Back from Vegas!

Well, I’m back and it looks like I brought the sunshine with me. The weather in Vegas was awesome – hot and sunny the entire time we were there. When we left Vancouver, it was pouring rain and miserable, so I’m glad to see the sunshine again up here.

Anyway, impressions of Vegas? It was pretty much what I thought it would be, but I expected more debauchery. I expected to see drunken partiers everywhere and a lot more young people. Basically, there were a lot more older people than I had anticipated. And families. Granted, we were there Sunday-Wednesday, and I’m sure more mayhem goes down during the weekend. We didn’t hit any of the clubs b/c my friend was getting over a cold and couldn’t really drink that much either. We only stayed out until about 2am each night.

Entertainment is expensive there. We ended up seeing Elton John and then I road the New York, New York roller coaster for $14 (!), and that’s about it. Didn’t end up seeing a second show, or going to Chippendales. Although we did go to that 1/2 price ticket booth to see if there were any shows we’d be interested in. My friend wanted to see Carrot Top, but I vetoed that right away. I think he’s an idiot.

Elton John at Caesar’s Palace was INCREDIBLE. I’m not that big of a fan, and I only knew about half the songs, but the showmanship and the special effects and props were totally worth it. Nobody but him could pull off a pair of giant inflatable tits hanging from the wall.

Speaking of boobs, what was with the hoards of people with billboards on their backs, handing out cards on every corner? I never took one, but it was basically a naked girl with a number on it. I even saw some of them handing the cards to kids. KIDS! How ridiculous and inappropriate.

As for gambling, I was up and down the entire time. We didn’t expect to win money, so we went to the different casinos and searched for our favourite 1cent slot machine – Jackpot Party. Greatest slot machine EVER. We played all the different versions, including Classic, Village People Party, and Super Jackpot Party. I probably ended up losing about $75 overall, which isn’t bad for 3 days of gambling.

During our last night there, we did the Fremont Street Experience, which is basically the old Las Vegas strip. Even though the new strip has all those massive, fancy themed hotels, I definitely dug the old Vegas more. It had more character for sure. We ended up playing Blackjack Switch at the Fitzgerald for 3.5 hours ($3 hand min). At one point I had almost tripled my money, but it was about entertainment value for me (we had an awesome time with the people at our table, and we were so loud that for a few hours we had a crowd of people watching our game), so in the end I walked away with the $40 I had put in. To get 3.5 hours of free entertainment (not to mention free drinks) was totally worth it. :) I had never played Blackjack Switch before, but it is SO much fun. I would definitely recommend playing it at the Fitzgerald too b/c the minimum hand was only $3, whereas other places were $5. And since you have to play 2 hands at once, it could get rather pricey.

We ate really cheaply because we used coupons. We did one buffet per day (except for the first day, where we just ate dinner at the cafe in the hotel). Each buffet was about $15 after tax. After that, we’d have dinner for about $10 and that was it. We didn’t buy any snacks or drinks at all. The free drinks at the casinos we always tipped $1 each, so they weren’t technically free, but I ordered multiple drinks at a time and probably paid less than $20 on drink tips the entire time I was there. I could have probably tipped more, but when you have to tip everybody and their grandma there, it can add up to a lot. Our general rule was to tip $1 to whoever we thought needed to be tipped. Except for the cab drivers, where we usually tipped $3-5.

Overall, I’m really glad I went, and it was totally worth the money. I haven’t added up my receipts yet, but I’m pretty sure I came close to my budget. The dollar not being at par anymore kind of hurt me, but I’ll have to calculate everything to figure out my final costs.