Welcome Wednesday - Vegas Review

Today I am sharing a really great review of Las Vegas Holiday by my friend Catnip.  Thank you for allowing me to post this review on my blog.  Sometimes the expression what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas has to be broken when the first time experience is so great.  I am hoping that those of you who are still hesitant to try Vegas, this might actually change your mind.

We got such great advice from all of you & several of you wanted to know how we made out. Some of you haven't been to Vegas & wanted our impressions. So here goes.

Vegas. Vegas. Vegas. Where have you been all our lives? We can't wait to go back. We can barely remember Brazil & Virginia Beach, our usual haunts. The excitement started at the airport upon arrival. It was a windy day & just as the Air Bus was touching down a gust of wind tipped the aircraft into a near collision on the runway. I happened to be watching out the window & I have no idea how the wing tip didn't make contact with the ground. The pilot had to make a split second correction without tipping the plane too far on the opposite side. Several people screamed. When the plane was parked at the gate, the pilot walked over to the wing tip & examined it closely for damage. Very close call.

The wind had cut off the electricity across the airport & everything had to done manually (attaching the finger, no luggage carousel, etc) & it was pretty dark inside the airport. It was an exciting start to our vacation.

We arrived in the early evening, tired, so we stayed in our first night. The next day was a long one, about 23 hours. We woke up at 4:30 am (7:30 at home) & hit the streets. Luckily, Vegas like New York, never sleeps, so we had lots of company. By the time we came back to our resort it was 3:30 am the next day. Vegas, what a place.

We stayed at a resort off the strip so it wasn't convenient for us to go back for a rest during the day. The resort ran a free shuttle to the strip every hour but it took too much time to go back & forth so we just stayed out every day until we were ready to collapse. We did try public transit as an experiment. Not bad but the buses are slow. You can buy a 24 hour pass for $7. The buses & a monorail run up & down the strip & elsewhere. We used taxis at night (expensive) as the resort shuttle shut down at 12:30am. Some of the casinos have a tram that connects them. We did a lot of walking. Next time we'll probably rent a car as parking is free at the resort & not expensive on the strip (special rate for rental cars) & then we can come & go as we please. We also want to do a few day trips outside of Vegas. 

The strip hotels are amazing & we would love to stay there but we think it might be expensive for a whole week. We did see some good offers on hotels on the Internet but our resort week was free (time share bonus week) so we didn't check them out. An advantage of the resort is that the smallest accommodation is a studio up to 3 bdrms & all have a full kitchen which helps to defray eating costs. 

The highlight & lowlight of our trip was the helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. It was quite pricey (244. Each) & we booked it prior to leaving as the website said availability was extremely limited. We discovered it's probably limited if you are only interested in 1 company & if you are going in high season. There are 8 or 9 companies that do the tour. Two of the passengers on our flight had bought their tickets only 2-3 hours before. You can buy the tickets on the strip. The vendors phone around to the different companies looking for available seats. If you buy on or close to the date you want to fly, you can pick a good weather day. We flew in the morning which was clear but the afternoon got windy, overcast & rainy. Our pilot said that most companies cancel the flights on windy days.

I'm a little queasy with heights but I had previously enjoyed a short helicopter flight at a fair & I always like looking out of airplane windows. Wellllll, 1.5 hours in the air & flying over the Grand Canyon on a slightly windy day turns out to be an entirely different thing. I was fine over the city, over Lake Mead & even the Hoover Dam. But when we reached the Grand Canyon the wind picked up & started to push the helicopter around. I thought I was going to die.

It didn't help that our pilot was a young Japanese woman who spoke broken English. Every single sentence ended with 'doh'. We were 7 on board (4 in back & 3 in front) & we had to wear floatation devices because we were flying over water. No parachutes mind you but we were told how to remove the doors of the helicopter in case of an emergency. Like that would help. We had headphones on so we could hear the pilot say 'doh' a thousand times & a speaker so we could ask questions. I had to move the speaker away from my mouth as I kept letting out small involuntary screams. If we had taken the tour that lands in the Canyon it would have been a fight to get me back on board.

Unbelievably, Bowser & the other passengers seemed to enjoy being batted around in a toy aircraft with Homer Simpson at the wheel, 5,000 feet above the abyss of hell. It was very beautiful & probably the best view in the world but I won't be going back. Bowser however, highly recommends the helicopter tour.

Later that day I passed a sales kiosk advertising helicopter flights with no doors. I asked what the attraction was to have no doors. The young man told me that it appeals to thrill seekers. I asked if there wasn't a danger of the passengers falling out. He replied, "That's why we don't fly over the Grand Canyon, retrieval would be too difficult". Gotta love Vegas.

Another highlight was the club crawl tour. We bought the tickets for half price on Living Social before we left. It involves crawling to 6 clubs, no cover, VIP line, premium drinks & food. I think the regular price is $80. We started out at Coyote Ugly & it got ugly coyote quick. There were about 250 of us for the crawl. We were afraid the crawl would be a bland tourist thing full of seniors from Milton. To our delight & horror we discovered that we were the oldest crawlers. On the bright side, the young 'uns found the old people very cute & adopted us like pets. Everyone was super friendly. We were given name tags. The guy writing the tags was either deaf or couldn't write very well. My name tag was Lap Nip (instead of Catnip). Bowser opted for the dignified name of Sir Drinks Allot. I knew we were in trouble from the start.

The drinking started pretty hard as it was happy hour & we had a free drink ticket. The beautiful Coyote hosts/entertainers liberally poured shots from the top of the bar into the open fish like mouths of the patrons below. Bowser & I of course maintained our decorum & our distance from the fray until she spied Bowser & called him forward to give him a shot. She started by taking his ball cap off & polishing his head with her ass. She then pinned his head between her knees & poured a huge shot down his throat. After that, she put his ball cap back on in the lock position. I've never seen Bowser with a sillier grin. 

Not long afterward, she called me to the bar. I cautiously approached in the spirit of the event & she asked me "how big a shot do you want"? I politely replied "how big is the bottle"? The challenge was on. I tilted my head back & someone put a bar cloth on my neck. While I was drinking I could hear clapping & cheering & figured that something exciting was going on & I was missing it. The noise got so loud that I finally held my hand up to stop the drink so I could see what was going on. It turned out that everyone was staring at me & rushed forward to shake my hand & take their picture with me. All night long I received congratulations on my "amazing" feat. Kids, they're so funny.

After Coyote Ugly (New York, New York), we moved en masse on the casino tram to the Luxor's Cat House (I was in cat heaven) then Tabu & Studio 54 in MGM. Studio 54 is huge (22,000 sq feet & 4 dance floors), very high end, pumping, techno & insane. It was Saturday night & impossible to reach the bar or the dance floor. To get in Studio 54 we had to pass through a line of very large, grim men in very serious suits. No security scanning but they checked everybody out. We had to abandon our drinks & food before entering the club.

All the clubs were packed, great sound systems & everyone wanted to dance. There were lineups outside which we breezed past in the VIP line. At Tabu, you could have a small table for your group & bottle service for $400. We skipped the last 2 clubs & left Studio 54 around 12:30 since we couldn't drink any longer (we couldn't reach the bar) & headed to the dueling pianos at New York, New York.

We really love good dueling pianos & Vegas has lots of them. You can find dueling pianos in New York New York, Harrah's, Palacio, Monte Carlo, Treasure Island & Paris (maybe more). We went to New York on our 1st day & they are the best in our opinion (although we didn't try them all).  I think New York is also the only bar that has a cover charge for dueling pianos. $15 on weeknights & $25 on weekends even late into the night. It's expensive but the combination of the bar, atmosphere, entertainers & crowd is the best. If you only want to drop in for a drink & don't mind standing, there is no cover charge. The place is packed every night.

The 1st night we were there the place really rocked. Bowser was singled out for not singing loud enough. The piano player told the entire bar to keep quiet (about 150 people) while Bowser stood & sang the refrain by himself. The song was "You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille" & the refrain was "YOU BITCH! YOU SLUT! YOU WHORE! Bowser did Milton proud & had the whole bar cheering & clapping. 

There were lots of Aussies & Canadians in the bar who were hysterical. By the end of the night the dueling between them grew fierce. $100 was paid to play Oh Canada & another $100 for Australia's national anthem. One of the young Aussies was particularly crazy. He took off his belt & spanked one of his buddies. He poured a beer over his head. He put 5 cigarettes (unlight) in his mouth & ate them spitting out the filters. A Canadian woman decided to do a cartwheel in front of the pianos & collapsed into an unceremonious heap on her landing. Not to be deterred, her boyfriend decided to help her & another cartwheel was attempted with both of them crashing into the floor. A different Canadian woman decided to take the cup of pencils & pile of request papers on the piano & fling them into the air.

It was all in good fun. No fights. No one was thrown out. The piano players were fantastic & egging everyone on. For the privilege of determining the last song, the Canadians & Aussies went head to head. I don't know how anyone had any money left but the Canadians won out (Albertans) & paid $200 for the last song which was something by Journey. We've never had more fun in a bar.

We're not gamblers but I inadvertently placed a $100 bet. We were watching a shell game on the street (3 shells & 1 pea) which the guy moves around faster than you can keep up because some of the moves are hidden by his hands. The minimum bet was $100. It was crazy, people were desperate to play. I was standing in front. He stopped switching them around & asked me where the pea was. I told him & I was correct. He handed me a $100 dollar bill. I told him I didn't bet. He looked at me like I was crazy & snapped the money back. He packed up shortly after looking at me again like I was crazy. Pretty funny.

We saw 3 shows. We highly recommend Le Reve (cirque de soleil) at the Wynn. It was the most beautiful, amazing, exciting & unbelievable show we have ever seen. Garth Brooks was playing in the theater next door. His tickets were only $250 each & he was sold out. You can buy discounted tickets on the day of the show for almost any show (20 to 50% off). The biggest headliners are usually sold out (Garth, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Celine Dion & the biggest Cirque show O). You have to buy their tickets in advance if you really want to see them. We also saw The Divas at the Imperial Palace (female impersonators) & they were fantastic. There are so many fantastic shows. You can't go wrong.  Live entertainment is everywhere & often free in the bars.

We enjoyed Fremont Street (Downtown or Old Vegas) but we should have gone at night as they have the most amazing retro neon lights & a huge lighted canopy that covers the street (spans 5 football fields). It's a pedestrian walkway & you can repel from one end to the other. There were 2 stages for live entertainment on the street. The gambling odds are 11.6 better in Old Vegas & the casinos are really close to each other. There is lots of history in those casinos (Golden Nugget, Binnion's). Fun to see & the food is much cheaper than the strip. 

I went into the Heart Attack Grill on Fremont St. You have to wear a hospital gown to go in. The servers are all dressed as nurses & the owner is dressed as a doctor who will listen to your heart & pose for a picture. There is a huge weigh scale in the middle of the restaurant with the numbers displayed to the room. If you weigh in at 350 pounds or more you can eat as much as you want for free. Three big guys weighed in while I was there & 2 were successful. One guy came up short at 346 pounds. The whole restaurant groaned.  

On the strip, the food options are limitless from Macdonald's & Denny's to the most exclusive gourmet meals imaginable in the big hotels. We found a few hotels had a food court where you could grab a fairly cheap meal. There are discounts everywhere from tours, to shows, to restaurants, to drinks. Most places have happy hour for 2-3 hours a day. You can drink on the street. You can enter most bars with a drink in your hand. And we saw smokers everywhere. Las Vegas doesn't seem to be burdened with a lot of rules.

Someone told us that Las Vegas isn't suitable for family holidays. We disagree. We saw so many nice men taking their daughters and granddaughters out for an evening. The girls were so pretty but they must have been a little cold as they were so under dressed. We saw them looking into the store windows of Rolex, Prada, Gucci, Tiffany, etc & the girls were pointing to jewelry, likely gifts for their mothers. So sweet.

We went to the indoors Premium Outlet. No big deal, kind of small, the usual outlet stores. We did buy a fantastic camera after Bowser lost our camera with all our Vegas pictures on it. We checked the prices on the strip for the camera & a couple of other things we saw at the mall & the strip prices were only slightly higher. We found good shopping in the Miracle Mile Shops inside Planet Hollywood. Also inside the Miracle Mile, the ceiling is painted like an evening sky. Several times a day a storm occurs complete with lightning, thunder & torrential rain which falls into strategically placed ponds in the mall. Very cool.

If you like Coke (the drink) there is a fantastic Coke store on the strip with a dressed up Polar Bear inside the store who is pretty funny & poses for pictures. The photographer will use your camera & take his own pictures which you can buy.

Anyway, enough stories. We saw things we couldn't imagine, had more fun than we can remember having in a long time & spent more money than we planned. We hooked up with Luckie (who was there with her mother in law) & Lulu & Karen.  We just missed Lynn & her daughter. Vegas, what a place.

We'll rent a Harley on our next trip & take a bike tour out to Red Rock Canyon or maybe Death Valley. There are lots of beautiful places outside of Vegas that we want to check out. We didn't have time to go into every big hotel which we will next time. Lots of great free hotel shows. We liked the MGM Lion Habitat, the Bellagio fountain show & the Mirage volcano. The MGM has 3 young lions in a beautiful enclosure. There are also 2 cub lions that you can touch & have your picture taken with for $25.