Being a Caesar’s 7 Star player does add pleasurable perks:  

• A large corner suite at both hotels, with the one in Biloxi equipped with a spacious 2-person Jacuzzi overlooking the Gulf.  Such luxury certainly encourages “fun in the room”!!!
•  Free in-room movies – being movie buffs, we watched six.
• A welcoming goodie basket at both places. 
• The free once-a-month spa treatment in Biloxi provided Brad a facial, me a pedicure.
• No waiting around for shuttles or rental car battles with traffic – limos to and from the airport and between Biloxi and New Orleans.

In New Orleans, we played one of our favorite VP games, Not-So-Ugly-Ducks, in $1 Triple Play and Ten Play.  No royals, but frequent 4-deuce hands kept our losses low.  We couldn’t use our free play on those machines so instead of choosing a lower-EV video poker game, we decided on a just-for-fun option for a change, slot machines!   It’s interesting to  try new games, especially the new community ones where it is fun to join the whole bank of players routing for a big bonus.   And much to our surprise – I am always surprised to get lucky on slots – we were able to turn almost all the free play amount into cash.

In Biloxi the best game was not up to our usual EV standards but we played a minimum amount so as not to look like a piker who picks up free play without giving any action.   We were able to use our free play on these machines.

Remember I said in Part 1 of this series that our primary goal for this trip was for fun and relaxation.  And we certainly achieved that goal.  But as you all know, I try to be as frugal as possible at all times.  So, if by careful planning and diligent searching for casino extras I can reduce the cost of a just-for-fun vacation – well, that is also a good goal.  Free transportation, free lodging, and free meals helped us achieve that objective.

And here is the best part of a casino just-for-fun vacation.  With a careful choice of games and lots of free play, you have a good chance of reducing your losses or breaking even.  And many times you can, as we did this trip, have all the fun and pull out a profit too!! 

I guess you might say we have mixed goals!  However, if gambling ever ceases to be fun for us, profit alone will certainly never motivate us.

When we do decide to travel, our out-of-town trips are usually combos, with both visits with family and to casinos.  However, recently we took a trip south, one that was for the single purpose of visiting casinos, namely, Harrah’s New Orleans and the Grand Biloxi. I thought it might be a helpful resource if I gave a very detailed report of this trip, telling the how’s and why’s.  It probably will be a long report that I will have to chop up in segments.  And it  probably will be somewhat rambling since the teacher in me is hard to keep down – I figure I will have to stop frequently to give a “lesson.”

So here goes!  I am an old hand at planning out-of-town trips to casinos.  Brad’s and my first casino-bound trip was in March of 1984, from Indianapolis to Las Vegas.  We came on a 4-day-3-night travel-agency package that had us staying at the aging Landmark.  We didn’t have much information about Vegas and even less about casino gambling before that trip, but we had so much fun on that visit that on the plane home we started figuring out how we could go back soon.  I went to the library and checked out a whole stack of books on gambling. And within a few weeks we received a mailer from the Westward Ho (where I had given my name to a pit boss while I was playing a very uninformed game of blackjack on that first visit), with an offer of 3 free nights,.  That offer spurred us to make our second visit the following September.

So, now 27 ½ years later, I am using those same resources and tools, albeit as someone who is much older but wiser – and has more experience under her much-larger belt!  The impetus for this recent trip came from – you guessed it – mailers.  We get scores of mailers every week – in our snail-mail box and my computer Inbox.  With increased competition from the proliferation of casinos all over the country and the bad economy limiting people’s discretionary income, casinos are digging deeper into their databases – and doing more cross-property promotions – than I have ever seen before.  I love this situation because it gives us more choices and I can cherry-pick the best.

We used to visit Harrah’s New Orleans quite frequently because they sent us great offers – free food, big free-play amounts, and enough airfare reimbursement to cover our tickets.  But during the last year or so, the offers had declined considerably, to low levels that we could not see it as a positive play for us anymore even though they still had some good video poker paytables.  However, after about a year of non-play there, we were surprised to get what I call we-miss-you-mailers, with offers that were more like the ones we got in the good old days.   (Lesson:  Try putting a casino in “time-out” for awhile and see if you might get a please-come-back mailer.  Many casinos decrease their offers to regular players, figuring they are going to come anyway!)

To further encourage us to take this trip, we  also received mailers from Grand Biloxi.  We had been receiving very strong mailers from them every since a couple of combo trips there earlier in the year when we could also see all or part of the Frugal Princess family who live just 5 hours away.  However, the offers weren’t good enough for us to make a special trip that far from Vegas  . But now they looked pretty  juicy if we could combine them with a visit to Harrah’s New Orleans and their offers.

So after studying all the mailers we each received from both properties, I realized we could do a double combo:  Not only combine a visit to two properties, but choose a date for the visits that covered two (monthly) offer periods and double the amount of benefits we could collect.

(Big lesson:  Be an ice-cream-cone gambler.  Pile high as many dips of offers/promotions as you can.  This works well for us on a local level as well as on out-of-town trips.)

Stay tuned for Part 2.

With only a quick stop at McDonald’s for lunch, we arrived late afternoon in New Orleans and checked into Harrah’s hotel.  Brad and I found one of our favorite VP machine open, $1 Triple Play NSUDs.  Angela was tired from the long drive and fighting a bad cold so she took a nap.  Steve and the kids walked around the waterfront,  doing geocaching and sightseeing.  Then we all met back at the room and went to the Grand Isle Restaurant for dinner.

Having kids with us in New Orleans necessitates some special arrangements since no one under 21 is  allowed entry into the casino, even to go to a food outlet.  So that rules out the food court and the buffet.  But this has not been a problem during any of our visits during the holidays the last three years.  The kids feel it is a treat to have room service for breakfast and we can always bring them carry-out from the casino food court.  Plus we can take them to any of Harrah’s partner restaurants not in the casino itself, with Ruth’s Chris Steak House in the hotel being a handy choice. 

However, their favorite  is Gordon Biersch’s Brewery Restaurant, where we have had one of our 7 Star “celebration dinners” each year.  We usually have other relatives in town to help us use up the $500 that must be used for that one meal – we are all too frugal to let any of that go to waste!  This year we had a real surprise during our meal here.  Drew Brees and his family and friends were also eating there.  Although the Saints had lost that Sunday afternoon, the fans filling the restaurant went wild , with yells and chants of “Who dat” following  the Brees group as they  filed out.

Since this was Brad’s  free 7 Star trip (I still have to use mine), we had two nice adjoining rooms.  We usually get a huge suite, but because of it being New Year’s Eve weekend, plus a Saints game, we weren’t quite high enough on the gambler totem pole this year.   But with two adjoining rooms, one a mini-suite, we had plenty of room for 4 adults and 3 teenagers to spread out.

We enjoy the perks in New Orleans of being 7 Star.  We can always get carriage rides.  This year we gave one to Zachary and Taylor for a little romantic getaway from the group.  And there was an improved perk we really took advantage of.  7 Stars usually get free room movies but in the past in NO you were limited to one per room per “trip.”  They recently changed it to TWO free movies per DAY.  So with 2 rooms we had a total of 12 free movies – and I think we used them all since the kids – and their parents – are all avid movie watchers.  Brad and I didn’t watch as many since we had “work” to do in the casino, but Ang and Steve “helped” us with that some of the time.

Monday one car took back the part of the family that had to go to work or had other things they had to do on Tuesday.  On Tuesday morning the second car took the rest of the Columbus family home.  Brad and I got a late checkout Tuesday afternoon and then our limo to the airport picked us up and threaded through the packed streets full of Suger Bowl fans.

Our plane was about an hour late leaving NO, but we finally arrived back in Vegas nonstop about 8:30 p.m.  Our friends picked us up.  We stopped at a couple of casinos to pick up free play.  And then it was Home Sweet Home!

There is never a boring day at the Frugal Princess family home:  opening gifts on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning; on-going Wii competitions to counteract the never-ending too-much rich food; watching football; taking in a local hockey game (Brad, Steve, and Zachary only); endless shopping to help us “get rid of” a stack of gift cards compliments of many Vegas casinos,  Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Bass Pro Shops, Macy’s, gas cards  (the kids’ favorite since they both have their own cars now); and the always-popular Visa cards that can be used anywhere.

After 9 days in Columbus, GA, the whole bunch of us piled in two cars and headed to Harrah’s New Orleans. But that opens a whole new story I don’t have time to tell  until I clear out my computer Inbox and desk In basket, both overflowing and crying for attention. 

Brad is on the couch now, sleeping off jetlag but soon he will be awake and wanting his “assignment” for the day.  Good friends picked us up at the airport last night and since they are players themselves, we were organized to stop at a couple of casinos on our way home to pick up bounce-back.  We all had cash coupons at Ellis Island and free play at Tuscany, where we played a short time to earn some gift cards.  But sometime today Brad will need to hit Silverton, Hard Rock, and Palms to pick up BB that will be expiring at midnight.

So, stay tuned for our New Orleans adventure.  (By the way, if you don’t like to keep checking every day or so to see whether I have written a new blog entry, you can “Subscribe” at the top of any blog page and receive an e-mail when I post a new one.)