Annual Trip Report for Dec. 16-19th, 2010

[rjleslie]

This weekend was pretty sic out there in Sin City and this place never fails to amaze me.

This is two years in a row that we've been to Vegas on the weekend before Christmas. This year, we were able to add an extra day to the trip and recruit another couple to head out with us. Also able to meet up with another college buddy that I have not seen in years. Marriage can have a pretty nasty habit of doing that for whatever reason.

Day 1- Thursday- 12/16/10- Up @ 4:15am to get ready to be at Detroit Metro Airport by 6:30am for the 8:30am flight. We were fortunate enough to pawn the kids off on my parents for the weekend. This also meant a free ride to and from the airport which is nice thanks to my Dad. Anyways, super smooth flight with drinking $7 vodka tonics to start off on the right foot. Likely the cheapest well drinks to be had for the weekend.

Land and cab it to NY-NY. Cab line is short and we are able to check into our adjoining rooms immediately. We booked an upgraded Facebook deal with the park ave rooms with a strip view. I stayed at this hotel about 5 years ago in a base room and thought they were sizable for four guys. We get to our room that is crammed with two queen beds in it, the other had one king with more room. At this point, I am starting to miss the room we had at Rio last year which was super nice and spacious. But, this year, we wanted a hotel with some amenities which Rio was definitely lacking last year, plus the price was great too, not to mention being on the strip. No big deal, as its only used to sleep in anyways, right?. The iPod docking station was a nice touch and the desk had ample room for a small bar setup.

While waiting for the other couple to arrive, my wife and I hit up Gonzalez y Gonzalez in the hotel. Great burritos and tacos. We kick back with a few more drinks. Its 11:30am at this point.

Head out to the strip to pick up some items (M&M store for the kids) and made it to Planet Hollywood and crossed over to check out the Cosmopolitan. Wow is all I can say. The Chandelier Bar is amazing. The rest of the restaurants were somewhat opened and we found where Marquee is located at. Very nice all around. The casino was very busy.

With it being the Holidays, we head next door to Crystals to see how they decorated it. Very nice also. Walked through Louis Vutton which was empty minus 10 workers and security. Found a pretty cool piece of luggage for the gambler in there- roulette table on top with drawers for poker chips, cards, etc. No price tag obviously and it was enclosed in a glass case. I guess its one of those "if you have to ask how much it is, you probably can't afford it" type things.

We start to head back to NY-NY as the other couple finally landed from DTW at 1:30pm. Happy hour starts @ 2pm at Nine Fine Irishmen. Can't beat $5 pints of Guinness to get things moving. Utilize some free drink passes in here and move on to Pour 24 for a few more rounds. I have become a big fan of micro brews lately and this one doesn't disappoint either. After some more rounds here we run into some promoters for Coyote Ugly and RoK. Always skeptical talking to these guys, especially since RoK is rarely mentioned on these boards, but Coyote Ugly had a happy hour later which could be entertaining from a people watching perspective before heading out to Tryst at night. Girls have free entry, shots, guys reduced cover at RoK. I really doubt that I would even consider paying cover to get in this place as a guest but we'll see if we attempt to go in this club at some point during the weekend.

We proceed to grab some dinner at the America grill in NY-NY. Happy hour continues. I think at this point we are all well tuned up. After dinner, my buddy and I run down to CVS to pick up some vodka, mixers, 5-hour energy drinks, and Gatorade to keep in the room. I find it humorous that the CVS sells bottles of Dom and Crystal, that are way cheaper than anything available in bottle service in the clubs.

Head back to the room and gear up for Tryst. A few vodka tonics down and we head to Coyote Ugly as its only 8:30ish now. Grab some 2-1 vodka tonic wells as this is the drink of choice for the night now. Coyote Ugly had all walks of life in there. I thought we all had a pretty good buzz on but there were some completely train wrecked people in here all ready.

We then decide to leave as its after 9:30 now and head to the Wynn. Great looking hotel as it was our first time walking in here. Grab some nice photo ops in the lobby area and proceed to find Tryst. Find out they don't open till 10:30. No problem. The girls find an outdoor patio that over looks the waterfall at Tryst I think. My buddy and I decide to go find a bathroom and he vanishes to find some slots to play. I start wandering around the gaming floor and come across Blush. Perfect! They are open and have free cover. Go and grab the rest of the group. We get seated in the VIP section which was pretty cool. Bottle prices in the menu seemed slightly cheaper than what I've read about on the boards. The staff was super friendly, talked to a host for awhile and our insanely hot waitress. Cash out of here after two rounds of drinks and head over to Tryst. There was a small line but I flag a clipboard guy down and told him that Ryan Perrings from X/S put us on a guest list (after talking with Ryan about b.s. at X/S). He fills out a slip, off to the cashier and off we go. No cover! Excellent! Score one for home team tonight! This is about where the night starts to become a blur. Fortunately, digital cameras are great for restoring the night's events. According to my wife, we danced our asses off and left with a pretty sizable tab. The tables seemed filled up and the wives played around with the stripper poles for a bit too. Very cool club with some very good music. Glad that we came here for the first night. I recall a handful of times of going to buy a round of drinks and coming back to find the wives surrounded by a bunch of guys. No worries as its all good. No real a-holes in here tonight as everyone is having a good time. This is a major plus I find when going to Vegas as compared to other places like Chicago and Metro Detroit bars. I think we ended up leaving around 2am (yes, early I know). I had a full drink in hand and walked out with it. I didn't want to leave this behind . Hop in a cab and I end up passing out and spilling the drink on my buddy's leg anyways. So much for savoring that drink. I end up in my room, passed out as the rest of the group stays downstairs to gamble a bit and get some late night food.

End of Day 1. To be continued...

[rjleslie]

Day 2- Friday, 12/17/10-

Wake up around 8am feeling relatively descent thanks to the 5-hr energy drink but waiting for the eventual crash. Head out to find some food and hit up the small pizza station inside the hotel. Greasy pizza always tastes good. The mission of the day is to figure out what show to see on Saturday as we didn't have anything planned at night. We cross the street to the MGM side in search of coffee. We come across a little mexican type bar that is serving a mixture of baileys and coffee. Just the fix that we needed. The weather was a bit sketchy today- cool sporadic rain showers. We venture down to Planet Hollywood again to the shops. Decide to play some black jack in the pleasure pit for $15 a hand. Why not, right? This blonde dealer is smoking and her chest is falling out of her top. The wives go find some slots to play in the meantime. Now, this is a single deck black jack, which is my first mistake. Probably not at the table for longer than 25 minutes if that and our chips are gone. Now, it was off to find some 190 octanes from Fat Tuesdays and pick up tickets to "The Peep Show" which the girls decided on. I was a little skeptical but whatever, hopefully Holly shows her cans a few times during the show if nothing else.

From PH, we cross to check out the Bellagio and their garden area. Again, the hotels here outdo themselves with the holiday decorations. Very festive and good for some sober picture taking. We start making our way back to NY-NY through Cosmo again, Crystals, then to eat lunch at Diabloes outside of Monte Carlo. The tacos in here were excellent. We venture in to Monte Carlo to see how big of a tourist trap the Minus 5 ice bar is. Sure enough... Packages starting @ $25 a person and you cannot bring any electronics in blah blah blah. Not liking this a whole lot since they charge you to take your picture. We head back to the room for a much needed 3 hour nap.

Wake up around 7:30pm to get the troops moving. Pour a few more vodka tonics sounded like a good idea along with taking a 5-hr energy drink on an empty stomach (not a good idea). We head downstairs to what was formerly the ESPN Sports Zone restaurant and now it is essentially just the same thing with a name change. Had a descent dinner in here and caught the end of the Red Wings getting lit up. Not good. Oh well, off to catch a cab to the Hard Rock for bottles at Vanity.

This was the first time to the Hard Rock and I could definitely see staying at this hotel in the future. Much younger crowd with a pretty good vibe and no kids strolling around like at NY NY. Tour around the casino floor for a bit and text ***** Sweet to let him know that we are here. It's about 10:30pm at this point and the line is a complete mess already. We wait by the slots near the entry and ***** comes out to greet us to tell us it would be another 15 minutes or so. No big deal.

We get in the table res line which is apparently confusing for some people. A group of 3 guys in front of turns to my wife and says "don't worry, I'll get all 7 of us in.". I told him that's not necessary as we have a table reserved. He gives me a strange look and proceeds to "talk" to one of the clip board guys. The clip board guy informed this retard guy that he is in the wrong line and that general admin is the other line over there. Retard guy proceeds to try to convince that they should let his group in and that they shouldn't have to wait in the other line. Some dismayed f-bombs get tossed at clip board guy from retard guy and clip board guy tells them to please move now. More jawing continues as clip board guy tells retard guy to don't even bother getting in line as you are not getting in tonight. This was rather humorous but delaying our drinking time. I flag ***** down from the podium and we are good to go. He tells me that he managed to hook us up with a corner dance floor table for us providing I know the tipping scheme or something to that effect. I show him a $100 bill and we are good to go. Another host actually walks us down to the table as ***** had to work the podium. I was a bit confused as to what was going on and was unsure of weather or not to tip the second host. He sat us down, shook hands, and he was back speed walking to the front door so I guess a tip was not necessary. We are quickly introduced to our waitress, Jen, another waitress, a runner, and security that is monitoring the area. I couldn't believe the real estate I scored for only 4 people especially with a b1g1 deal. Bottle of goose (1 liter) and Moet champagne please! There were two other parties that were seated next to us- one bachelorette party and another mixed group. Both were bordering 10+ people. This was some prime real estate and I couldn't imagine what this would run on any other weekend. One thing to keep in mind with a b1g1- they will tax you on both bottles and base gratuity of both of them too. I did not know that. When I saw my receipt before the comp, it was north of $1200 (also a few rounds of other items in there too from when my college buddy showed up). Bottle of Grey Goose (1 liter) was $495 and our comp bottle of Moet Champagne was $450. The champagne was gone in 20 minutes. The other comp bottle could have been Skyy vodka. Our waitress was awesome and very accommodating. My college buddy and wife eventually met us in Vanity and had no issues joining in on the fun with the real estate. They let him in with dark Adidas running shoes, which I warned him to be careful about. I guess they got in free of charge by mentioning that they were meeting up with a bottle service group and bypassed the general admin line in the process. Eric D-Lux was spinning that night and there were some great mashups and mixes played. I think the theme for the night was "Vegas, put your mother f'n hands up"...and wait for the the random "Barbara Streisand" drop to come out of nowhere. This is funny because upon listening to some podcasts on the way home, the exact drop came on.

The wives really enjoyed the elevated seating area and their personal dance platform. Didn't really explore too much of the club. There was a main table located at the front(?) of the dance floor that had some serious bottle service going on. It seemed like every 30 minutes, the waitresses were running out with the lights (sparklers not allowed inside Vanity?) and the magnum-type bottles. There were some rather large bottles of champagne being brought up there too. Didn't recognize anyone athletes/celebrities in the group. Around 2am, the gorilla-sized bouncers tried throwing one of the guys from the group out for whatever reason. In the process, this guy tripped down the stairs and plowed into some random girl on the dance floor. This was a multiple injury night as a girl in the group next too us was resting an ice pack on her foot. Strange.

For whatever reason, I looked at our bottle of Goose as it is just under half way gone. I try coming up with a good reason why we should by another one. Splitting it three ways won't be that bad, right? Fortunately, (I think), this did not happen. We finished the last of the Goose as between the four us after my buddy split pretty quick after finishing their couple rounds of drinks (he proceeded to gamble and drink whiskey till 10am afterwards). Vanity seemed to start emptying out around 3-3:30am (I think). The two groups in our area were long gone by now. ***** Sweet came over to talk with us to see how the night turned out as did the waitress and runner. Great customer service! We head for the exit as the girls were exhausted from dancing and being on their feet all night with the heels and grab a cab back to NY-NY for some late night food and call it good. Solid experience all around!

End of Day 2. To be continued...

[BiqJosh]

Great read so far. Lookin forward to the rest of it!

[Sweat_shop]

So far so good I just got back from there today and was Impressed with cosmo as well

[WarreN]

Great TR so far. LOVIN the 8:30 am cocktail on the flight! MY MAN!

[rjleslie]

Day 3- Saturday, 12/18

Once again, we are up relatively early. Really starting to think that the mixture of tonic with the 5-hour energy drink creates the fateful crash similar to what Red Bull does. The group is feeling relatively ok but in dire need of food. We check out a burger joint down stairs in the food court which was descent. Service was a bit sketchy as our waiter seemed like he had a night similar to ours.

The girls wanted to do some shopping down at the Forum Shops in Caesars so off we go. My buddy and I figure we can hang at the sports book to find some college hoops games that are on to pass the time while the girls shop. Arrive at Caesars and the sports book is jammed. I am by no means an expert on sports book betting but some of the games we wanted to bet on Michigan State/Prairie View was not on the board and we already missed an opportunity for Michigan vs. Oakland to lay some coin down. Not sure if you can bet on a game that isn't listed. No other games looked rather appealing but I did pick up a parlay card to start piecing an idea together for the BCS games before we leave the next day. Still feeling like in need of sleep we proceed to go find the girls shopping. As we pass the Playboy store, I get a call from my wife that says, "Hey, do you want to meet Miss January 2011?" I'm like, uh, ok, I guess. A bit confused by this I see our wives chatting up Miss January. $15 later, I get a signed copy of the issue and a photo op of her, my wife and I. Good stuff. She was descent and had a rather large rack. Once again, we see Pete Rose trying to sign autographs in the sports collectibles store across the way. Talking to one of the Playboy store workers, I learn he is there every weekend signing autographs as he lives in the city. So much for his prior gambling issues, right?

We leave Caesars and figure we need to get back on the horse with drinking and start gambling a bit more. We proceed across the street to find O'Sheas. Yes, my very favorite casino. I consider this more of my style- low key, low tables, cheap drinks, with more of an active, younger atmosphere. We go to the bar and observe the beer pong tournaments in the back. This is definitely my style now. We order two beers, two Irish Car Bombs, and two other drinks. Total- $10. My jaw hit the ground. The bar tender looks at may and says, "what, do you want to pay more?" I go no, but this pales into comparison to my bar tab from Vanity last night. He laughs and serves us the drinks. Shots go down, and my buddy and I grab the beer to go play some $5 black jack.

We find a few seats at one of the $5 tables. The immediately swap out dealers. Great, right? The multiple decks get reshuffled and here we go. This is the first time that I can recall that the dealer rarely flipped over a 21. I swear every other hand I got, was 20, or close. I doubled by cash here and bailed after about an hour or so playing. My buddy didn't fare so well. Feeling a bit better we walk back to NY-NY now as our feet have had about enough walking for the day and time to get ready for dinner and Holly Madison's peep show.

We have dinner at NY-NY's Italian restaurant. Not in the mood for pasta, I go for the thin crust pizza as I am anticipating another heavy drinking night. Definitely hit the spot. We close out dinner and head to PH. We arrive a bit early and proceed to Koi (restaurant/lounge) up on the mezzanine by the show entrance. Not sure if this place is brand new or not but it seemed pretty cool. Had a couple of rounds here and proceed to go get our seats.

The show was actually entertaining but, a warning, Holly does not do a whole lot in this which is why I think it tends to get negative reviews. It wouldn't rank it up near the Cirque shows, but its a worthy alternative to a cheaper show. We paid for upgraded seats where we could almost reach out and touch her. Not bad for seeing a new Playboy model earlier in the day and an old one later in the day.

We exit PH to head back to NY-NY for the night. When in the cab line, we see some belligerent drunk lady trying to run from the outside security and get a cab. Not sure what happened here. We are definitely feeling the affects from the prior two nights in Vegas so we play it cool and head to Coyote Ugly again (RoK actually had a line believe it or not). The weirdest part of this visit was that guys actually had to pay cover. Only $5 but still. Whatever. We only stayed for a few rounds as the typical course of the antics in here takes place. Girls removing bras, etc. and the repeated entertainment from the bar dancers- "Hey, if you're drinking, put your hands up and make some noise!!!!" This grew rather tiresome and we decided to make it an early night at 1:30am.

Day 4- Sunday- 12/19. I couldn't sleep at all thanks again to the 5-hr energy drink from the night before (I really have to stop taking these things). Get packed by 8am and I cash out downstairs on the two rooms. Funny that both rooms for the weekend with an added dinner to the room was less than our bar tab at Vanity. I guess that happens. I make one last stop to the sport book to do a 5-team college bowl parlay with $20. 22:1 payout so that would be really nice if I hit. Off to the airport we go, pay $20+ at Burger King for breakfast and wait for our plane. A very bumpy ride at first as this could have been easily anticipated considering what the skies looked like on Sunday when we woke up. Back in DTW early which was great. Cold temperatures and a fresh coat of snow.

Great trip all around! Not sure if we'll make it back in 2011 as a family trip to Florida is already planned for March, guy trip to Myrtle Beach in April, and an adult trip to New Orleans in November. We'll see though.

Thanks for reading!

[WarreN]

Nice TR Rick. Lol @ Pete Rose...poor guy.

btw your facebook link is broken. You forgot the .com

[rjleslie]

Nice TR Rick. Lol @ Pete Rose...poor guy.

btw your facebook link is broken. You forgot the .com

Thanks for the heads up. Not sure why the link won't work. My internet at home (Comcast) has been up and down all afternoon.

I remember going into the sports store last year just for a photo op with Pete Rose and the store told me I would have to spend somewhere around $75 starting price for a 8x10 photo, or $100 for his book (signed of course) for a photo op. No thanks. Chatting up a playmate with the wife in tow was much more enjoyable at a cost of only $15.

[bsweet]

thanks

Glad you had a good time at Vanity Rick, and thanks for kind words

[expression]

wow crazy trip

[rjleslie]

Thanks guys. Always a good time. Wishing I would have put a bit more cash down on my 5-team parlay for the college BCS games. Just need Auburn to cover and I'll be receiving a little check from the NY-NY casino accounting department!

[keith77]

Wicked crazy ass trip am going to be going to Vegas with my high rolling Lithuanian Poker Star Karolis this year cant wait ! nice work on cocktails on the flight

K

[nel167]

Great TR those 5-hour energy drinks are a curse and a blessing

[PiKaMonK]

solid TR man