Day 11
Sunday December 27, 2009
Today we started off by heading over to City Center to check the place out. On the way out I played a match play at roulette and lost yet again as red came up when I was betting black. We are now 8 for 25 on coupons and it’s not a good thing!
Getting to City Center was a little tricky but once we figured out where we were going it wasn’t too bad. This place is way too big and not really a place I’d be interested in although I’d stay there once to say I did it if the opportunity arose. The place was nice and still had the “new smell” to it. One thing I thought that was cool was the craps tables had very high denomination chips on them. Usually $1000 & occasionally $5000 chips are on the tables at the bigger houses but here they had chips all of the way up to $25000 in the bank. That was impressive!
When we left City Center we went over to Terrible’s. We were going to go to the café but we had some time restrictions so chose the buffet instead. I’ve never raved about this buffet and I won’t rave about it today. It’s just not that good. I figured for breakfast it was going to do the trick and that it did. Just be warned here that most of the foods are basic restaurant grade, right out of the package. I paid with points so it was of course comped. I would just warn everyone that might want to go here that their Sunday brunch is like 12 bucks a head and this buffet is not worth it. Go to the café instead!
When we came down from the buffet we hit the roulette table with some match plays. Dee lost her odd bet but I on my black bet taking us to 9 for 27 on coupons.
Next stop was to gas up the rental car and then to the rental car facility. I had to return the current car we had and pick up a new car. This was the catch to saving nearly $100 on the 19 day rental. I thought of a few things we could do to make this easy. First would be to park in the short term lot when we got there, run into Avis and see which space the new car was in and if it was something we would like. If not I was going to ask them to check our current car back in, and then right back out again. When we got to the lot the car they had reserved for me was an upgrade and we chose to go back down and return the G-6 we had.
Returning the first car was fast and took all of a minute. We gathered our things and the car they had waiting for me was only steps away from the return area. I bet the agents probably thought it was odd that we headed over to another car after returning this one! This rental was for a full size car for 9 days and I got a rate of $140 after the $30 coupon Avis had on their website. We were assigned a brand new Mercury Grand Marquis with only 400 miles on it. This car is a boat and had some extra features that most cars don’t and still had that new car smell. After a quick once over we were on our way.
We headed out to the Cannery again. Still armed with some match plays and wanting to play some video poker this was our choice for the day. We started off with match plays on roulette and we both won for a change. It’s been a while since we did that and we were now 11 for 29 on coupons.
Once again we chose 8/5 bonus in triple and five play. I started right off with a bonus quad and joked with Dee that in 3 minutes it would be gone. I wasn’t too far off as I was back into my original buy in just a few minutes later. It wasn’t long after that when I was feeding in another bill. Dee was holding her own so far though getting 4 aces on the top line and this kept her going for a while. I hit a few more quads but then started getting my ass kicked when I was dealt a winning pair of jacks but the hand contained 4 to a royal. I dropped the other jack and hit draw nailing a much needed royal on the bottom line for $1000. I say much needed because between the tow of us I think we were in the area of 80,000 hands without one and that’s just this trip. It doesn’t count how many hands I had playing in Atlantic City prior to this trip so it was a much welcomed win! I kept playing hitting a bunch of quads and a straight flush really racking up the credits.
We played a little bit longer and Dee got whacked and lost her aces money and her buy in and I had just gone through a $300 swing so decided to cash out, hot the slot club to redeem our points for gift cards and then went on our way. All in all I think we walked out of the Cannery with over $700 in winnings and some gift cards. This is the way promos are supposed to work!
When we were done paying at the Cannery we drove back to the strip to the Riviera. This place doesn’t offer much these days but they sent me an offer for 2 nights and $50 in free play. Since we were staying right across the street anyway I felt it was a decent move. Dee is also a big fan of Kady’s Coffee Shop here and I have a 2 for 1 coupon for lunch or dinner.
This place was dead and check in was a breeze. I actually used a self check in kiosk. I had never seen one of these before but it took all of the information from your credit card number, pulls up your reservation and prints out a guest card and makes your room keys. I’m really surprised more hotels don’t have these things. They are a little impersonal though but for those that want a ck check in and don’t have any special requests, this is the way to go. Our room is in the Monte Carlo Tower room 1515. This room wasn’t renovated but it only carries a regular room rate of $27 tonight if you were actually paying. It’s quite large with a king bed and nightstands, table and chairs, TV cabinet/dresser, make up table and a fridge. Lucky for us the last guest left a few slices of pizza for us! HAHA, EWE!
The bathroom is small and dated but does the trick. We had an amazing view out the window of the roof, pipes, wires and air ducts that was priceless. If I were really staying in this room I would have been right back down to the front desk getting moved. I never understood why a hotel would place a guest in a room like this when their occupancy level is at 35%. These rooms should be among the last assigned to a guest and quite honestly not given to anyone being brought in by the casino.
After we took a quick nap in the room it was off to the casino to play a bit and to run through my $50 in free play. Here we chose a variety of penny slots. I started with a Monopoly Real Estate Tycoon machine and hit a few bonus rounds. On one round I actually landed on boardwalk with a 3X multiplier for 1000X my bet times 3. This made me a winner here and I cashed out after that. Next up I chose a Gems machine but had no luck. I followed that up with a machine similar to the one Dee had scored big on last year. I guess these things like us because I hit it for 25,000 coins and cashed out. I took one more shot with DaVinci diamonds in a different part of the casino and hit that one for another $25 win. We quit after this and took the money.
We left the Riviera for a while to go to South Point. We saw Tony Orlando was playing there and I’d heard he puts on a good show and we both like his stuff. We used a buy one get one free coupon from the LVA book to buy our tickets and saved $50! We got tickets close to the stage at table 10 seats 5 & 7. These were dead center about 20 feet from the stage.
After we got our tickets we went to the slot club to activate $15 in free play for each of us. I scored these in a trade a while back. Using these was easy and there was no seat from the booth for them. Dee chose one of her favorite penny slots to play but wasn’t having any luck. I chose to give her my free play and loaded it on her machine. Still not much luck but she cashed out with a $12 win and we headed off to the showroom.
The showroom was packed but not sold out. The show started off with Tony greeting us from back stage and his band doing a Boston cover tune. Then Tony came out and started the show. He did the Neil Diamond song America and thanked all veterans for their service. Then he did all of his hits and gave us a little history of the music. After they played all of his big hits they did a lot of cover tunes and Tony told stories of his past. They did everything from Ben E. King to the Beatles to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones and everything in between. He also gave each member of his band the spotlight for a tune or 2. His voice isn’t what it once was but he can still entertain. I’d rank this as one of the best shows I’ve seen and would go see him again in the future, especially with a 2 for 1.
When we left the show we hit the Riviera to go to Kady’s Coffee Shop. This is one of Dee’s favorite restaurants and the prices are pretty cheap when you consider it’s on the strip. I normally hate paying for food but with a 2 for 1, cheap prices and not having any comps in this area of the Strip, the 10 bucks is a small price to pay for 2 people to eat a good meal. Avoid sodas here as they run $3 a piece. I had the meatloaf dinner and Dee had the rigatoni which is a long time standing favorite of hers. The meals came with soup or salad and I chose the chicken noodle. My meal was good but not the best meatloaf I’ve ever had. It was a bit on the spicy side too. Dee said hers was great like always.
After dinner we hit the casino and played a variety of penny slots. I didn’t do very well although I had a few decent hits but didn’t get much play for the amount of money I lost. All in all it was a good day at the Riviera as I won about $240 on $50 in free play.
We went back up to the room to gather our belongings and came back to the Hilton. This place was packed. So packed I couldn’t even get to a table to do match play. Then I saw the line at the check in area and it was snaked through the entire lobby. It was now after midnight so we came up here to crash for the night.
Total win/loss for the day $1050
Total comps for the day $339