special on their breakfast buffet for members for only $4.99. I used my points and it occurs to me once again that for locals, it really is much cheaper to eat out than at home. You’d pay more for just a glass of orange juice at the MGM café then an entire buffet here. After breakfast, I made another run at the Triple Deuces for dimes, but got nowhere.
I checked into Sam’s Town and asked for a room on the east side. I like this side of the building because it’s easy to get to and from the parking garage the back way. I stopped in Shepherd’s, the western clothing outlet. I’m not sure why I did. I don’t wear western wear an apparently neither do many others judging by picture. I sat down at a 9/6 Jacks and won ten bucks but it was time to check in.
Shepherds--on the second floor of Sam's Town--not a lot cowboys today
My room is on the third floor and my window faces the back of the faux mountain in the atrium. I was offered a room on the 6th floor and I declined (a mistake). It was nice to see that Sam’s Town has finally upgraded their rooms. For the longest time all the rooms had 19” tube TVs that were all the rage when “The Brady Bunch” was the hit show. The rooms were worn looking and the furniture was just plain old. They’ve changed over to the LG 42’ flat screen TV on a three drawer dresser, new carpet, and it appears even the bathroom had a new counter and sink installed. It’s still rather small by today’s standards, but it’s clean and certainly all that someone like me needs.
After back-to-back suites, it's back to the basics at Sam's Town
The view from my window looking into the atrium
After getting all my things put away and moved in, I headed down to the casino to see if there was anything new and to play again. Outside of the occasional installation of some of the latest machines (I won another $10 at the new Lord of the Ring machines—simply having a good run on these), the casino floor has remained pretty much the same now for about four or five years since their last major remodel. I went to a member promotion kiosk to swipe my card and register for some drawing I won’t win at, but I also printed out my $10 meal comp. This is a new twist to the way comps are dispensed nowadays here. It used to be that you charged comps to your room and it was taken care of at the end of your trip or you had to stand in line at the slot card counter and wait for a boothling to print up the comp for you. Now, you simply swipe your card and you’re given a voucher for whatever the comp might be from movie tickets, to match plays, to meal comps. Other hotels should take notice.
I went back to the 9/6 Jacks or Better progressive (the best VP schedules in the place) and this turned out to be a wrong turn. Though I was able to play for a good long while accruing plenty of points, I simply couldn’t catch any quads and end up losing on this session. I decided this would be the end of my gambling for the day.
This weekend is going to be a busy one for me. Today I’m meeting LVA members Dave and Julie (timberwolf) who are driving in from San Diego this afternoon, tomorrow we are all going to be meeting up with Terry and Louise (dorianmac) who are flying back in from Hawaii late tonight, and then there’s the MPT meet at the South Point that evening, and finally Sunday night, two ex-students are coming into town to see a show, which I’ll explain more later.
The original plan was to meet at the Planet Hollywood Diamond Lounge at 4:00. I drove into town and parked once again in Bill’s Gambling Hall’s parking lot and was very surprised to find NO parking on the first three floors. This is a first. I’ve never seen this parking lot full before in all the years I’ve been coming here. To my knowledge there’s not special event going on: major convention, title fight, and it isn’t a holiday. I end up parking on the very top floor in the sun. It’s 108 degrees today and I hate parking in the heat, but I don’t have much of a choice. At least it’s getting late in the afternoon and the sun will be going down in a few hours. I walked over to Ballys and into the Paris when I called Dave to see if they had checked in yet (they’re staying at the Paris). They were still just past Baker, CA because there was a rollover fatal accident and they got stuck in look-e-loo traffic. I told them I’d hang out in the Paris Diamond Lounge until they got here, which would be about an hour and a half.
I sat down at the bar in the Paris Diamond Lounge and nursed a beer while watching the Yankee/Red Sox game. A couple came in and sat down next to me and we struck up a conversation about how we’d improve the country (isn’t it interesting that America is going through these tough times when in just about every bar in the country there are people with all the solutions?) I told him he was just the guy who could answer a question I’ve been stirring around with for years. I think America needs to put its electric grid underground. I explained to him that every year, we read about tens of thousands of people losing power due to ice storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires and so forth. We managed to put all our plumbing underground, we’ve managed to stretch an Interstate system crisscrossing the country in every which way, and why not train and put people to work to begin putting the grid underground? Was I missing something? Is the technology out there to make this possible? A new neighborhood being built has all its electrical needs buried underground—why not the entire country? He told me the technology is there and we could. Okay! Next topic: “Have you ever noticed that if you hear the jingle, ‘I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener…’ that it sticks in your head for hours?” That’s about the gist of the conversations that go on at the bar in the Diamond Lounge.
At 5:30, Dave called and said he and Julie were checked into their room and they were on their way down. We took a table and Dave called a friend of his, Norman, who along with his friend Thomas were in town for the weekend and who were waiting for us at Planet Hollywood. We told them to come to us at the Paris. We checked them in at the front desk in the Diamond Lounge (each member is allowed one non-diamond guest) and they joined us for drinks and snacks. Both Norman and Thomas are Vegas newbie’s (of a sort) and are staying at Aria for the weekend. Neither had been in a Diamond Lounge before. It didn’t take long for the drinks to start coming. We stayed there for about an hour and then we all walked over to the Planet Hollywood Diamond Lounge and sat in the back room where the large wall-size TV is at and ordered more shots. We began toasting everything from Holly Madison to chanting USA, USA, USA (we were watching the opening of the Olympics—an especially loud cheer went up in the room when Queen Elizabeth jumped out of the helicopter with James Bond).
Now I should mention that I was the stick-in-the-mud here. It’s not that I wasn’t joining in the fun; I simply wasn’t joining in the shots and other rounds of drinks. I was the only one driving as I had to drive back to Sam’s Town later, so I stopped after one shot and switched to Diet Pepsi and coffee. The name of the shots now escape me (I’ll find out later and update) but I think they were called a Dirty Roy. It’s one of those things like a Long Island Ice Tea that is made up of four or five liquors, but has no alcohol taste—a recipe for disaster. The group had four of those along with their regular drinks. Needless to say—a great time was had by all.
Guy on the left joined in for the picture--then Julie, Dave, Norman, and Thomas at shot #3
After we closed down the joint, the group headed for somewhere else, I do not know, but I headed back to Bill’s to get my car and drive back to Sam’s Town. The Strip on a Friday night is C-R-A-Z-Y! There were so many people it was almost difficult to walk. The porn slappers were slapping, the costumed panhandlers were having pictures taken, and little children were doing their best to keep up with their speed-walking parents. As I crossed the street from Ballys to Bill’s, two motorcycle cops had drove up onto the sidewalk, taken some shirtless dude down to the pavement and cuffed him. As I got closer I found that there was a fight between two tattooed dudes over something to do with bumping into someone—I don’t know. It just made me think what it must be like to be a patrolman in Las Vegas on a weekend night. Who needs to pay a hundred bucks for show tickets when you could just stand on the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Blvd and be entertained all night long?
Atrium show begins at Sam's Town
When I got back to Sam’s Town, the atrium’s water show was beginning. It’s been pretty much been the same show for years always ending with the classic “God Bless the USA” with water blasting 50ft high and colored lasers streaming all over the atrium—only in Vegas.
More tomorrow
The habit of waking up around 4:30 AM is one that’s hard to break, but I suppose when you fall asleep at 9 PM it makes sense. I do like the early mornings. It’s a great time to enjoy a cup of coffee while I type these reports and while most of the rest of the city is still asleep, I find it easier to think, read, and write. I’ve mentioned this in past years, but this is SO completely different than my life at age 22 to 40 when I was a club musician playing guitar and singing for a living starting at 9 PM and going until 2 AM every night for almost 20 years. What a change.
I also want to take a moment out to talk about the housekeeping crew here at the M. When I returned to my room last night, not only did she do the usual vacuum, bed making, and general cleaning, she (yes, I’m making an assumption here) also took all my iphone, ipad, and camera cable that I had left on my desk and wound them up and placed them nicely on the desk. She also took all my toiletries and placed them neatly on a wash cloth. Not only do they take the toilet paper rolls and make a triangle out of the last piece but she also stamps the end with the M logo. Who does that? Simply put, the housekeepers are excellent. I’ll be leaving a generous tip.
Also, some of the LVA members on the paid side have asked about the Diamond monthly free show tickets. As some of you might not know, when the year began, Caesars instituted a new club of sorts and touted it as “new and improved” when exactly the opposite was true with many Platinum and Diamond perks being scaled back including the elimination of the two free tickets to their B level shows. Enough of a backlash was made by the members that they retracted the policy. I was given a list of these and was surprised that not only did they return the perk; they actually added some shows that were not on the list before. Diamond member receive two free tickets (Platinum buy one and get one free) to the following shows: Defending the Caveman; The Harrahs Improv; Legends in Concert; Jeff Civilico; Frank Marino’s Divas; Human Nature; Nathan Burton; Vinnie Favorito; Tony and Tina’s Wedding; Jubilee; Anthony Cools; Empire Comedy; and Penn and Teller. So, as you can see, they’ve really expanded the selection. Today: Better Shows – Tomorrow: Better food in the Diamond Lounges! Call your host or write those letters!
I want to take a moment to answer some comments.
Jdnicoloff: About the full pay machines at the M: you’re right. Being that I play 8/5 BP and Quick Quads the most, I should have done a little more detective work. I do know that the lady next to me was playing 9/6 DDB, but that was for dollars. My detective work needs to be improved. Next time I’m there, I’ll do a better job and look at more of the VP schedules.
jonandjanel: I really don’t know much about the buffets on the Strip because I don’t tend to go to them that often. I do know that the worst is the Flamingo, but when I’m on the Strip, I don’t tend to do buffets unless I get a sweet deal of some kind. I have also had Harrahs breakfast buffet, which is pretty good and of course, yesterday wrote about the Paris breakfast buffet.
BEAGIANT: Thanks SO much for the Padre tickets. My son and I will enjoy them!
On to today’s report: I checked out of my suite and my next stop will be Sam’s Town where I will be for the next two weekends (Sam’s Town is the only comp I get for weekends). However, first I needed to send in yesterday’s report and so I drove to Henderson to fill up at the Costco ($3.22 per gallon) and to Starbucks. I hadn’t had breakfast yet and I had a small dinner, so I drove over to Sunset Station. They have a special on their breakfast buffet for members for only $4.99. I used my points and it occurs to me once again that for locals, it really is much cheaper to eat out than at home. You’d pay more for just a glass of orange juice at the MGM café then an entire buffet here. After breakfast, I made another run at the Triple Deuces for dimes, but got nowhere.
I checked into Sam’s Town and asked for a room on the east side. I like this side of the building because it’s easy to get to and from the parking garage the back way. I stopped in Shepherd’s, the western clothing outlet. I’m not sure why I did. I don’t wear western wear an apparently neither do many others judging by picture. I sat down at a 9/6 Jacks and won ten bucks but it was time to check in.
Shepherds--on the second floor of Sam's Town--not a lot cowboys today
My room is on the third floor and my window faces the back of the faux mountain in the atrium. I was offered a room on the 6th floor and I declined (a mistake). It was nice to see that Sam’s Town has finally upgraded their rooms. For the longest time all the rooms had 19” tube TVs that were all the rage when “The Brady Bunch” was the hit show. The rooms were worn looking and the furniture was just plain old. They’ve changed over to the LG 42’ flat screen TV on a three drawer dresser, new carpet, and it appears even the bathroom had a new counter and sink installed. It’s still rather small by today’s standards, but it’s clean and certainly all that someone like me needs.
After back-to-back suites, it's back to the basics at Sam's Town
The view from my window looking into the atrium
After getting all my things put away and moved in, I headed down to the casino to see if there was anything new and to play again. Outside of the occasional installation of some of the latest machines (I won another $10 at the new Lord of the Ring machines—simply having a good run on these), the casino floor has remained pretty much the same now for about four or five years since their last major remodel. I went to a member promotion kiosk to swipe my card and register for some drawing I won’t win at, but I also printed out my $10 meal comp. This is a new twist to the way comps are dispensed nowadays here. It used to be that you charged comps to your room and it was taken care of at the end of your trip or you had to stand in line at the slot card counter and wait for a boothling to print up the comp for you. Now, you simply swipe your card and you’re given a voucher for whatever the comp might be from movie tickets, to match plays, to meal comps. Other hotels should take notice.
I went back to the 9/6 Jacks or Better progressive (the best VP schedules in the place) and this turned out to be a wrong turn. Though I was able to play for a good long while accruing plenty of points, I simply couldn’t catch any quads and end up losing on this session. I decided this would be the end of my gambling for the day.
This weekend is going to be a busy one for me. Today I’m meeting LVA members Dave and Julie (timberwolf) who are driving in from San Diego this afternoon, tomorrow we are all going to be meeting up with Terry and Louise (dorianmac) who are flying back in from Hawaii late tonight, and then there’s the MPT meet at the South Point that evening, and finally Sunday night, two ex-students are coming into town to see a show, which I’ll explain more later.
The original plan was to meet at the Planet Hollywood Diamond Lounge at 4:00. I drove into town and parked once again in Bill’s Gambling Hall’s parking lot and was very surprised to find NO parking on the first three floors. This is a first. I’ve never seen this parking lot full before in all the years I’ve been coming here. To my knowledge there’s not special event going on: major convention, title fight, and it isn’t a holiday. I end up parking on the very top floor in the sun. It’s 108 degrees today and I hate parking in the heat, but I don’t have much of a choice. At least it’s getting late in the afternoon and the sun will be going down in a few hours. I walked over to Ballys and into the Paris when I called Dave to see if they had checked in yet (they’re staying at the Paris). They were still just past Baker, CA because there was a rollover fatal accident and they got stuck in look-e-loo traffic. I told them I’d hang out in the Paris Diamond Lounge until they got here, which would be about an hour and a half.
I sat down at the bar in the Paris Diamond Lounge and nursed a beer while watching the Yankee/Red Sox game. A couple came in and sat down next to me and we struck up a conversation about how we’d improve the country (isn’t it interesting that America is going through these tough times when in just about every bar in the country there are people with all the solutions?) I told him he was just the guy who could answer a question I’ve been stirring around with for years. I think America needs to put its electric grid underground. I explained to him that every year, we read about tens of thousands of people losing power due to ice storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires and so forth. We managed to put all our plumbing underground, we’ve managed to stretch an Interstate system crisscrossing the country in every which way, and why not train and put people to work to begin putting the grid underground? Was I missing something? Is the technology out there to make this possible? A new neighborhood being built has all its electrical needs buried underground—why not the entire country? He told me the technology is there and we could. Okay! Next topic: “Have you ever noticed that if you hear the jingle, ‘I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener…’ that it sticks in your head for hours?” That’s about the gist of the conversations that go on at the bar in the Diamond Lounge.
At 5:30, Dave called and said he and Julie were checked into their room and they were on their way down. We took a table and Dave called a friend of his, Norman, who along with his friend Thomas were in town for the weekend and who were waiting for us at Planet Hollywood. We told them to come to us at the Paris. We checked them in at the front desk in the Diamond Lounge (each member is allowed one non-diamond guest) and they joined us for drinks and snacks. Both Norman and Thomas are Vegas newbie’s (of a sort) and are staying at Aria for the weekend. Neither had been in a Diamond Lounge before. It didn’t take long for the drinks to start coming. We stayed there for about an hour and then we all walked over to the Planet Hollywood Diamond Lounge and sat in the back room where the large wall-size TV is at and ordered more shots. We began toasting everything from Holly Madison to chanting USA, USA, USA (we were watching the opening of the Olympics—an especially loud cheer went up in the room when Queen Elizabeth jumped out of the helicopter with James Bond).
Now I should mention that I was the stick-in-the-mud here. It’s not that I wasn’t joining in the fun; I simply wasn’t joining in the shots and other rounds of drinks. I was the only one driving as I had to drive back to Sam’s Town later, so I stopped after one shot and switched to Diet Pepsi and coffee. The name of the shots now escape me (I’ll find out later and update) but I think they were called a Dirty Roy. It’s one of those things like a Long Island Ice Tea that is made up of four or five liquors, but has no alcohol taste—a recipe for disaster. The group had four of those along with their regular drinks. Needless to say—a great time was had by all.
Guy on the left joined in for the picture--then Julie, Dave, Norman, and Thomas at shot #3
After we closed down the joint, the group headed for somewhere else, I do not know, but I headed back to Bill’s to get my car and drive back to Sam’s Town. The Strip on a Friday night is C-R-A-Z-Y! There were so many people it was almost difficult to walk. The porn slappers were slapping, the costumed panhandlers were having pictures taken, and little children were doing their best to keep up with their speed-walking parents. As I crossed the street from Ballys to Bill’s, two motorcycle cops had drove up onto the sidewalk, taken some shirtless dude down to the pavement and cuffed him. As I got closer I found that there was a fight between two tattooed dudes over something to do with bumping into someone—I don’t know. It just made me think what it must be like to be a patrolman in Las Vegas on a weekend night. Who needs to pay a hundred bucks for show tickets when you could just stand on the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Blvd and be entertained all night long?
Atrium show begins at Sam's Town
When I got back to Sam’s Town, the atrium’s water show was beginning. It’s been pretty much been the same show for years always ending with the classic “God Bless the USA” with water blasting 50ft high and colored lasers streaming all over the atrium—only in Vegas.
More tomorrow
