Wednesday, January 3, 2008

This is part two of a four part Las Vegas trip Report.  If you want to start at the beginning, go here!

I woke up from a dream that a housekeeper had come into my room to tell me she switched my home made “do not disturb” sign with a real one.  I had to actually open the door to make sure it was just a dream and it was.   My homemade sign was still on the door.

Well I’m up now so time to go out!   I am dressed and on the elevator at 8:00 am.  I am very tired and I have a headache but neither of these are going to stop me from being in Vegas.

I lost a bit on Video Poker.   Played a Sun and Moon penny machine, got my Video Poker money back.   I ate at The Caravan Café to use my comps   It is really unfortunate that Sahara has such limited food options and none of them are good.

After eating, I went back to the casino and had a huge losing streak.    I ended up with only $30 cash left on me.  Ugh.  Good thing I only brought half my budget in cash or else I might have kept going. Which reminds me, let’s recap my ATM rule.

My ATM rule in Las Vegas is:  you are not allowed to go to the cash machine until you have ZERO cash left.  Singles do not count, neither does change.   This rule came into play after one year – I had $5 left and was walking to a cash machine when I spotted a new Lil’ Lucy machine.  I put the five in and won a $180 bonus.   If I had stopped at the cash machine, I would not have gotten this.  So now I follow this rule all the time.

I board  a bus to downtown and lose the $30 quickly at the El Cortez.  I used my American Casino Guide for $10 free slot play here and lost that too.   Also, there was a problem where the ACG coupon code was removed from the computer system.  So the boothling used the Las Vegas Advisor code to put it in.  I reallllly hope this doesn’t screw me when I go to use the Las Vegas Advisor coupon on my next trip.

Once I lose the freeplay, I’m cash-free and ready to hit the cash machine.  But before I do, let me use my Binions free play – $20 – that I got from a mailing.

Well don’t you know it.  I sit down at a Double Double Bonus video poker machine and instantly I hit Aces.   $200.   This is why I have that cash machine rule.   I could very easily have missed out on this $200 win to take more than that out of the ATM.

I then went to play Press Your Luck.  If you read my last trip report, I did very very very well on this game.  Well that luck did not repeat itself.   I quickly lost $60.  At the very end, I finally got the Big Event bonus with a 3x multiplier.   It was the free spin bonus, which is the best one.   Yay!  I won….45 cents.  Uhhhh.  Yeah.

Screw you Binions, I am out of here!   I walked over to Fitzgeralds and decide to use my comps to eat at the coffee shop.  At this point I am starving and my head is POUNDING.

I had the worst service ever here.  First, it turns out they sat me at a table in a section that had no server. This would explain why no one ever came to take my order.  Although someone should have noticed me sitting there.   I made a dramatic display of reaching for the comment card and a manager came over and explained the problem to me.  She apologized and she took my order.  She also asked me to please make sure I don’t hand the host the comment card, to give it to her directly.  Then I got a waiter and he asked me to please not write anything bad about him because he had just come on duty and wasn’t assigned to my table when they first sat me.  What I got out of this is that Fitzgeralds must take those comment cards very seriously.

Note:  at no time did anyone offer to discount my meal for this or anything.   I seriously waited about 30 minutes for someone to take my offer.

Also on the topic of Fitzgeralds/cashing out and ANNOYING – allllllllllllll of their ticket cashing machines suck.   All of them.   You can put your ticket in and it spits it out.  You can try another machine, spits it out. You can go from machine to machine to machine and they will all tell you “go to cashier”.  All of them.  All the time.  Always.

Now is when I decided I was going to give Monopoly a second chance.  It’s the newer one, Supermoney Grab, with the top box bonus.   I have played this machine before.  If you line up three chance boxes, you get the bonus.   However, I kept picking the box with the free credits, not a real bonus.  Now I’m determined to play the damned bonus.  And I do!   Quite a few times.  I also got some big hits, like $20 at a time.  Okay that’s not a BIG hit, but when you are playing 50 cents a game, it sure seems like it.   I left this machine up $90.

Now I’m done for the night and head back to Sahara.   On the way to my room, I found a bank of Monopoly Supergrab machines and began playing.    I lost everything and stopped with a whopping $20 left.   Sigh.  At least I haven’t gone to the cash machine yet?

While I was playing, there was a family that included children sitting around. A couple of them were playing, one had a kid on its lap pushing the buttons on the machine.  I lit a cigarette and one of the elder people said in broken English “no smoke…..children.”   Um yeah.  See, the thing is – they aren’t allowed in the casino at all.  So basically, I’m not putting out my cigarette for them.   Ya know?   Security finally came and chased them all out.

Time for bed.

Want to read more?  Here are the next two parts: three and four.