TR in progress--SUCCESS

[rnjbond]

Try it in the middle of the Vegas strip. It's awfsome.

[dnix]

thanks to everybody who replied--as drew mentioned we did all make it into rain and had an AWESOME time. i guess i could edit the thread title since i'm home now but don't know how!

the solution we chose to get our friend in might be frowned on by some (and probably for good reason), but we picked the method that:

- had the highest chance of working based on our assessment of the club entry procedures
- cost us the least amount of $
- required no help from a host or other palms employee (wouldn't want to risk damaging a relationship with any of those hosts that have been so generous and helpful to the members here)

i won't post the details for two good reasons--it was so ridiculously simple that i'm a little embarrassed that i made such a big fuss about it initially, and it's so easy to exploit that it could encourage some underage members to try and repeat it and i don't really think that's a good thing for this board.

full TR to follow--i think i'll organize it by locations/venues rather than give you all the chronological play-by-play which was painfully slow at times.

bahahahaha did your solution work at all the clubs or just rain?

[cthip]

tried to write my review of encore but it sucked balls (my review, encore was awesome). maybe my brain is just still working too slow. here's my palms review and i'll give encore another shot later:

PALMS CLUBS

i spent the better part of saturday afternoon/evening furiously calling, texting, and forum posting to anybody and everybody that i thought could help us work around our little ID situation. to be totally honest by the time we left for the clubs everybody in the party was feeling a little bit dejected and disappointed. broke away from the group for a few minutes to go to the meetup at blush (THANKS RESTYLE), but didn't get to spend much time there and i was probably too much of a downer to be of much use to them anyway. still, awesome meeting you guys there!

to give the situation some perspective, the friend in question has been a part of our annual vegas trip for years, and has historically always been the guy that takes care of everybody else--he makes sure everybody is happy, has a drink, and forces alcohol down their throats if necessary. not having him with us that night would have been a huge let-down for everybody involved.

also, the palms was really our third choice for saturday night. XS would have been our preference but tables were sold out by the time we got our group together. patrick frank offered us tryst and it would have been cool to hang out with the other forum members there, but a few friends who had a bad experience at tryst last year vetoed that idea. so, we settled on the palms figuring that it was a good option and would save us each at least $100 (wristbands ~$140 with open bar, vs $250+ for a table).

we had considered just staying in that night as sort a of a no-man-left-behind show of solidarity. but, all twelve of us had already pre-purchased our wristbands on wanttickets.com and also we had three people (my bro and two friends) who had just turned 21 recently, was their first time in vegas, and really couldn't afford to throw away the cash they already spent on their club tickets so we sorta had a responsibility to show them a good time. so we had to at least try and make something happen.

so we headed out to the palms around 10:30 and got there around 11. picking up the wristbands was a little slow, some lady in front of us had some dispute with her ticket order and it took 3 people about 15 minutes to sort it out. once we had the wristbands, it was absolutely a VIP experience. to be honest, i felt more like a VIP with the palms wristbands than i ever had with table service. that feeling of walking past the huge mass of people waiting in line, flashing the wristband, and having the ropes magically open is really priceless. no waiting for a host, no checking a list, or sending a text to figure it out. just flash the wristband and the doors open. even when we were waiting at the final ID check, a doorman saw the wristbands, came over to us to check our IDs, and let us out of line and into the club. very cool.

once inside rain, the hosted bar is on the top floor above the DJ booth. we met up with the rest of our group there, and when our friend who lost his wallet showed up, we all let out a collective cheer and i just got that feeling that everybody was ready to PARTY. i was a little bit disappointed that the hosted bar now ends at 1AM instead of all night, but i will say i was very impressed with how efficient it was. in the hosted bar area there were twelve of us, and maybe ten other people who were using that bar. there were three or four bartenders working at all times and we NEVER waited for a drink. we took care of our bartenders and they took care of us and we basically felt like we owned that whole VIP section (the alcohol may have imparted a false-sense of self-importance that fueled that idea, but really who cares). there were a few tables unsold up there so we had plenty of space to sit if we wanted. we honestly didn't leave that area until the hosted bar closed at 1AM.

spent the rest of the night on the dance floor at rain. haven't been to a house/trance club in years, but oakenfold is still definitely one of the best in the business. most of our group isn't really into electronic music at all, but there were enough mashups and remixes of recognizeable mainstream music that everybody had a good time. opening set was by some guy named jordan stevens, he was pretty good too.

never made it out of rain to see the other clubs. have been to ghostbar in the past and wasn't impressed. would have liked to see moon, but honestly we were having way too much fun at rain to think about going anyplace else. in retrospect probably could have gotten a cheaper wristband package and saved a couple bucks. all-in-all it was totally worth and wouldn't hesitate to go back. actually, scratch that. CAN'T WAIT to go back!

[dnix]

i guess i could edit the thread title since i'm home now but don't know how!

what do you want the title to be?

[cthip]

what do you want the title to be?

i'm still in a bit of a mental fog so let's keep it simple. something like "TR in progress--SUCCESS!"

[P-tr-ck]

nice tr. I would love to know how you got your man into rain.

[Danny Vegas]

Btw, pulling a Lebron = taking shots, then pouring splenda in your hands, and throwing it in the air like baby powder.

Best idea ever.

OMG that's great. Who came up with that one?

[cthip]

Fleur de Lys @ Mandalay

broke away from our group early saturday evening to take the wife to a nice dinner at fleur de lys @ mandalay bay. got the $50 gc from restaurant.com (THANKS MOEZILLA) for $2 and figured that was good enough excuse to go. of course, the $48 we saved with the gc was really used for cabs back and forth, but i guess that's just the price of doing business in vegas!

eating in vegas now we're always a little skeptical since so many chefs have one (or more!) restaurants in vegas. some of them are great, and some of them are poor watered-down imitations of the originals. the outstanding reviews of fleur de lys on yelp, coupled with the gc are really what convinced us to try it and it was definitely a great choice!

got a reservation on opentable.com for 5:30PM--early enough that we'd have time to digest before hitting the clubs. got there before the restaurant even opened so sat at the bar and ordered cocktails. i had a cucumber martini which was awesome--light, refreshing, tasty. and this is coming from a guy who believes that a real martini is really just gin, vermouth, and olives. nothing else! the wife got something with pureed maraschino cherries and pop rocks. it was pretty good too.

amuse-bouche were brought to us in the bar. decent, but nothing to write home about. little piece of fried cod with a little warm potato salad underneath.

sat down and ordered. i had a tuna tartare appetizer. i know just about every fine-dining restaurant in the country (maybe the world) has some type of raw-tuna preparation on their menu but this one really stood out. large chunks of firm, jewel-like ruby-red tuna with a ponzu sauce and some type of crisp green vegetable i didn't recognize. one of the best raw tuna dishes i've had. seriously. wife started with the truffled onion soup and OH EM EFFING GEE it was good. rich and creamy, but somehow still light. really sweet caramelized onion flavor, slices of black truffles and a little ball of duck confit at the bottom of it. by the time we finished these appetizers i had all but forgotten about all the stress from earlier in the day.

second course i had salmon with some kind of green sauce. pureed peas or chives or something like that. whatever it was it was delicious. salmon was just barely cooked--none of that raw, slimy feeling but just barely starting to separate into flakes when you cut it. mine was good, but again the wife's was better. ravioli made with yukon gold potatoes and veal. the sauce on this one was goooooooooood. like soak it all up with bread, and then lick the plate to get the last bit of awesomeness off of it, then order another bowl. ok so i actually just stopped with the bread, but if the restaurant was empty i might have continued on with the rest of that.

we both had the braised short ribs after that. i have to admit, i'm a sucker for braised short ribs. if it's on the menu, i'm ordering it. this wasn't the very best i've had, but it definitely didn't disappoint. falling-apart tender, braised with Guinness AND red wine. served with carrot, potato, and parsnip purees. lots of people raved about this dish in their reviews and i agree it was pretty damn good, if a little heavy for a hot summer day in vegas. i had a glass of a santa barbara pinot noir with this one. i'm no wine connoisseur but it was good and reasonably priced.

almost skipped dessert as we were getting pretty full, but glad we didn't. wife had the chocolate souffle with mocha ice cream and glass of madeira. souffle was rich and chocolate-y but not too sweet. mocha ice cream was awesome. i had a sort of deconstructed carrot-cake. the cake was just alright, sorta dense, but it was a great vehicle for the rest of the dish: cream-cheese ice cream, raisin puree, and pineapple-carrot sorbet. really really really really good. wife liked the pineapple-carrot sorbet, i preferred the cream-cheese ice cream, we were both surprised at how good something as simple as pureed raisins could be.

we left feeling fat and happy, and with significantly less money in the wallet, but this was definitely our best meal in vegas, and one of our best anywhere. if you're in the mood for something fancy on the strip, this is the restaurant i'd recommend. it's sorta fancy-pants, but not so refined as to make it weird or inaccessible. it's just food that tastes really really really good. service is friendly and not overly-formal either. three-course menus are only $55 ($45 if you come early in the evening).

[SoCal Girl]

You made that sound so good...I am really hungry now. Some how Chicken and brown rice just doesn't sound good anymore

[cthip]

champagne brunch @ FIRST inside the palazzo/venetian

woke up sunday morning and somehow organized 10 of our group in various states of hangoverness to meet at FIRST. this was no small feat--this place is a little tough to find as it's located down a long hall that leads to an exit from the mall near where the palazzo/venetian meet.

new-ish restaurant/bar. open late (24 hours maybe?) affordable. theme is sorta rocker/party. standard diner/comfort-food items made with higher quality ingredients and sometimes a little twist.

some of us like to do the champagne brunch buffets on sundays but it sucks for other people to pay $30-$40 to get in then realize the food sucks and after a glass of cheap champagne you realize you're more hungover than you initially thought.

FIRST has a champagne brunch where most items are $15, and you can add on unlimited champagne for another $7. i tasted some of a friend's champagne and it was good, didn't see the label though. it came with a screw-cap and couldn't have been too expensive but good is good right? i opted for a bloody mary. a lady rolls around a cart and makes it at the table while you tell her what you want in it. i got pretty much everything which was absolut peppar vodka, celery salt, worcestershire sauce, A-1, tabasco, tomato juice, shaken and garnished with a celery stalk and a slim-jim. that's right, a slim-jim like the kind you used to buy at 7-11 when you were in junior high then snap it open and pretend that you're the macho man randy savage. OH YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! served in a big glass and oh so full of win. probably the best bloody mary i've had, but i'm not a big bloody mary guy other than the rare occasions that i'm drinking in the AM.

they give you free freshly made doughnuts. they're warm and rolled in cinammon-sugar and taste a lot like a really light, pillowy churro. seriously the lightest donuts i've ever had. like fall-apart-when-you-pick-them-up-light. kinda weird, but good enough that i was motivated to order a breakfast item called a "mc dougie" which was more fresh mini-donuts (without the cinnamon-sugar this time), topped with bacon and sunny-side up eggs and served with honey-bourbon-maple syrup. the waiter described it as a fancy mc griddle but it's so much more than that. even the fruit bowl on the side was sweet and fresh. fruit you would actually want to eat, good for a hangover.

i think everybody else was happy with their food except the guy who ordered pancakes. three pancakes for $15. came with real maple syrup instead of imitation-maple which was nice, and was plenty of food for him, but three pancakes just don't really look like they're worth $15. he got the unlimited champagne and they were playing all the football games he bet on though so he was happy.

my only complaints were that for a place that markets itself as a good morning-after type place, the music is WAY too loud for people with hangovers. good selection of music, but i guess any music is too loud when you're hungover. also service was a little slow but that could be our fault because we had such a large group. took close to an hour to get our food, but they were good about drinks while we were waiting, and when the food did finally come it was hot and good, hadn't been sitting under a heat lamp forever. would definitely go back for lunch, dinner before heading, out, or maybe midnight snack before passing out.

[cthip]

You made that sound so good...I am really hungry now. Some how Chicken and brown rice just doesn't sound good anymore

haha. as good as that may sound--the real thing is better. GO if you get a chance to!

[cthip]

the venetian

ok so far most of my trip report/review has been about places that i LOVED in vegas. here's one about a place that i hate. or at least love-hate. the venetian.

what's good about it? it's MASSIVE. what's bad about it? it's MASSIVE. the thing i hate most about it is that my friends always stay here and i can never find them. there are at least three towers that i'm aware of (palazzo, venetian, venezia) and two of them sound exactly the same over the phone. who's the marketing whiz who thought up that one? venezia. doesn't that just mean venice? so your towers are called venice and venetian. brilliant!

anyway different elevators located on different sides of the massive casino/shopping area means i can't find my friends' room and don't know how to tell them where i am. meanwhile my wife's heels are starting to bother her and we're both getting a little testy. different security guards at each elevator entrance more than willing to hassle you about where you're going and why, but absolutely useless when trying to get help and find a room. i understand it's their job to keep the casino safe, but do they have to be such dicks about it? i will say that during our wanders through the hotel hallways we did see at least four or five groups of very drunk and reasonably hot girls on their way out to the clubs that night. definitely more than i've seen at other hotels from a quantity perspective, not really sure about quality. depending on your situation that could be a huge plus to staying here.

that being said, you can get GIGANTONORMOUS rooms for not a lot of money and cram a lot of people into them. my friends got an 1100 sq ft room with two queens and a sofabed (wow that sounds kinda dirty) for under $200/night on the weekend. if i took the time to sit down and count i could figure out how many people were splitting that room, but what's the point? all i know is that when i showed up, it smelled like cigarettes and dudes in there.

which brings me to the infamous venetian scent. over the past few months they've supposedly scented all the rooms and common areas to cover up the smell of smoke. to be honest, i never noticed it until the cleaning crew decided to leave a spray bottle of it in the room and a friend started spraying it everywhere. very floral and annoying but pretty effective at covering up the smell of smoke. nothing really covers the smell of dude though so the room was still kinda smelly.

finally found their room and smoked some nice cigars and drank some nice scotch. nice to have a HUGE room to do it in when you don't feel like or can't go out.

oh yea, check in is a NIGHTMARE here. my friend and i were on the same flight in. my wife and i checked into encore, took a nap, showered, got dressed, and walked over to the venetian to greet the rest of our group, assuming they were drunk and had lost lots of money already. when we got there 3 hours later, they were still waiting for their room. cabbie said venetian laid off 90% of their workforce. i'm sure that's an exaggeration but could explain the slowdown in room turnover/check-in.

[cthip]

bahahahaha did your solution work at all the clubs or just rain?

didn't try the other clubs. i assume it would have worked (it's really not very sophsiticated), but we weren't really willing to risk finding out.

[Drew]

I stayed at the Palazzo and loved it. Wasn't difficult to get from front desk to the room or to the garage. The trek to parts Venetian though did take some skills though. That sucks about check in. I didn't have any issues.

ok so far most of my trip report/review has been about places that i LOVED in vegas. here's one about a place that i hate. or at least love-hate. the venetian.

what's good about it? it's MASSIVE. what's bad about it? it's MASSIVE. the thing i hate most about it is that my friends always stay here and i can never find them. there are at least three towers that i'm aware of (palazzo, venetian, venezia) and two of them sound exactly the same over the phone. different elevators located on different sides of the massive casino/shopping area. different security guards at each elevator entrance more than willing to hassle you about where you're going and why, but absolutely useless when trying to get help and find a room. i understand it's their job to keep the casino safe, but do they have to be such dicks about it?

that being said, you can get GIGANTONORMOUS rooms for not a lot of money and cram a lot of people into them. my friends got an 1100 sq ft room with two queens and a sofabed (wow that sounds kinda dirty) for under $200/night on the weekend. if i took the time to sit down and count i could figure out how many people were splitting that room, but what's the point? all i know is that when i showed up, it smelled like cigarettes and dudes in there.

which brings me to the infamous venetian scent. over the past few months they've supposedly scented all the rooms and common areas to cover up the smell of smoke. to be honest, i never noticed it until the cleaning crew decided to leave a spray bottle of it in the room and a friend started spraying it everywhere. very floral and annoying but pretty effective at covering up the smell of smoke. nothing really covers the smell of dude though so the room was still kinda smelly.

finally found their room and smoked some nice cigars and drank some nice scotch. nice to have a HUGE room to do it in when you don't feel like or can't go out.

oh yea, check in is a NIGHTMARE here. my friend and i were on the same flight in. my wife and i checked into encore, took a nap, got dressed, and walked over to the venetian to greet the rest of our group. when we got there 3 hours later, they were still waiting for their room. cabbie said venetian laid off 90% of their workforce. i'm sure that's an exaggeration but could explain the slowdown in room turnover/check-in.

[cthip]

I stayed at the Palazzo and loved it. Wasn't difficult to get from front desk to the room or to the garage. The trek to parts Venetian though did take some skills though. That sucks about check in. I didn't have any issues.

good to know. palazzo's biggest 2-queen room is 720 sq ft which is why i think they chose the bigger room in the older tower. since there are relatively fewer of the larger "rialto" suites (i think maybe only six per floor) at the venetian, that may have contributed to their long wait this time.

i'd probably give palazzo a shot if i got a good deal there.

what are the chances you and i walked right past each other in my endless treks between encore and venetian?