Terrified of Vegas - Day 1

This TR starts off just like any other TR, with some ceremonial pics. 

This is a picture of my brand new shoes that I decided to wear for Vegas.

This is a picture of my beginning bankroll for Vegas.

Just kidding! This one is more like it

We flew out of YYZ at 9:30 AM, so we were out the door by 6:30AM. We use the self-check-in kiosks and print our boarding passes. We’re herded through the airport like cattle, the airport wasn’t super busy just a lot of “stations and “check-points” that you have to go through. My theory is that they deliberately do this so that it seems like your “wait time” before you get processed seems quicker. ‘cause you’re spending a few minutes at this station, then herded onto the next one, then passed along onto the next station.

We found our destination gate and followed the herd towards that destination, she was letting everyone else pass through and then we were rudely stopped. She pulled us aside and said “what does the sign say?” pointing towards a sign very far away. We told her we couldn’t read the sign since we weren’t wearing our spectacles, she then asked the next person directly behind us, and they couldn’t read it either. So in the end she read the sign for us, saying that they were currently only boarding people with flight times earlier than 9:15AM and that we would have to wait until the sign changed to match our flight time. 

We moved to the side and watched as some of the people in the line were able to pass through while others received the same sort of treatment and were just as confused as we were. Our conversation at that time was that no one was familiar with their process; they were no signs or anything of that sort, just following everyone else in the same direction. We felt that it was unnecessary for her to single people out like that, treating them like idiots or kids and asking them to read a poorly placed directional sign.

Once the sign changed we were able to pass through her check-point. To help you envision this line better, think of a Costco exit, where they have one employee quickly scanning your cart of 100 items and your very long receipt to see if you stole anything. Same thing here, she just quickly scanned your boarding time to see if you can pass or not. Like I said, all an effort to streamline you, so it doesn’t seem like the queue is so long. 

As we were passing through airport security, both of us forgot to put our liquids in little clear plastic bags, it seems like the emphasis on this is smaller now. Why do I say this? Because there were no signs reminding us of this step, compared to the million signs we saw back in the day. We had to ask them for a little bag, we pulled ourselves to the side and transferred our liquids into the bag. I didn’t transfer all of my stuff into the bag, because it wouldn’t fit. I left out the stuff I was willing to let them throw out. It went through the scanner just fine, like I said, it seems like the rules on that are more relaxed. I didn’t see bins of liquids being thrown away this time.

Shortly after we arrived at the gate, we were able to board, my travel companion managed to sleep through most of the flight, where as I only slept for a little bit. 

Fast forward five hours later and we successfully arrive in VEGAS!  Her first sight of Vegas was just as similar to mine when I first experienced it, as I’m sure the same with many others: OMG. They have slot machines at the Airport!?

We just did carry on, so we didn’t have to wait for baggage claim (that’s the plus side of not wanting to pay $25 each way to check your bags). We make our way to the taxi stand and when I get in, I told him to the Vdara, then make a little comment that he’s one of the better cabbies in Vegas, right? That I don’t need to tell him no tunnel or no freeway? Then he replies with the sarcastic remark of oh don’t worry, I’m going to tunnel you, take you on the freeway and drive you around in circles first. I didn’t laugh.

He didn’t long-haul me. Once we get to the hotel, the meter read $17.52, but he announced $19.52. I thought this was a new tactic were he just adds a $2 tip on for himself, kinda like how some restaurants automatically throw in a 15% tip. So I tossed him a twenty. He looks at it in disgust and goes what’s this? And said to me: people like you deserve to be tunneled! I explained to him that the meter only read $17.52, and then he said that there is a $2 airport fee. So I tossed him a couple of extra bucks and he was on his way.

We get to the very nice hotel lobby and there are only a few people ahead of us checking in at this time around noon. I do the $20 trick, and we’re greeted by someone very nice, who promptly puts the $20 aside in plain view, but she makes us aware and says “let me see what I can do” so I know that it’s working so far, and that she hasn’t rejected it fully just yet! She doesn’t tell me what room I was booked in originally, but she does tell me that she put me in a very high suite on the 29^th floor, with a view overlooking the Bellagio Fountains. She made it seem like the $20 trick worked, so I was happy with it. No complaints!

As predicted, since it’s only noon in Vegas, our room isn’t ready yet, so we’re able to store our bags with the bell hop and they’ll give me a call when the room is ready. I tip the guy a couple of bucks for storing our bags. Our next stop was to find some grub before we navigate and walk our way over to InNOut Burger. We quickly discover that there doesn’t seem to be a food court in Vdara or Aria (the closest neighboring hotel) I guess the hotel is too high class for Food Courts. So we decide to skip it, save time trying to look for food and just start missioning our way over to the burger joint. We’re on the strip now and walking towards Tropicana Blvd, but we bypass all the food options on the strip, because there doesn’t seem to be anything “light” and we don’t want to ruin our appetites for InNOut Burgers. 

We start following the walking direction of Google Maps, it tells us to keep walking along Tropicana Blvd, but the side that we’re on doesn’t have a side walk and we don’t see one in sight on the other side as well. I tell her that last time I did the walk, I had to cut through the Excalibur parking lot, walk, then cross at a freeway in order to get there, and that was a good 25 minute walk. We get to the overpass of Excalibur and NYNY and I point out the path that we would have to try to navigate and we decide to just scrap the mission and hail a cab from Excalibur since we’ve both been up since early morning and haven’t really had anything to eat yet.

We hop in the cab at Excalibur and asks me which InNOut burger I wanted to go to, I told him the one on Dean Martin Dr, ‘cause Google said that was the closest one. This was early afternoon, but traffic there was pretty bad, it might have been further but quicker to get to the other one instead. It ended up being a $17 cab ride with tip! 

We get in and the place is a zoo, with the lineup practically all the way to the door. I tell her that it’s usually like this. I stand in line, while she goes to the menu and takes a closer look. About 30 minutes later, our order is placed, we find 2 seats at the bar stool and our orders are in our hand!

We quickly wolf those down and agree that this was definitely worth the mission!

We decide to try our hand at walking back to the strip, since our bellies are full now and could use the walking. Walking back was much easier, we could easily see the path that we had to take. 

We head on over to the Hooters hotel to sign her up for the players card. They had a $5 match play for a table game and a point redemption system. She played the $5 match play and bet it on Red in Roulette and won that! We then moved over to Video Blackjack to try to earn her the 25 points to redeem for a mini Mason Jar Shot Glass. Sad to say, I think this was one of the better new player sign up promos going on right now that we were able to capitalize on. 

After Hooters we hoofed it over to Tropicana to inquire about their promos. They had the lose $100 get 50% of it back today, the other next month etc. We didn’t capitalize on this, ‘cause we don’t go to Vegas on a monthly basis and $100 was a little too much to commit for someone who just started gambling.

We exited Tropicana and headed towards MGM. I had KA tickets for tomorrow night that I wanted to see if I could pick up. While I was at the box office, the lady asked me if there was anything else, I explained to her that I would need to go to NYNY to pick up Zumanity tickets next and she said she could print them out for me right there as well. So that saved us some time. Once that was taken care of, we began our journey back to Vdara, as we had gotten the call that our room was ready while we were in Tropicana. 

As I had mentioned earlier we were staying at the 29^th floor. The 29^th floor was part of the “second bank” of elevators, where these elevators were only responsible for taking you up to the higher floors. I know 29 sounds high, but as it turns out, 29 was the lowest floor of our elevators. So it was pretty nice, we didn’t have to make any unnecessary stops on the way up or down and we were always the first ones out and last ones on. 

Snapped a few mandatory room pics

We showered and changed, then proceeded to head to the Bacchanal buffet at Caesars Palace. Holy crap! All the weekenders are here now, the streets are packed! It was difficult navigating our way through the streets weaving in and out of people taking pictures and selfies of themselves. About half way through our trek, I realized that I didn’t have the tickets on me. My mind immediately thought the worst, that I dropped the tickets trying to navigate my way through the sea of people. It was too late to turn back now, so we had to quickly head back to our hotel after dinner to pick them up then quickly make our way over to NYNY for Zumanity at 9:30. 

 

When we finally find the buffet at Caesars, holy crap! Another sea of people! The computer screen said that it was an estimated wait time of 2 hours; we didn’t have that kind of time to spare. We had to scrap it and eat at the buffet on a different night. We start walking back to the hotel, figured might as well pick up the tickets first, while we figured out where we were going to go eat. As we’re walking back, I get the bright idea of calling Pampas Brazillian Steakhouse to make a reservation for 7:00 PM as we had a TravelZoo voucher for that so it was also one of the restaurants we were going to hit up. 

We get to the room and thankfully the tickets were just sitting on the desk, now I don’t have to waste more time and go have them reissued at the box office, we also grab the voucher for Pampas. When we finally get there, you guessed it! Another sea of people! Although this was more like a lake of people as the crowd was smaller. We stood in line for about 5-10 minutes just waiting and letting our breath catch up to us, but after that small amount of time, the line didn’t seem like it was moving at all. I tried calling them again to ask that if I had a reservation did I still need to wait in this line, but their line was constantly giving me a busy signal. After someone from behind us cut in front of us, we confronted them about it, but they didn’t acknowledge it and said that they were there the entire time, we were both tired and didn’t want to fight them about it and that left a sour taste in our mouth so we just decided to f*ck it and leave. 

We were in the Miracle Mile shops and there were these two other restaurants facing each other, after a quick glimpse at the menu we decided to settle in at one of these subpar restaurants, ‘cause we were pressed for time, and thoroughly tired of walking. Why did we say they were subpar? Because the restaurants were practically empty!

We settled on Ocean One Bar & Grille. We split a calamari appetizer and I ordered some form of their steak and she ordered some variation of their pizza. My steak was okay, but she didn’t really enjoy her pizza and only ate a couple slices of it. When the pizza came out it looked like they had microwaved her a Delissio pizza, but one that was already defrosted and tasted worse. 

She wasn’t a big fan of the restaurant and didn’t want to order anything else. When the server had come by to take our order, I informed her that we were in a bit of a rush, expecting her to say that she'll try her best to rush our orders or something like that, but all she said was that, she really can't control the kitchen and that was that. With tax and tip, the meal cost exactly $50, service was so slow that I didn't even ask them if I could use my players card to collect points for this dinner. Oh well.

Off to NYNY we go for Zumanity! I make sure to grab us each a coffee before we get to the show, ‘cause you know after a waking up early, a long day of traveling and walking and now we’re going to be parking our keisters in comfy chairs for the next two hours, we’re sure to feel sleepy and doze off. 

I used the MyVegas reward of BOGO. So the additional show ticket worked out to about $60. We got the balcony seats, which are referred to as “cheap seats”, which wasn’t bad IMO, there was nothing obstructing our view, we could still see everything and we weren’t in the front row, which means we weren’t hassled by the stage performers. All in all it was a good show. 

We knew it was a long walk to our hotel and it was almost midnight, which means it was almost 3AM EST. And as with any Vegas trip, your first day is, you’re almost up for almost a full 24 hours!

We had the most difficult time navigating our way to our hotel, there doesn’t seem to be any direct access to Vdara from the strip. We either had to go through Aria or through the Bellagio, which meant a lot more walking!

But before we could go back to our hotel we had to make a pit stop! Every time we  passed by a CVS or a Walgreen's she would need to go in and take a look at their makeup, this time was no exception, however, this time she added a cup of noodle to her shopping list. I felt kinda bad that she resorted to a cup of noodle for a snack as she was in Vegas, but she didn't want anything else.