And then after Las Vegas, I go home and unpack / repack and head out to New Orleans to spend New Year’s Eve cruising to the Carribbean.
Sounds amazing, right? RIGHT?
I am actually feeling a bit excited about the Vegas part of the trip, which is something I am not sure I have felt in a long time. I was supposed to go to Vegas this past January as a kick off for a National Park tour. I cancelled that. Then I was supposed to go in May, cancelled that too.
I wanted to re-read last year’s trip report for Vegas so I could see what my mindset was for that trip. Was I excited last year? I remember I hadn’t planned to go, but then needed to be out of my apartment for 3 weeks for a renovation so that’s where I went. But was I correctly remembering that I wasn’t excited?
When I went back to read the posts, I realized I never updated the main page HERE so I went ahead and did that. Then I began reading the trip report and felt fuzzy brained because it was like reading someone else’s trip report since I didn’t immediately remember some of it. Even though it is MY trip report and happened less than a year ago. I know I was working through it and my job is mentally intense so it is not surprising that I would have gotten the posts up without them or the actual days I was living – being added to my memories. But I felt like I wanted to respond to some of those posts so I thought I would do this here.
So here is me responding to THIS post:
2024 Me: Jetblue Mint fares dropped to an insane price of $730 each way. I haven’t seen prices that low in a long time.
2025 Me: Oh hey, I paid $620 each way this year
2024 Me: The same day, new MLife offers came out and for some reason mine were higher than ever before, which makes ZERO sense. They had gone down earlier in the year, which made sense since I burned them in December. It hurt my soul to see the crappy offers and resort fee since I am not longer gold. But for the offers to go back UP? Without any new play? AND the resort fee is waived? And the room choices being fountain view Bellagio and tower suites at Luxor? That’s absurd.
2025 Me: Holy shit I don’t remember posting this at all but it happened again in 2025! My offers went from lowest ever, including having to pay a resort fee at Excalibur lol no. Then suddenly my September offers were sky high and resort fees are waived on all properties even though I am not gold. I am thinking maybe because I had been making a million trips the previous years that when September rolls around and I haven’t darkened Las Vegas’s door, MLife thinks to lure me back? I don’t know.
If you are familiar with how MLife works – you know that the offers update monthly. You can tell when they are updated by the “book by” date changing. On September 1, I could get a balcony room at Cosmopolitan for the first Vegas portion of my trip, but the fourth night was not comped. When the dates flipped, I tried again and it was suddenly comped. On September 1, I could not get Bellagio fountain view on weekends. When the dates flipped, I could. So the drop in Vegas tourism is really reflected in my offers.
2024 Me: Paris – I wanted to stay here so badly. I love this hotel for no real reason. I am abso-fucking-lutely not paying $50 for a comped room so sorry Paris, maybe next time, maybe never.
2025 Me: SAME! I absolutely checked prices here a million times and came so close to agreeing to pay the fuck you resort fee, but at the end of the day, I could not do it.
2024 Me: No luxury of doing laundry in my hotel room!
2025 Me: I actually had booked Vdara twice to get access to a washer and dryer in my room but switched out one of them. I didn’t remember at all last year that I could only book a studio and not a suite so I did not have laundry access. Not a problem in 2025. I can even get New Year’s Eve comped at some MLife properties this year.
2024 Me: El Cortez! I was planning to make my return here! Checking in on Christmas night. But since I never made it to El Cortez last year – seriously – I did not even use the LVA free play coupon – my offers have ended. Could I call them? Yes. Would I? No.
2025 Me: I am staying here! I did visit last year, lost all my money so fast and left angry. But it generated an offer. I am excited to be back to my former “stay at on every trip” hotel. I am more excited they have a Starbucks.
2024 Me: Fontainebleu sent me a very limited offer that is good for when I am there! 2 nights comped, no resort fee. I struggled to fit this one in. It seems very logical that I would replace 2 nights at Luxor with 2 nights a FN Blue because duh. But realistically, I have zero comps at FN Blue and tons of comps at Luxor. So moving to FN Blue would actually cost me money. So I ended up double booking it with Encore.
2025 Me: I ended up never checking into FN Blue last year and I didn’t even cancel because I couldn’t do it online. I got an offer yesterday for 2 free nights good EVERY day in December, including weekends, with the one exception of 12/31. But I am all booked. Which hotel to cancel? Bellagio, nah. Virgin? No, maybe? I mean yes but no? El Cortez? Absolutely not.
So I ended up cancelling a 2 nighter at Park MGM. It was a hard decision. I was planning to eat fancy meals with the too-much resort credit that came with my offer. But this is the right call.
2024 Me: I tried to book a bunch of non-gambling things because I purposely have a smaller budget.
2025 Me: I don’t really have a smaller budget this year due to spending 2025 cruising like a crazy person, which is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than anything else on earth. I also won $5100 last month on Carnival Venezia.
But the cruising thing – I have found myself just naturally gambling less on cruises. My cruises trips are not about the casino. They are about the vacation. The seeing new places. The SLEEPING. So the degeneracy in me has lessed and I honestly haven’t even figured out my gambling budget yet.
I did book one tour to Valley of Fire and Red Rock. But honestly, I am more looking forward to sleeping on weekends than I am concerned with filling time to keep me out of the casino.
Turns out 2025 me had a lot to say about 2024 me. And that’s just for the first post in a trip that had 19 posts. So I am not going to continue on the insanity that would be me responding to ME for 19 posts.
I am looking forward to seeing this sky again:
