Our very short 3 ½ day visit to Las Vegas, sadly, is over. We had planned to renew our wedding vows, and to attend church services on Good Friday, and the early service on Easter Sunday before catching our flight home, to see a Cirque show, have the buffet at Bellagio, and spend time seeing the sights.We did most of that and than some. We are still excited, overwhelmed would be a better choice of words.
Arriving Thursday morning, the MGM wanted to charge us extra to check in early. After speaking to the manager, he gave us our room at 11:00 am because it was our anniversary. He said it was also a nicer room than the one we originally had reservations for, he actually said “up grade”. We went up and put our suitcase away, and it was a very nice room. We've never stayed in a Suite before. It was big enough for several hotel rooms. Beautiful view also.
We quickly changed into comfortable clothing and went down to claim our vouchers, and begin exploring.
First we stopped at the player club at MGM. They gave us some free machine play tickets, which we decided to save for later since we had to go to Bellagio to pick up our buffet tickets, but were told when we got there to just bring our voucher back when we want to use it. We decided to see "Love"on Saturday night and went off to claim our tickets. There is a lot of traffic on the strip. And valet parking is expensive.
After we finished our errands and visited - picked a Chapel, and found the church for Friday and Sunday, we went downtown. The place is so busy and hustle and bustle. Much more than I ever expected, we figure that 3 1/2 days is not enough time to see all of Las Vegas. Some of what we saw (people begging, etc) is saddening.
We walked around than went into Binion's. Did you know the casinos give free slot machine money if you visit their club and join? Even if you are not staying in their hotel! The player club gave us $$ so we played some slot machines. I won $2.70, and she won $4.00 so when we quit, we had $26.70 cash. We went to 5-6 other casinos and they also gave us free slot machine money. This was our first gambling adventure. Neither of us has every been in a casino before.
Time just flew by, and it was after 7 pm before we knew it. We also had over $70.00 cash winnings without risking one cent of our money to gamble.
We decided to eat downtown at Magnolias inside the Four Kings. It was very reasonably priced, and we had gotten a coupon for buy one get one free when we joined their club, plus a deck of cards and free money. We had roast beef and it was pretty good. Plenty of food, large portions.
After dinner we returned to MGM, and decided to walk around on the strip. We saw the water show at Bellagio, and than just down the street, some sort of Pirate fire volcano thing. It was getting late, almost midnight, so we returned to our room and called it a night.
Friday: It's Good Friday.
Being from the East Coast, and early risers, when we awoke and went downstairs, it was like a ghost town compared to last night. Too early for breakfast, we decided to just stroll the boulevard. Than decided to ride the double decker transit bus. We took it to the Italian theme place, I think it's called Venice. They have gondolas and we walked around a lot looking at everything and than had breakfast on the sidewalk at the French place Bon Ami. Expensive but very good. We also went to the Wax museum Madam Tousseaus, and Paris Eiffel tower.
Than we attended church services for Good Friday. I have never, ever seen such an interesting service. I'm so very tempted to call it entertainment, not worship.
Later we saw some circus act at a casino called Circus. After visiting the mall with the UFO. We had eaten at a outdoor hamburger place a short while earlier., expensive but delicious. The Circus casino also gave us both free money to play slot machines and a deck of cards. We both lost, I think we got $1.00 back, and gave that to the waitress when we got free cola and bottle water.
Than back to the MGM for a tour I booked to surprise my wife. They picked us up, and off we went to the helicopter airport. We flew over the Grand Canyon at sunset. Beautiful. Coming back, we flew over the boulevard where all the casinos are. What a site at sunset – early evening. Money well spent.
I felt so lucky being in Vegas with the love of my life, and we were going to be renewing out vows in the morning. We decided to use our Bellagio buffet for dinner Friday night, and the helicopter limo driver dropped us there instead of our hotel. By the time we arrived, it was 8:30, and there was a line. It moved quickly, and we were seated just before 9.
I am not a gourmet, simple food well prepared suits me. There was just too much to choose from, and I suspect an enormous amount goes to waste every day. I hope they donate the leftovers to a feeding program for the needy. We saw plenty of “down and out” people almost everywhere who looked like they could use a good meal and shower.
We finished dinner and got back to MGM about 11:00 PM. We decided to “gamble” our free MGM money from joining the club when we checked in.
Someone. Jphelan, said to seek out the Lion's Share machine. He gave good suggestions about other things, so I asked an attendant who took us to it. The Jackpot was over $2.3 million, and someone was playing, so we watched for awhile.
My wife decided to play her free money in another machine, so we went and I watched while she won $31.00. On a penny machine. We were now over $100 in profit without betting one penny of our own money. We decided to go back to the room, and on the way got lost. Those casinos are big.
We watched some gambling, and those people were betting a lot of money. At one table, the man was playing with black, and yellow, and brown chips, and I was told they were $5,000 each. We could only stare in wonderment at how someone could gamble with that much money on the turn of a card. He had more money on the table than I made last year, and we are not paupers by any way or means. We left to go upstairs, and we passed the Lion's Share.
I decided I would try it. I had gotten good advice so far from the forums, why not continue to listen? After watching that other guy bet thousands, I figured I would be a big better and play three whole dollars per turn. So far, the biggest bet we had made since arriving was on a penny, or five cent machine, and we had over $100 in profit. I remember hearing “to win a lot, bet a lot”, and “you got to be in it to win it” in a movie or something once, so why not try?
“Why not?” indeed.
I put in my free play and pulled the handle. Nothng. Again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I had $1.00 left and the machine would not give it to me, so my wife said to put $10.00 more in it.
“Why not?”, I always listen to her and take her guidance.
Yet, I think she may have become addicted to slot machines.
I added $10.00 and, nothing. She said, “One more try”, so I did and we won something, but the machine did not give it to us. Lights began flashing. Bells started ringing.
Than someone in a suit comes over and congratulates us. We won. He said we won the machine. Than he opens the machine and takes the piece of paper and asks me for my drivers license. I stopped him because I had read about scams. Lucky for me, my wife had her cell phone camera with her, so I took his picture, and a picture of our voucher he was going to take. How am I going to cash out if he takes it, and how much did we win?
WHAT are we going to do with a slot machine? This raises a lot of questions for us, as you can imagine.
Sorry if this message is getting too long. A lot was going on, as you can imagine.
He said he had to process it, and I could not go to the cashier with my cash out voucher because it was a jackpot. But security came also and assured us it was the procedure. It was after midnight, way past our usual bed time.
“How much did we win?” I asked.
Than my wife takes a picture of the ticket and asks “Is that what we won?” and starts screaming. She usually is not very excitable. Turns out it was worth staying up late. Very late. It took a couple hours to collect our money. Actually a check.
Here is a picture she took of the ticket.
Another man in a suit came and told us we won the machine and could take it home with us, or they would ship it. What am I going to do with a slot machine?
Here are pictures of the machine with the jackpot on it, and the final payoff for all of this:
http://tinyurl.com/cugw29z http://tinyurl.com/cqtcnqn
