Pre – Trip:
Prior to heading out to Las Vegas I surprised Dee with a short trip to Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Florida. This was so she could see her folks before the holidays as they spend the winters in Florida. We flew from our local airport Stewart – Newburgh into Fort Lauderdale back on December 13th for $155 per person. This isn't the greatest rate but it's not bad. I booked back in May to lock this in. I scored a rental car through Alamo for 4 days for under $20 per day and used a coupon and discount code from the Entertainment Book that got me a discount of $24. After taxes the rate was just $92 for a standard sized car. We ended up with a Chrysler 200. This car had only 980 miles on it and was in brand new condition. We spent 4 nights with Dee's folks up in West Palm Beach. The final night of the trip we spent at the La Quinta near the airport.

Day 1
Wednesday December 17, 2014
We were up very early this morning at 4am around. Once we were ready we headed out for the approximate 5 minute drive to Ft. Lauderdale International Airport. We had to drop off the car at the rental car garage which went very quickly. There aren't many people returning cars at 4:45am!

Next was a short walk over to the terminal and checking in with Southwest Airlines. I booked this flight back in May for $149 per person. I used points to pay for one of us and paid for the other. Two weeks later the fare dropped down to $126 so I re-booked and banked some credits to my account and had some points returned too. Since then the fares have fluctuated between $139 and $288. Checking in here was fairly quick and we were off to the security area. Things here were good. People were behaving well except for the one lady that thought her kids were exempt from the no liquids rule and had bottled water in their back packs. We got through quickly with no issues.

When it was time to board we were allowed on first because Dee is in a wheelchair. This didn't stop all of those who showed up in airport wheelchairs from WALKING all over the terminal prior to the flight and WALKING down the jetway ahead of us. It really pisses me off how many people game the system so they can get priority boarding. Faking that you need a wheelchair is about as low as you can get.

This is flight 902, it's non stop and is scheduled to depart at 6:55am (now you know why we were up at 4am) and arrive in Las Vegas at 9:30am. The good thing about flying out of Florida is we don't have to worry about snow and ice delays!

The captain came on the PA and told us the flight would take 5 hours. We took off a bit late. The flight was smooth sailing for the most part except for two spots where the seat belt sign was turned on. Of course this is a magnet for every asshole douche bag to get up and move about the cabin. During the flight I logged onto their free TV service provided by Dish Network on my tablet. This really helped pass the time because this flight really sucks, especially this time of year when there are more headwinds. There was also a flight tracker and I saw we seemed to be way ahead of schedule.

We were given or traditional snacks consisting of Nabisco 100 calorie snacks and cup of juice. I had grabbed us a couple of bagels in the terminal too.

We finally started making our initial descent and landed at 9:05am, 25 minutes early despite leaving 10 minutes late. We had to taxi for a while until we got to the terminal. We got off last as we had to wait for Dee's wheelchair to be brought to the door. From here it was off to baggage claim. The bag was actually the last one out but that worked well since it took so long for us to get there it was perfect timing.

Once we had the bag I found a place for Dee to sit and I hopped on the rental car shuttle to go pick up the rental car. Originally rates were sky high but I was able to book a premium at Budget for $125/week after a coupon back in September. I wasn't happy with this rate and continued to check rates daily. In November I was able to score a rate of $88/week through Dollar for a full sized. A few days later I re-booked to a standard for $78/week and a few days after that I re-booked again for $72/week. On November 30th I got an e-mail from Dollar for 15% off on weekly rentals. I tried the code they sent me and while it raised the base price, after the discount I saved yet again. This time the price was $70.69 for the week. Then, oddly on December 2nd I got another e-mail from Dollar telling me I hadn't rented a car from them in over a year (false, I rented twice from them this past summer) and offered 20% off. I re-booked it again and the rate is now down to $66.24/week. This is by far the lowest rate I've ever gotten in Las Vegas for a weekly rental. The only killer is the 100.6% in added taxes and fees. That effing facility charge is the most unfair charge there is out there at $3.75 per day. Explain to me why a 14 day renter that doesn't use the garage any more than a 2 day renter has to pay 7x as much for it. I was a bit worried about the condition of the car I was going to get because the last time we were here all of their cars had VERY high mileage on them and were beat to shit.

Once there I headed to Dollar and found my paperwork in a dodge Avenger. I looked around the lot for something better but almost every car in the standard row was an Avenger. I checked the car over and decided that I would take it . It has 35,000 miles on it but seemed to be in pretty good condition. It would turn out this car wasn't as good as it looked as it had a slight “shimmy” in the back end but it ran well other than that.

I went back over to the airport to pick up Dee and in just a few minutes we were headed downtown to Main Street Station with a quick stop at CVS for some items we didn't bring with us. They didn't have everything they wanted so we hit Walgreen's too.

I actually booked this back in June when we were here with host Ipo for 6 nights and a silver card which allows us to eat complimentary at any non-gourmet restaurant at the downtown Boyd properties. When my December offer arrived I had her add the $75 free play to my account.

Ipo blocked our normal room for us. It wasn't ready yet but we were able to check in and get our silver card. As a matter of fact the current guest of that room was still in there. I guess that's ok considering it was only 10:30am!

For lunch we hit the Market Street Cafe over at the Cal. I started the trip with my favorite hot open turkey sandwich. Dee had the spaghetti and meatballs and was very excited to see it added back to the menu since it has been removed a while back. Sadly she didn't really like the meatballs though.

Now it was finally time for some video poker action! We started of with our favorite triple/five play machines. The notable hands for this session were Dee hitting aces about 3 minutes in. I hit a straight lush but I was quad deprived. I was down $200 with only 2 quads but had a lot of play. I switched over to my hail Mary of double-double on my last $20 with no luck. I popped in a 3rd bill and left the game on DDB. The biggest surprise was when I held a lone ace, looked over at Dee who was fidgeting around and turned back to see aces and a kicker for $500 on line #4. I switched back to bonus poker and got dealt kings shortly after.

Dee hit another set of aces and many bonus quads. I also hit another set of aces on bonus poker. After a pretty nice first session of the trio we finished with a $400 win. We also scored 28 scratch cards worth $57. (27 @ $2 & 1 @ $3)

It was after 3pm now so we went to see if the room was ready. It was and we were given the room I requested #1724. This is a handicap accessible room. These rooms are the same as the standard rooms here at Main Street Station with a king bed, nightstands, table with chairs, dresser, 32 inch flat screen TV, closet, fridge and a work desk. The bathroom is laid out similar to the regular rooms as well except it's all one room instead of being split into two. It also has safety bars around the toilet and in the tub. I was excited to see this bathroom got a mini renovation of a new tub, surround and shower head!

I got our stuff from the car and got us unpacked while we took a short break. It is nice being able to move into a place for 6 nights.

It was time for another session of video poker. Noteworthy hands were just a few quads here and there and Dee getting dealt a large number of full houses. We didn't get half the play we did earlier and lost $200 each wiping out the wins from earlier. We scored 8 scratch cards worth another $16 (8 @ $2).

For dinner we went to the snack bar over at the California. I had the saimen and Dee had the chili cheese fries. The food here is always very basic but always good too. We topped this meal off by splitting a peanut butter cookie!

To finish the night we ran my free play through a 50˘ 8/5 bonus progressive. There no no big hits but I was able to cash out with the full $75.

Thanks to scratch cards and free play we were actually able to scratch out (no pun intended) a small win today.

Now it was getting late and our bodies thought it was 3 hours later so we decided to get to bed.

Total win/loss for the day $150
Total Comps for the day $225