Vegas Vacation (2017)
Vegas Vacation Travel Day
Well our bags are packed and we are ready to go. Just waiting around until 10:00 to leave for Austin to catch our flight. Our itinerary for the week will include Blue Man Group, Vegas! the Show, The Hoover Dam Tour, and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. We will also dine at the Bellagio, House of Blues, Binion's Cafe, and Wolfgang Puck's as well as enjoy traditional Vegas Buffets at the Luxor, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, and Excalibur. All of our meals will be BOGO Free or just FREE! Thanks MyVegas! |
Day One
After arriving at the Airport in Las Vegas, it only took us 2 hours to get to our hotel. After riding the shuttle, a bus, the shuttle again, transferring to another bus we finally arrived at the Luxor. The hotel is old and kinda gross and reeked of cigarettes (everything in Vegas reeks of cigarettes) but the bed was soft and room was spacious and the elevators go sideways. After checking in, we jumped on the Duece and headed downtown to see a million bucks! Evening - Downtown Vegas The Deuce is a double decker bus which spends the day running up and down the strip. The trip from our Hotel to Downtown is less than 10 miles, but takes over an hour to travel. We jumped on at the stop across the street from our hotel and were joined by 6-8 drunk and unruly guys. They were pretty tame, but really obnoxious and loud. We were both hungry and exhausted from traveling already, so that may have contributed to the obnoxiousness. Our destination was the Fremont Street Experience. This was the most appropriately named attraction we have ever visited. What an experience! The brokeback mountain strippers, the pastey twins, the wine bottle drummer and the go go dancers were just a few of the highlights. The Fremont Street Experience is just a huge party full of debauchery and drunkenness. It was great! We stopped in Binion's for a World Famous Burger and to get our picture taken with $1,000,000. The burger was above average and we were both scared to touch the million bucks. Both Binion's and The Golden Nugget, along with the 4 Queens and The Fremont Casino are traditional old school Vegas casinos and a ton of fun to walk through. |
Day Two
Woke up bright and early and had breakfast at the House of Blues inside the Mandalay Bay. We had tickets to see Blue Man Group at our Hotel in the evening, but no real plans for the morning. So we did what we love to do, headed outside and started walking to see what we could see. Morning - The Strip We are not gamblers, but decided that we could not go to Vegas without at least giving it a try. Our plan was to spend $1.00 each at the penny slots at every casino we visited. Mancie lost her first dollar in less than a minute. I, on the other hand, being the high roller that I am, won $7.00 on my fist spin and immediately cashed out. That meant I could play at 7 more casinos for free! We made it all the way down to Treasure Island, which is about 4 miles, before turning around and heading back on the opposite side of the road. We visited Paris, The Venetion, Excalibur, The Mirage, Caesers Palace, Bellagio and a whole bunch of other Hotels, before heading to an early dinner at the Mandalay Bay Buffet. It was terrible. Evening - Blue Man Group Our show for the evening was in our hotel, The Luxor, which was a good thing because we were dead tired and my knee was about to fall off. We also had an issue with our AC in our room so we were ready to move to a new room after the show. The show was great! We were in the 3rd row almost directly in the middle of the stage. We even had to put on a pancho because we were in the "Splash Zone". We did not get wet, but Mancie did almost get hit in the head with a jello mold and I almost caught a marshmallow in my mouth. It was a weird show. Mancie even got to take a selfie with one of the performers during the show. He looked like Chris Kattan. After the show, we picked up our new room keys and headed over to our new room in the East Tower. It is nice. Nice, cold AC that doesn't rattle. We also got a call a few minutes after we got settled from the front desk who gave us 2 free buffets for our trouble. Hopefully they don't suck. |
Day Three
Day three started off with a short walk over to the MGM Grand for the BOGO Free breakfast buffet. Thanks MyVegas! This buffet was much better than the previous night's dinner. Morning - The Strip / Madame Tussauds After breakfast, we jumped on the Deuce and headed North to the Venetian Hotel which is home to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Along the way, we stopped at Planet Hollywood to pick up our tickets for our evening show. The museum was kinda creepy, but there were a ton of good photo ops and we enjoyed a short Marvel Avengers 4D Movie at the end which was included with the admission price. Evening - Bellagio / Vegas! The Show We had a free buffet dinner at the Bellagio (Thanks again MyVegas!) which was really good. We hung around Planet Hollywood in the early evening and even watched a bit of the hockey game at the bar before our 7:00 PM show, Vegas! The Show. Vegas! The Show was a trip down memory lane and a history lesson for Las Vegas. It started in the 1940s and worked its way up highlighting different entertainers who made their mark on Vegas. We saw good impersonations of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tom Jones, Elton John, Elvis, Tina Turner, and a few others. We also saw a pretty terrible Sammy Davis Jr who sounded more like Urkel. The same guy played Sonny Bono and was equally as bad. Over all it was a fun show and I would recommend it for an older crowd who lived through some of the glory years of Vegas. We made it out of the show just in time to see the World Famous Bellagio Fountains Show. It was a bit underwhelming to tell the truth. It was an interesting experience because of the sea of people who crowd around to watch it. Honestly though, it's one of those things you have to do when in Vegas. |
Day Four
Breakfast at Johnny Rocket's in the food court of the Luxor. Wow! $30 for breakfast. It tasted fine, but damn. Morning - Hoover Dam Tour We had about an hour to kill before our bus picked us up for the tour, so we headed down to the casino to spend our $1. Luckily there was a drunk hooker there who volunteered to show us how to win at slots every single time. She told us it was here duty as a Canadian to show Americans how to win at slots. Luckily our bus arrived and we were able to ditch the Drunk Canadian Hooker and set off on our next journey. The short drive over to the Hoover Dam gave us the opportunity to see a little more of Las Vegas as well as Boulder City, Nevada. Our first impression is that there is no grass in Nevada. We knew it was a desert, but there is literally no grass, anywhere. You see grass all the time on the strip, but upon further investigation you realize that it is all fake. Some of the trees and flowers are fake too. The Hoover Dam was amazing. Truly a modern marvel. Tons of great photo ops with beautiful landscapes. We were able to mark off Nevada on our visited states list as well as Arizona. As you walk across the dam, you travel from Nevada to Arizona. Evening - Wing It We used our free Luxor Buffet vouchers for an early dinner and were about to call it a night, when we realized it was only 6:00 PM and not even dark yet. We had not yet visited the Excalibur Casino so we agreed to give the Drunk Canadian Hooker slot machine strategy a try. Within the first few spins Mancie hit the 100X jackpot and won $10.00 (did I mention we only play penny slots?) We cashed out and went next door to the Tropicana and won another $17.00 there. Both of these were by far our biggest winnings of the trip. Thanks Drunk Canadian Hooker! |
Day Five
Morning - Winging It Part II Started with Excalibur Breakfast Buffet which was good. I also had some "breakfast dessert". After, we checked out the last few casinos we had not visited yet including the Aria and a few others. We were able to win penny vouchers from the remaining casinos we missed earlier in the week. By noon, traffic started to pick up for the Billboard Music Awards which were happening the next night. Our final meal in Vegas was at Wolfgang Puck's which we paid for with a $25.00 voucher (Thanks MyVegas!). Food and service was top notch. Around 2:00 we started our bus, bus, shuttle, trip to the airport for the flight home. We figured our adventures in Vegas were done, but boy were we wrong. It wasn't the Drunk Canadian Hooker, but there was a Drunk Tourist who got thrown off the plane for being loud and obnoxious. After that settled down, our flight touched down back in Texas around 11:00 PM. |