Vegas For The Holidays? Hmmm

[stungazed]

As someone that has been in town almost every year over Christmas for the past 15+ years, things have changed.

It used to be DEAD from the end of the rodeo until about the 27th or 28th. The strip had it's busy times with the Asian tourists but for the most part the city was dead. It's still dead from the end of the rodeo until December 23rd. It also varies depending on what day of the week Christmas actually falls on. This year with it being on Friday, things started getting busy on Thursday night.

About 7-8 years ago when prices hit rock bottom due to the recession things picked up. This year Christmas Eve it got pretty packed. Christmas day was a nightmare. The line at the Rio buffet zig zagged fro the cashier, through the maze, out the door, across the main walkway and almost into the bathroom near the poker room and, that was just the regular buffet line. That wasn't including the seafood buffet line. I've never seen anything like it and I'm guessing it was a 2+ hour wait to actually be seated. I wouldn't be surprised if some people in that line didn't get to eat.

[StatFreak]

Go have a wonderful time.  And tell us all about it, so we can all know what we are missing.

Well, I had started writing a short trip report but it stalled, so I'll cut to the chase. It wasn't crowded. In fact, it was less crowded than a typical Friday or Saturday night but most of the people were crammed around the three stages listening to the bands. The northern half of FSE was obviously more congested because those two stages are so close together with the third being all the way down at the D. The "space" in between was much more sparsely populated.

The bands were good but not really better than the free bands one can see any night. The biggest plus was the lack of buskers.

I got a free hat, noise maker and blinkie pin from MSS so I was set, but I did shell out a buck (hard sell hustled tip) to the large boobed (the real selling points) ladies in front of La Bayou for a handful of beads. The first lady then tried to hustle a second buck for the second lady. No dice.

At midnight they showed fireworks on the display but punctuated them with real fireworks under the canopy. That was cool. In addition to smaller sparkles that went off along the sides, they had strung several lines above the zip lines and set those off in cascades from north to south and then back again. They were loud and impressive. They had a few that "shot" across at the bases of the canopy from one side to the other. They were on lines and carefully designed to go out before hitting the other side. The engineering was imaginative.

I think that the price probably kept the crowd size in check, as well as the fact that there are no places to sit on FSE. The outdoor bars were obviously charging premiums for seats.

I actually spent most of the evening at MSS playing 10/7 DB. I won about $120 which was nice, considering that I was only playing for fun and was drinking. Well, I had four drinks over eight hours. I guess one could call that drinking.    The parking and wristband were comped and I got a comped dinner at triple 7 from a host. It was easy to leave when I wanted and there was no extra traffic to contend with. All in all I had a good time and enjoyed myself but I wouldn't pay to get an FSE wristband in the future, mostly because of the lack of a place to sit.

The only negatives were the drink some woman spilled on my sweater just before midnight and the scam artist couple I passed on the way back in the MSS/Cal overpass that made me for a mark and tried to get me to give them money to help them buy a serpentine belt for their motor home, which by amazing coincidence could conveniently be pointed to in the MSS parking lot from the overpass where we crossed paths. Hey, I could've "bought" (i.e., "held onto") his fake ID and phony wedding band for only $15.00 (okay, it was actually some specific amount shown to me in on their cell phone.) Puleeeze.

[knagl]

Thanks for the report.  I'm surprised to hear that there were open spaces on Fremont -- from all the pictures I've seen in the past (admittedly, near the stages), it looked like a billion people there.

Serpentine belt, eh?  That's a new one.

[StatFreak]

I noticed that I forgot to mention the "Year in Review" they had on the canopy before midnight. I think it ran about 5 minutes and covered the standard major categories of people who passed away, politics, sports, movies, music and a couple of others. It ended with the countdown, which was also done (loudly) on the canopy.