First of all thanks for taking the time to read my reports after every trip that I make. I’ve been writing these reports for over 5 years now. Each report has been a step by step account of every trip and each report is full of detail. It takes many hours to create these reports and I have enjoyed writing them. With that in mind I would like to let everyone know that this will be my FINAL detailed report. I have grown tired of writing them with such detail and I spend too much of my valuable Las Vegas time writing them. I have also found that in reading them myself that they have all started sounding the same! Never fear though. I will still do reports, just much shorter and with less of the detail. My plan is to follow a new format (yet to be determined) to provide as much information as possible but with out retracing my every move. Now with that all said; here is the latest trip report. Enjoy!
Day 1 Monday July 14, 2003
Welcome to my latest trip report. It’s about 4:30am here in NY. Why am I up at 4:30am? No, it’s not to get ready for work. It’s because today is the day I once again return to Las Vegas.
I left the house around 5:30am to make the journey to Newark where I will be flying today. Yesterday I picked up a rental car from the local airport that I drove to Newark and dropped off down there. This is cheaper than actually parking my own car at Newark and I don’t have to leave my car down there worrying about it for the next 2 weeks. They gave me an Oldsmobile Alero with 18,000 miles on it. I didn’t realize it until after I got the car home but this is a mid-sized car. I had reserved and paid for a full size. It wasn’t worth going back to the airport though. As much as this pissed me off there was only a $2 difference in price.
It was early enough in the morning that there was no traffic and the trip went smooth. One minor highlight was when I stopped outside the Meadowlands to top off the gas tank. I always stop at the same Exxon station every trip to do this. In NJ gas is all full serve so the attendant came over and I had him fill the tank. My total was a whole $3. I handed him a $5 bill and he hands me back $3 in change. Now the right thing to do here would have been to return the extra dollar but I didn’t. The reason for this is if you remember in my last report the attendant didn’t have any change on him and I got screwed out of 50 cents. Now I have the upper hand!
When I dropped off the car off the agent told me I had to go inside to get my paper work completed. When I got in the agent inside found it more important to put lotion on her hands, put her rings on and chat with her co-worker than to take care of me. Finally she took care of me and it turns out the agent in Newburgh never entered my rental into their computer. After she realized this I was on my way to the terminal.
There was no line at the America West counter and in less than 2 minutes I was on my way to security. For the first time in years there was a huge wait at all 3 lines. It wasn’t moving very fast but I blame security for this. They were making everyone remove their shoes, which is no longer required but yet they were asking everyone to do it anyway. I eventually got through and got to my gate.
Once I got to the terminal I grabbed some crackers from the newsstand for the flight. This is where my second win of the day happened. The crackers were way over priced at 85 cents. I gave the girl a dollar and she gave me 45 cents change. Again, the right thing to do would be to return the extra but she was more interested in bull shitting with her co-worker and not paying attention to what she was doing. Nothing pisses me off more than employees that ignore and make customers wait while they screw off.
Shortly after this they started the pre boarding and for some reason everyone decides they need to get in line regardless of their group number. America West really screwed up allowing this to happen.
We departed a few minutes late but nothing major. This is flight 78 and is non-stop all of the way to Las Vegas. It’s on an Airbus 320. The flight is pretty full with very few open seats. Luckily there is an open seat between me and the guy on the aisle. We are supposed to arrive at 10:17am but the captain has just come on the PA and said we would be getting there about 30 minutes early. This sounds good to me because the flight is way too long.
There is no meal on America West flights but we got the tiny pretzels and a soda. I also had those discount crackers from the airport.
I am beat now after only sleeping 3 hours in the last 2 days so it’s naptime. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep off a good part of this long boring flight. More to come after my nap!
Well I got an hour or so of sleep until they showed the preview of the movie and the captain came on the PA. Today’s movie is Bringing Down the House with Steve Martin and QueenLatifah. Like always they charge $5 for entertainment service (headphone rental) but I still have the old set I lifted from first class last year! The movie was ok but like with most movies they showed the best parts in the commercials on TV. After the movie I took another short nap and woke up to the plane starting to slow down. I looked out the window and saw the rock formations of the mountains and knew we were getting close. The captain came on and said he’d have us on the ground in 20 minutes.
We landed at 9:52am, 25 minutes early. The flight was pretty smooth the whole way until the landing when the captain bounced the plane off the runway before actually landing. The flight attendant came on and said it was 101 degrees. Nice! This is 40 degrees higher than it was when I left my house.
I made way my to baggage claim after a quick stop (you know where). I think America West dropped the ball again here too. They had 4 flights of luggage going on to 1 carousel. I didn’t understand this when there were 3 or 4 they weren’t using at all.
After I got my bag I was off to the Alamo/National shuttle. The first bus was packed and I had to wait for the second bus. This bus was packed as well. My fears were that I was going to be spending an hour over at the office to get my car. The shuttle first stops at National’s, Emerald Isle. Some lady gets up to get off the bus and looks for her bag in the rack. She seemed like quite the ditz and then verified that she was. She points out to the driver the bag that’s hers and as I see him pick it up I realize that it’s my bag. I yelled to the driver that it was mine. After 5 minutes of her looking for her bag she finally found it. Not only did it not look anything like MY bag that she thought was hers, it was a different friggen color!
The next stop was the Alamo office. I had purposely sat next to the door on the bus and by the time the bus stopped and the door was opened I was on my way in already. To my surprise when I got inside there were only 2 people ahead of me. I couldn’t believe that the busload ahead of us was all taken care of already.
In just a few minutes I was up at the counter. Everything went well until the agent tried to hard sell me on insurance again. This girl has done this before in the past and uses tricky wording to try and get you to buy it. Instead of asking if you would like any coverage, she says ok, on the insurance do you want collision as well as liability. I said I didn’t want any additional coverage and this is when the hard sell and scare tactics start. She told me that my policy won’t cover everything and they won’t cover the down time of the car among other things. I jumped back on her ass and told her that the loss of use scare tactic is a bunch of crap because you need to be sold out and prove that you lost business because the car was down. She gave up and printed my contract. For those interested her name is April so if you use Alamo and get her watch out for her crap.
I have a full sized car reserved for 2 weeks at only $94.97 per week. I also have a coupon for $20 off the rental. This is by far the lowest price I’ve ever paid for a full sized car and is a hell of a deal. Compare it to the fact that the 1-day rental I had with Avis to get from Newburgh to Newark was $44
When I got to the row of full sized cars there was nothing but Chevy Mailbus. While it’s not a bad car I’m not really a big fan of them. The other option was a Hyundai Sonata. Just as I was about to settle for the Malibu one of the workers drove up a nice new Dodge Intrepid. This car was brand new and only had 2200 miles on it. I hopped in and was on my way.
It was still pretty early and I was hungry so I headed up to Fiesta Henderson to get lunch. I of course had my favorite lunch, the Feel Good Wonton Soup. It was pretty good but the broth seemed weak today and a little watered down. Let’s hope that this is just a fluke and isn’t going to be a regular thing.
After lunch I stopped off at the slot club and registered for 5X points and then went over to one of the FPDW slant tops. These are great machines being that they are fast and ticket in ticket out. It seems like the deuces were on vacation today and the bigger hands weren’t hitting. I played for over 2 hours though before finally dropping my buy in of $100. My next play was over to the craps table. This is one of my favorite games in town with a $1 minimum and 10X odds. My first roll was a pretty good one. I had the dice for 15 minutes which isn’t really a killer roll but, the table was slow and I threw the dice quite a few times. Unfortunately no one else could shoot that well and the table was choppy. I played for about 2 hours and cashed out even.
It was getting late now so I headed downtown to check in at the 4 Queens. I had reserved a room under the Fremont Street Experience but they didn’t have any left. I took a room away from it instead. They gave me room 505 facing a wall and pipes. Normally I would have had my room changed but I’m not actually staying here. I had originally booked this planning on staying here but hen the Rio came through with an offer so I’ll be sleeping there. The rooms here are basic and small but are pretty nice and it appears this room has been refurbished recently.
After checking out the room at the 4 Queens I went up to the Rio to check in. They sent me an offer of 3 free nights and a $30,000 invitational slot tournament. It’s hard to pass that up.
When I arrived there was a short line at check in but then I realized Rio has a separate check in for Platinum cardholders. I was recently upgraded to Platinum even though I don’t have the 3000 tier credits they require. It took just a few minutes to check in and I was on my way to suite 1623 in the Ipanema Tower. This room is at the end of the hallway in the original tower. It has slightly different floor plan from the other rooms. It has a long entranceway that leads to the room. There is a sectional “L” shaped sofa and round coffee table. The king bad has some fake drapes over top of the headboard and a nightstand on each side. They have a 27-inch TV on top of an over priced refreshment center. This TV is a big difference from the last time I stayed here in 1998 when they only had 19-inch screens.
The bathroom is separated into 2 different rooms. The first room has a large vanity area, shelving unit with drawers and a closet. There is an iron and board in the closet and they do offer a hair dryer. The second room has a pedestal sink, toilet, and tub. The tub has birds molded into it and the little window that looks into the hotel room. I don’t think I will ever understand that window.
I have a view of the entire strip. I can see all of the way form Mandalay Bay to downtown. I also have a view of the pool area. When I lay down on the bed I can still see everything from Caesars to the Stratosphere Tower.
After I checked out the room I went to register for the slot tournament and get something to eat at the welcome party. They gave us all of the information we needed for the tournament and a gift. The gift was a blue glass candleholder. It didn’t seem like a fitting gift for the occasion though.
They had a little buffet set up and it looked very picked over. I wasn’t too thrilled with the selection but they did bring out more food. They had a bunch of finger foods like egg rolls, chicken on a stick and fried ravioli. The foods were good and the fried ravioli were some of the best I’ve ever had. They also had fruits and cheeses and a dessert table with small cakes and cookies. Cocktails, beer and soft drinks were also available.
After eating I went to the car and got my luggage and got settled into the room and took a short break. I didn’t get any sleep but felt refreshed and headed out to the Hard Rock. Traffic sucked all of the way there for some reason. I though it was odd because the town seemed pretty slow earlier today.
When I got to the Hard Rock my first stop was to the cage to activate my new credit line. I set this up out of convenience and to not have to travel with as much cash. Everything here went smooth and I made my way to the craps tables and asked for a marker. I thought it was pretty cool that they just hand you a pile of money just or asking! The table started out really good and I was up about $400. Then the table turned and everything I was up disappeared. I finally quit showing a $200 loss even though I was even. While I played I was hiding chips.
When I got back here to the Rio it was after midnight and I was exhausted. Even though it was only midnight my body was telling me it was 3am!
Total win/loss for the day -$100
Total comps for the day $113