This mission to our favorite city was with my brother. We were celebrating the 10-year anniversary of our move from New York to So Cal. What better way then a weekend in Nevada!
March 8th
We hit the road at about 8:15am. There was virtually no traffic all the way through Riverside and San Bernardino and we made it the famous Quigley’s restaurant in Barstow by 10:00. After a quick bite, we were back on the road and arrive at the valet at Rio by 12:30. As always, there was no wait at the Platinum check-in line and we were up to our room in no time. A simple mention of wanting a strip view yielded us a nice view of the Bellagio and the rest of the south strip. After settling in to our room for a few minutes, we were off. First stop was the Las Vegas Advisor office to pick up their Coupon Book, which is conveniently located right out the back exit of Rio. We then headed out to the Suncoast. Since it was mid afternoon of a Friday, we decided to take surface streets. It took a good 20-30 minutes of winding through the valley to get there.
The Suncoast is really nice compared to some of the other locals places. We were surprised how busy it was in the middle of the afternoon. We were going to use the 2 free drink coupon but the 8/5 Bonus in the bar machine in front of us proved to be too much of a temptation. So we each feed a $20 in and got the drinks free anyway. I’ll save the coupon for another day. It was our first experience with ticket in/out system and it gets my enthusiastic thumbs up! My brother scored another drink (I’m driving) and we cashed out down a few bucks to scout out the rest of the place. I was disappointed to found the entire selection of multi-play Bonus was only 7/5 so I found a .25 FPDW. This is another first for me. I have never placed DW live before. I have only been practicing my strategy for a little while so I wasn’t 100% comfortable; even so, it was quite enjoyable, despite the losing quite a bit. My brother, although a decent VP player, enjoys playing Video Keno. He finds one to his liking and proceeds to hit for a hundred bucks just as I’m ragging him about playing it. I liked what I saw of the Suncoast and would consider coming back again if I start playing more DW in the future. After spending a few hours there we headed back to Rio to get ready for dinner. We took the shuttle from Rio over to Harrah’s and walked over to the Mirage for the buffet courtesy of our friends at Wagerworks. I like this buffet. They have some of best prime rib of any buffet. My brother raved about the crab legs and I overdosed on chocolate at the dessert bar. This time we also had good drink service, which had been one of the weak points in the past. We wondered around the Mirage and the Forum shops for a while after dinner then took the shuttle back to the Rio. After a few drinks and a lot of walking I wasn’t much in the mood to go anywhere, so I violated my own rules for this trip and decided to play at the Rio. Since it is well known that the VP sucks at Rio. I limited myself to .25 single line 8/5 Bonus which they do have in decent quantities. The cards just weren’t falling my way and after about 2 hours I was pretty beat up once again. Not a single quad, a few full houses and that was about it. A few more drinks at the bar and it was time to go upstairs and lick my wounds.
March 9th
We started on Saturday by taking in the Gold Coast breakfast buffet across the street. We tried to use the 2/1 LVA coupon but it’s not accepted on weekends. Aw hell, I guess we have to fork out $4.50. It is a fairly basic breakfast buffet with the unique twist of having Asian food as well. The quality is good and the surroundings are pretty nice. As with my last trip, I still say that this is the best breakfast deal in town. There is no point in paying $10.00 for eggs and pig. After showering and changing, we headed over to the Palms. After picking up a slot card for my brother, we finally found the elusive 8/5 multi-play. I started out with doing pretty good. I finally got my first quad about 10 hands in and was up for about 20 minutes. My brother hit just an awful spell and blew through a hundred in less than 10 minutes. His bankroll wasn’t really prepared for 5 play quarters so he went back to single play. I must have caught whatever he had because from the point he left I didn’t win a thing, proceeding to blow through several hundred. To make matters worse, during this beating, the waitress didn’t come by for a half hour then I never got the water I ordered before I left 45 minutes later. This is rather sad at 11:30AM on a Saturday. It was getting close to the time to head over to the LVA meet at Main Street Station so I decided to cut my losses at $300 and go downtown early and take some pictures. I left my brother at the Palms as he was holding his own at the single lines.
I drove downtown and parked at the Horseshoe, and wandered around taking a few pictures. I realized a few weeks ago that this was going to be my 30th trip to Vegas and I don’t any pictures! So I put my new digital camera to good use on this trip. The LVA meet at the MSS was great. I was joined by Kevin and Noel Marie, Jay from Atlanta and his buddy, Capt Coupon (Slabow) and Wando (Andy). Slabow showed up with all 3000 of his slot club cards and so more strategy cards than Bob Dancer. We were also honored to have Jean Scott and her husband Brad show up for a little while. We talked about Frugal Gambler II and some tales of extreme frugalness, which were pretty funny. I really would like to do a grinding mission with Slabow once. It seems like it was be a rip. The LVA crowd is definitely a unique bunch! I left with my autographed copy of the Frugal Gambler and headed back to the Rio to meet up with my brother. It turns out that his luck wasn’t much better than mine after I left and between the Palms and Rio, he was in the hole pretty good. With both of us suffering from serious bankroll shock, we decided it was time for non-gambling pursuits.
On our trip out to Suncoast, we drove past quite few new home communities, so we went back out there to check out a few of them. Coming from California, it just blows my mind what you can buy for $200K in Vegas. It is very tempting to up and move but then where would I go for fun??? After driving around town for a while we went back to the Rio to use the 2/1 buffet coupon that they had on their website a few weeks ago. It is still the good ole Rio buffet though I did notice a slight decline in quality on this trip. I stuffed myself pretty much everything and walked out bloated like a pig. After letting our huge dinners settle for a little while, we headed over to New York New York to pick up our free roller coaster rides also thanks to Wagerworks. After wondering around like idiots for about 20 minutes we found the Promotions Booth and got our tickets. Since they were comped, we got to bypass the huge line of Brittany fans waiting to get on, which was quite nice. It was almost 10:00 and there were grommets everywhere. It is a great coaster but certainly not worth paying $10 a piece for. We decided to then head down to Mandalay Bay to check it out because my brother had never been there. We were surprised to see how dead it was. A Saturday night in March and it was like a morgue. We jumped back on the monorail to head back to the NYNY then back to Rio for some more Bonus Poker with what was left of my bankroll. Yet again another session with no luck and the added indignity of a horrendous lounge act whaling away in the background. After about 2 hours, I decided to save what was left of my cash and call it a night.
March 10th
The next morning I woke at about 7:30. I headed down for a coffee and a breakfast sandwich at Toscano’s. I loved these things in the past and to my disappointment, they hadn’t received their bread delivery yet and I got stuck with a day old bagel. Another disappointment was that they had built a wall where the entrance was to the sports book from the deli. It used to be great to be able to watch the game while you ate but no more. It was yet another blow to the beloved Rio. I went back up to the room and packed up. We went down to the check out by 9:00 and this is when we got out last surprise of the weekend from our friends at Harrahs Corporation. We knew we hadn’t played much at the Rio this weekend but they still got a few hours out of each of us. We hand the woman our Platinum cards and she says You don’t have any play on these, well just a few hours, so we can’t do anything else for you. Gee. Thanks for nothing! We gas up and hit the 15 by 9:30, sadly another trip to Vegas has come to an end. We make pretty damn good time considering it’s a Sunday and are back at home by 1:45.
Some thoughts for the trip...
I am now convinced that Harrah’s are the cheapest bastards in the business. Their cash back is non-existent and the food comps are only slightly better. Here is a news flash for Harrah’s, a free room can be had virtually anywhere in Vegas, you better step up and start appreciating your customers before they are all lost. It is a really a shame because Rio is a great hotel and still does have a lot going for it but as long as their games suck and they are stingy with their patrons, I will not gamble there. Because of Harrah’s cheap ways, I now need a new home in Vegas. I am hoping the beatings I took at the Palms and Suncoast will generate some action from them in the way of room offers. I was surprised at the lack of people at Mandalay Bay; perhaps things aren’t quite back yet after Sept 11 although the Suncoast didn’t look like it was hurting. It was great to meet some of the people of the LVA message board and put a face with the names. I look forward to more gathering in the future.
