Trip Report - Belated May 22 - 29th

Hey There

Just a quick Trip Report and few musings from my latest trip to Vegas – was my first trip for 18 months so excited to be heading out to my Fav city again oh and a new home base casino

Flights

Flew Virgin from Manchester direct to Vegas – We had managed to accumulate enough air miles to upgrade from Premium Economy to Upper Class and on a 10hr flight this was defiantly worthwhile. Had a great flight over and landed feeling refreshed and ready to go.

Hotel

We have stayed at the Luxor for the past 3 years and after a enjoying Aria’s Casino so much on our last trip we decided to book there for this week. At Luxor we can normally get a Tower Premier Suite and Connecting Tower Queen room comped up front and end up getting all the food taken off when we leave.

At Aria our new Host offered us a City View Corner Suite at Platinum Rate and a connecting Queen Room fully comped up front. Was about $2200.00 for the week including Memorial Day weekend. Also hooked us up with free limo pick up from the airport. (Host knocked us $600 off at the back end so total was $1600.00 when we left).

When we arrived at the Aria we found that our room was a smoking room and in fairness I hadn’t specified either way with the host, only other corner suite available with connecting queen room was on the 3rd floor.
We took the 3rd floor room and whilst it was a nice room and a lot nicer than the Luxor I wasn’t blown away by it like I thought I would be. I think it was the low floor that killed it for me. Bellagio Suite with fountain view had a much bigger Wow factor when walking in.

Overall the hotel and pool area are fantastic and I really enjoyed the hotel. Staff were always really helpful and willing to go the extra mile for you.

Gambling

Gambled a lot this trip as usual.

Aria - For the first time I got to see what my final rating was with the casino. They logged me at 40 hours of play with a $60 average bet. They had me down $1000 for the trip but in reality this was much closer to $3000 and I don’t know why it didn’t tally up.

Hit a few decent Pai Gow hands for bonus’s including 2 straight flushes that paid over $1000 each. Highlight hand – I always “squeeze” the cards and after looking at the first five had a straight flush; sixth card gave me an open ended straight flush…… Basically with the last card I had 2 shots at making the 7 card straight flush paying 8000-1 and another shot with the joker for a 1000-1 payday. With $22 on the bonus it would have been a monster. Sadly it didn’t happen but for that second I really thought it would. Lol. That’s why we play I guess.

Seemed to win at the carnie games such as 4 card poker and ultimate Texas Holdem but couldn’t do well at anything else.

Casinos

Aria – like I said before loved it. Nice Room, Great Pool, Fantastic Casino, Excellent Restaurants

Cosmo – loved this place last year but not so much this visit. Too busy over Memorial Day weekend in the casino; no poker room and some people with some very high opinions of themselves wandering around. Lol. Overall nice property but a weird vibe.

Paris – Spent a few hours in here if we had breakfast at Mon Ami Gabi and enjoyed it. I like it here, just seems chilled and relaxed but maybe because I always go there at 8am in the morning.

Cromwell – Looks fantastic; casino was very nice and the dealers excellent – one major downside was the noise from Drais – it felt like we were in the club – too much and caused us to leave in the end.

Food
Aria Café – Heard a few bad reviews but we couldn’t fault it for a quick easy breakfast or lunch option. If you’re e hungry at breakfast give the “Deuces Wild” a try.

Aria Buffett – ate here comped on MyVegas game. Decent eats but the queue was insane long for some reason (midweek). Mlife Silver card or over gets the queue jump and it was well worthwhile.

Burger Bar @ Mandalay Place – great as always – never had a bad meal here all the times we have been to Vegas. My Favourite Burger Spot.

Holsteins @ Cosmo – Wow I wanted this place to be good. I’d read so many good reviews, checked out the menu and could see this been our new go to place burger restaurant for the trip since we were staying at Aria. That’s until we tried it. Never been so disappointed in any meal in Vegas. Poor food, cold burger, terrible uninterested service. Wont be going back.

Mon Ami Gabi – Again headed here for breakfast several times. Love it here on a morning chilling out people watching over some good food.

Lemongrass @ Aria – Only ate here once for dinner. All three of us loved the place. Great Thai food that we really couldn’t fault. Wish we had gone earlier in the trip and defo would have returned.

Julian Serrano @ Aria – Was good but not amazing. Some of the dishes good and some just average. Overall felt too big a place for Tapas and the vibe wasn’t quite right. Still ok just not amazing.

Jean George Steakhouse @ Aria – Saved this place for our blowout meal on the last night and we weren’t disappointed. Food, service, wine all of it was superb. I had the 26oz Tomahawk steak (about 10oz of that is bone) and it was excellent. Dare I say one of the best steaks I’ve had. Couple of bottles of red and the bill for 3 of us was $550.00 plus tip. Yes expensive but what a great meal.

Anyway that’s about all I can remember.

Cheers for all the tips leading up to the trip and I’m sure I’ll be back asking questions before the next one.


Redders

Cool TR, I think that's the first Aria TR i've ever read, good to know a little more about it as I know nothing about the place(not sure we've ever even walked into the the place).

I've been wanting to try my luck at pai gow but haven't done so yet, think I'm gonna have to give it a go next time for sure. Wish you'd hit that SF for the monster payout, would've been nice.

18 months... wow. How did you hold out so long. These boards help sometimes

Sad to hear that about Holsteins...it always get such good reviews.
Thanks for the report..

Really informative TR, and concise!

I've been told I should try Pai Gow for years...guess I need to.
I also wish you had filled in that straight flush. Darn!
I'm a sucker for a game with a side bonus bet, i.e. Blackjack Switch.

We LOVE Mon Ami in the morning for their Blueberry French Toast and a side of their wonderful bacon...go every trip. But...we had an unhappy dinner in there several trips ago--so dark we almost couldn't read the menu, so loud we couldn't communicate with our snooty server who didn't speak much English, either that or he was overdoing the Francais thing. He acted shocked, shocked, like we were Nazi invaders when I asked if they had a good Riesling wine...silly me, this is a French place, why would they have German wine? Sorry, I'm not a wine person by any stretch, it is either White Zin or a good Riesling. He had me sample one of theirs that was pure vinegar, which of course I declined and that sealed the deal...he wasn't going to like us and we couldn't wait to get outta there. Probably just one of those things that can happen in a good place, but it'll take a team of horses (and somebody else paying) to get us in there for dinner again.

Hint about your smoking room issue: Once we walked into a non-smoking room (Bellagio) but clearly some folks had smoked in it before us. Strong smoke odor, was sure we'd have move. Housekeeping supervisor offered to fumigate, and if it didn't satisfy they would move us pronto. I was skeptical. We didn't unpack, left the room for a couple hours while they did it (they were pulling the machinery in as we left), and amazingly the smoke odor was totally gone when we came back! Might be worth a try if you ever get in that situation again.

Blade

I know - 18months away killed me.

I just end up on the message boards everyday trying to get some sort of Vegas fix. Or review resteraunts and hotels and stuff planning the trip.

Think i might not be back for at least a couple of years now - work and family reasons - all good things but just wont get the spare time.

I am really envious of people who can fly into Vegas from the US for a long weekend etc. That would be awesome.

Blonde4ever - i know - I checked it out on loads of review sites prior to my trip and was really excited about going. So Disapointed. I read lots of good things on other peoples trip reports about the place and they were all positive too.

Maybe I just had a bad one off experience but our bill was $90 for the three of us for burgers it has to be good everytime.

I know what you're saying about the bad experience - sometimes you can go somewhere good and it just goes wrong - you can feel it happening but cant stop it.

Good tip on the smoking room - i think i would have gone for the high floor if i had of known this.