You don’t wanna mess with me when I’m packing

I’m back from Vegas! I picked up Bee at around 3:30am on Saturday morning and we caught the first flight out of Bellingham to Vegas to meet Lisa and her sisters for her first stagette (she has two of everything for this wedding — lucky bride!). We arrived home late last night, but not before making a few new friends (it’s crazy how many stags and stagettes take place each weekend in Vegas) and shooting some guns. Turns out, I’m a decent shooter! Heh heh.

Sidenote: Poor Bee got hit on the forehead with one of the bullet casings and ended up with a painful cut

This post is sponsored by Jet Abroad, a website that offers cheap flights and hotel bookings. I checked them out and their prices are pretty decent. I especially like that they include the final cost including taxes and any applicable fees.

On my last trip to Vegas

If I told you there was a place you could get hammered with a dollar (or perhaps even make money doing it), fire an UZI (legally) without a license, sit in the cockpit of a working plane right before take-off (and get your own mini lesson if you’re nice), watch a show where the stage is made of several different moving parts over a 1.5 million gallon pool, and take an afternoon trip to one of the world’s seven natural wonders of the world, I bet there’s only one answer you could think of: Las Vegas.

It’s no wonder that Vegas is such a popular destination for bachelor / bachelorette parties. It’s not just the strip clubs and overflowing cocktails that attract party-goers looking for a good time. Vegas is simply the only place in the world you can do everything and anything for an affordable price.

“So how do you get the best deals and how the hell did you get to sit in the cockpit” is what you’re probably wondering. Those are the two most commonly asked questions I get when I post pictures about Vegas.

The Best Deals

Packages. Yup, that’s right. Book the hotel with your flights to Las Vegas and you’re guaranteed to get a better deal than by booking the two separately. In fact, if you can’t find a hotel on the strip for under $45 per night (based on 2-person occupancy), look harder. It’s no secret that Vegas didn’t take the recession very well and it’s better to sell off a room for the cost of cleaning and hydro than to leave it vacant for the night. At least with pre-booked rooms, the hotels can count on future business.

$1 drinks. How does that work? Simple answer: it’s Vegas. Longer answer: if you’re thirsty but don’t have much in your pocket, take a dollar to the slot machines and sit near the aisles where the servers walk past. Even if you’re with a friend and only one person is gambling, both of you will be offered free alcoholic beverages. Sidenote: if you don’t like your drinks to be too strong, let them know because I suspect they automatically make everything a double.

Free cover. How do you get it? If you’re female, it’s easy: just walk past the clubs during the day and pick up free admission passes. If you’re male? Ask a female friend to pick one up for you.

For more tips, check out the post from my last visit to Vegas (tips are on the bottom).

Sit in a Cockpit

I know it’s not the most flattering photo, but it’s the only one I have of the both of us in the cockpit.

No, I didn’t tell them it was my birthday. The story is better than that! Several years ago, my friend and I went on a girls’ getaway. We booked our flights to Las Vegas through a travel agency that found a cheap flight and hotel package departing from Bellevue WA. As we were entering the plane on our way home, my friend was sneaking a glance at the cockpit and when she saw that one of the attendants was looking at her she said “just wanted to look at the cockpit”. It may not be that funny, but it got the staff laughing.

Once again, being a girl has it’s advantages in Vegas. The pilots were male and we happened to have seats close to the front of the plane. So, one of them came over to our seats after everyone boarded and started making conversation about my friend’s earlier remark. I asked if we could take pictures of the controls (I was just as trigger happy back then as I am now), and the guy responded by saying he could do one better and let us sit in the seats! :O It was pretty exciting. The two of us sat in the two pilot chairs for a couple minutes and took a few photos before we scurried back to our seats just in time for takeoff.

I won $24.30 off of a $1 at Bellagio!

We had driven an entire day to get from Redding, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. It was exhausting, but at least we avoided the main highways by taking the mountain pass route.

Approaching Vegas was overwhelming.You drive through miles of desert nothingness so dark at night that you can see the milky way and stars litter the skies like icing sugar on a chocolate cake. Then, you begin to approach a city of lights so bright you wonder if something is going to short circuit. The city gets bigger and bigger, and so do the buildings and towers. Suddenly you’re driving (or rather inching) along The Strip and your senses are overwhelmed by the stench of hundreds of people, the sounds of commercials and outdoor performances playing one after the other telling you that “Leanne Rhimes is performing at the Luxor” “Watch the #1 musical performance..” “Rated #1 show in all of Las Vegas” etc. as if you were on the set of Minority Report, and the bright lights twinkle, flash, and move across the buildings around you all trying to entice you to spend money at their resort. It’s an epileptic person’s worse nightmare.

I can’t say I was keen on staying in Vegas when we first arrived. I normally avoid big cities when I travel. But, by the end of two days, I wished we could’ve stayed at least one more night because there was so much to do and too little time to do it all.

This was my second visit to Vegas as an adult. The first trip was in 2007 for five days and that was just the right amount of time to see some shows, shop at the outlet mall, and go through all the hotels on The Strip. Two days is not enough time.

Sidenote: Please don’t take your kids to Vegas. I went once as a kid and hated it because I wasn’t allowed to step into any area that had gambling (including restaurant seats that had gaming screens), which pretty much meant I couldn’t go anywhere because there are machines everywhere! It’s also not a good idea to bring your kids because there are dozens upon dozens of people along the streets handing out graphic stripper and prostitute cards to anyone who walks by. Even if you avoid them, the cards cover the sidewalks like confetti after a New Years Eve party.

Worthwhile Things to Do in Vegas

1. 

   ‘Tastes of the World’ at the Coke shop is also worthwhile. It’s $7 for 2 trays of pop from around the world or $8 for a tray of floats.

   Spend an entire afternoon walking down The Strip and visiting all the different hotels. It may look like a small street, but it takes a really long time to walk from one end to the next. Each hotel has an underlying theme and most have free daily shows (ex. Bellagio’s water show outside, Treasure Island’s Siren’s show, Caesar’s Palace afternoon show etc.). There are tons of cheesy photo opportunities and fun to be had.

2. Take in a show. I would go to at least one major show like a Cirque du Soleil performance, and maybe one of the smaller burlesque shows for kicks. Ticket prices may be high for a Cirque show, but it’s worth it.
3. Devote an afternoon to shopping at the Outlet Mall. Like everything else in Vegas, the Outlet Mall is oversized and will take an afternoon to get through.
4. Try a buffet and don’t skimp on it. Avoid the ones that are $7.99 and treat yourself to a nice one — budget $20 for lunch or $30 for dinner.

Tips for Travellers to Vegas

1. Book your hotel room online and ahead of time! Booking your Vegas hotel room online is always cheaper than booking a room in person.
2. Be aware that the hotels have begun charging an extra “resort fee” that range from $10 to $25 per night. This may make your cheap room more expensive than the nicer room at the more expensive hotel.
3. Prices for rooms change throughout the day, so if you have the time, check the prices a few times over the course of a couple of days to get the best deal.
4. If you don’t know what show you want to watch, visit places like Tix4Tonight at the Coke store for discounted tickets. Be aware that they charge a $5 fee so it’s worth it to buy tickets for expensive shows but not so much for the smaller shows.
5. If you want to catch a Cirque du Soleil performance, you might have to purchase them online ahead of time for good seats (depending on the show). Ka and Love usually have discounted day of tickets, but O is usually sold out by the day before.
6. If you want to get a discount on Cirque du Soleil performances and don’t mind sitting on your own, you can get discounted single seats at the booking desk. There were only ‘limited vision’ seats left when we got there so we bought individual seats scattered in the nicer sections of the theatre that were much cheaper — the ‘limited vision’ seats cost about $120 while the seats that we got that are normally worth around $170 only cost us around $120. You can’t talk during the performance anyways and you won’t want to look away from the stage to look at your friend / partner either.
7. If you want to change your seat, you can always try to go to the booking desk an hour before a performance to check if anyone has refunded their tickets last minute.
8. 

   CSI: The Experience — Worst Vegas attraction EVER.

   Do NOT go to CSI: The Experience. I seriously want a refund!! It was $30 to go in and it’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever paid for. It’s supposed to give you the experience of solving a crime on your own. I thought that at the very least the crime scenes would be detailed and realistic like they have in the show. But no. The crime scene looked like the set of a high school’s haunted house and the “experience” consisted of going through a few rooms and filling out a form with information that’s hand-fed to you on posters and interactive computer screens. I actually felt like they should be paying ME to go through it. At the end of it I actually did ask for a refund but the guy said he couldn’t do it. He also said that lots of people complain about it being crap, after which I thought “then why the hell didn’t you tell us not to go in!?!” Ugh.

9. If you want to gamble a bit, take out $x from your wallet (the amount you’re willing to pay for the experience of gambling) and put your wallet away until you’re out of the casino. This helps to prevent overgambling.
10. If you want free alcoholic drinks, just sit in front of a slot machine for a while and bet a few cents every minute or so. Waitresses will come around and ask if you want something to drink. It’s complimentary and a really cheap way to get buzzed before you hit the clubs. I’ve heard this works better if you’re female with a female friend (men don’t get as many drinks). Be aware that the drinks contain much more hard alcohol than you may be used to. You can also order non-alcoholic drinks.
11. I’ve heard that you’re more likely to win on a slot machine that’s closer to a casino entrance because they’re programmed to have higher chances of wins so that people walking by the casino see others winning and are enticed to enter. I haven’t found out whether this is true or not.

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