1st Timers Birthday Trip

[sirdeez]

I write long reports with a lot of details so hopefully it’ll sound fun enough to bother reading it.

Ok, so this trip was a group trip for a friend of my wife’s birthday. She and her roommate have never been to Vegas before so it was up to me to plan the entire trip for the 4 of us. Before the trip my best friend and Vegas Fight Weekend Crime Partner’s girlfriend decided she was going with us. He wasn’t going to make it since he had a work event that weekend, but he was actually going to be in Vegas the week before for work. This basically was an unacceptable coincidence for him so he decided to change the date on the work event so we could just stay in Vegas for our arrival. It’s been all fight trips the last couple years so I was looking forward to a big group trip.

Most plans were made directly with hosts from JC and they all represented extremely well. Special shout outs will be given when we get to the night we used them. All of the hosts I contacted and didn’t actually decide to go to their club, thanks for all the info, you were all extremely informative and professional.

The trip is a Thursday-Monday trip with Thursday night being the “biggest” night. We planned it this way because history shows the deeper into the trip the big nights are the more likely you are to lose soldiers to battle along the way.
We get to Vegas after a 5 full hour flight from Atlanta. That’s just crap, they schedule it for 4.5 but it almost never takes longer than 4 in the air. Bumpy as hell too so maybe they flew slower through some winter storm. Anyway, we don’t land until 8pm Vegas time.

Had a table at Haze scheduled through Joey Orr for a B2G1. Joey was 100% awesome from the initial outreach I made over JC through a courteous follow up on FRIDAY after our visit. Never waited more than a day for a response (and that’s including a period he was actually on vacation). We were a little behind schedule getting over to Aria as we had to wait on the friend’s GF getting to Cosmopolitan and getting ready.

Joey walks us in and we get taken to the upstairs table right on the corner before you get to that back upstairs area. We loved the spot as we had the perfect view of the dance floor, dancers, Hot Server contest that was going on that night, etc and since we were pretty well paired up, we weren’t trying for a lot of foot traffic. Next to us were some athletes and their agent but no one we recognized, they were mostly hockey players.

We get a bottle of Goose and Crown and the free bottle which is usually Sky becomes Belvedere since they were the sponsors of the hot server contest so that was cool. We didn’t drink even one drink of the Crown but finished the 2 bottles of vodka. Also, Joey brought us out some Patron XO shots in celebration of the birthday. (Side note: The birthday girl who is a bartender gave him a “mini Guiness” shot recipe, which is just Patron XO with a small float of Baileys if you’re interested, it looks and tastes great). We got hit up for some drinks from these Canadian dudes who were doing everything they could to be as Canadian as possible (saying “eh” at least 100 times in 10 minutes). After they finally went away I asked the security guys “aren’t you supposed to be a chic and hot to be a bottle rat?”. Around 3 we’re ready to get started on afterhours so we literally start offering the bottle of Crown to all the tables around us. Once they realize we’re not trying to SELL it but GIVE it away, we find a taker and bounce.

After a quick refresh back at Cosmo it’s over to Drais. Drais is pretty much the only place my wife literally “must” go every trip and the last trip we didn’t make it there until after it closed the night we tried to go so this trip it was imperative we make it there.
For Drais I had been in contact with Zane to set up our service there and Zane was, quite literally, on point for everything, even checking in with me the day of to confirm our arrival and that they were ready for us. We let him know we were on our way around 4 and when we arrived there was quite a crowd trying to get in. We walked up, asked for Zane, got ushered in immediately and taken to our table, which was on the dance floor on one of the corners facing back to the entrance. It was the perfect spot actually. Think we got a bottle of Goose there and did end up drinking the entire thing. One note on Drais, our guests thought, and I agreed, that the service at Drais was the absolute best we had the entire weekend. They almost couldn’t believe it. From Zane to the bussers we found nothing but REALLY helpful folks. I mean, you couldn’t smoke a cigarette without someone coming for the ashtray!! Anyway, Drais is a fucking blast and the music had us dancing all the way up to when we roll out of there at around 8.

After hanging at Cosmo for a bit afterwards the rest of group decides to head to Spearmint Rhino but I’m done in so I’m dead around noon. Wife returns about an hour after leaving with reports that the SR door guy was a total ass so she said eff it and left before walking in. The rest of the group decide to stay and the 2 newbies hang for a couple hours and the friend and gf stay for like 10! They fell in love evidently with an Australian blonde. Good for them I say, love is hard to find. Day 1 was an epic bender.

[sirdeez]

A couple things I forgot to mention on Day 1 (that I’d want to know):

Haze music on Thursday was open format, some EDM, a LOT of EDM type Top 40 (Kesha, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, LMFAO), and quite a bit of Top 40 type hip hop. It was serviceable. The DJs at Drais were great and they looked either very haggard or very banged up. We took pics of them.

When we got back to the Cosmo after Drais, we decided to make mimosas. Note to self: mimosas using 80 dollar bottles of room service champagne are really good, but not as good as 30 dollar bottles of liquor store champagne. Also, no chicken fingers are worth 25 bucks. They’re just not.

Ok, so since Day 1 lasted until Day 2 afternoon for almost all of us, Day 2 was mostly sleeping. We had considered both RPM and Tao for Friday night but couldn’t quite rally for either of those. We decided to make it a casino party night.

When we were ready to get going, around 9pm, Friend and GF were STILL at SR. In fact, I even got a call from them, only it wasn’t them. It was the Australian blonde letting me know they weren’t going to make it out by 10pm (our original meet up time). I was hoping this to mean that they were about to close the deal.

Wife can’t make it out, she’s done for the day enjoying round after round of room service. SO, birthday girl, roommate, and me head over to Planet Hollywood, my favorite actual CASINO. Never have a bad time and the crowd is always in line with what we were going for in a casino.

As soon as we walk in our awesome ratio (2/1 woo hoo!!) attracts the guys giving free admission to Gallery. I’ve never been in there so we figure why not (and after last night’s tabs I was ready for some free admission). There is NO ONE in the front bar of Gallery when we walk in so we grab a drink there (3 ketel red bulls $46 – yeah, do the math, what is the per drink price?) and walk through the club. Although as stated here all the time, the layout is very strange, I did like the way the club looked. There were definitely people in the back bar and on the dance floor (which is maybe 8 feet wide, more like a hallway with tables instead of walls). So we had our drink there and watched the girls on the trampoline for awhile, and again, the club did look cool.

After Gallery the girls wanted to gamble but they are not high rollers at all and want to play blackjack. Luckily PHO has 15 dollar tables. They’ve never gambled before and after the 10 minutes it took for the dealer to wipe out their initial buy in I didn’t know how much they would ever gamble again. In the end I suggested pooling resources and playing the outside of a roulette table for awhile. This strategy worked well and we each had about 10 vodka redbulls (with REAL Red Bull) for the low low price of winning 60 bucks each. This made them ecstatic. One of the gogo dancers also made them ecstatic so they continually tipped her. I find it funny that the only appropriate thing someone can do in a pit is tip a gogo dancer. I can’t think of any other legitimate reason a player would be back there but they never gave them any grief.

In the meantime, my buddy had shown up with the bad news of his GF conking out before the deal could be sealed. Tough luck buddy. Their SR girl had actually invited them out that night but he certainly wasn’t going to be going out with her without his GF so he came to meet us. The girls went to the bathroom at some point and ended up getting brought into Koi for that $20 all you can drink deal. They hung out there for about an hour and we called it a night around 3:30am.

[TheGeneral]

Next to us were some athletes and their agent but no one we recognized, they were mostly hockey players.

Why do I get the feeling you partied with BizNasty? (https://twitter.com/#!/BizNasty2point0)

Sounds like an awesome time!

[sirdeez]

Day 3 is going to be the big tourist day. Since I was in charge of planning the trip I decided we should all go have lunch at Mon Ami Gabi, sit on the patio and watch the fountains across the street. Of course there was a wait for the patio so the girls went to Sugar Factory while I screwed around playing video poker. The thing buzzes and I go to grab them at Sugar Factory. They are literally in there going shopping. I think my wife dropped like 3 bills in there including candy necklace bras (holler!). SUGAR FACTORY! Anyway…

Mon Ami Gabi was great as always but the service from our main waiter was horrendous. We ordered 2 bottles of champagne and some OJ so we could make our own mimosas and once he opened them, he just left them sitting on the table. We had to ask the waiter in the section next to us for an ICE bucket, and pretty much everything else. Our dude was just nowhere to be found. I gave the guy who actually did stuff 30 bucks direct. Mon Ami Gabi is still an awesome place.

After lunch we went and checked out the Bellagio exhibit. It was still Chinese New Year and was pretty cool. The little kids with clothes made out of flowers was the coolest part. The girls took pictures in front of all the little kids in the same pose as the little kids so that was cute.

So, after the afternoon the next plan was dinner at STK followed by the Jabbawoceez show and the Palms. Dinner at STK was awesome as always with our 2 waiters being unbelievable. Certainly got the bad taste out of our mouth from lunch. I’ve never been inside STK without getting steak tartar and foie gras French toast… and that remained true on this visit. Others had bonein ribeyes, lamb chops, my wife had a seafood tower, etc. Oh yeah, the shrimp rice krispies were the bomb. We were there early so it wasn’t as bumpin as it usually is as the night progresses. The Jabbawoceez show was actually very good, this was a choice of the birthday girl. It was really funny. It’s not just dance routines, it’s more like a funny Mime show that has some dancing in it. There’s no way these are all the originals because 1) they weren’t nearly as tight as they are on TV when it comes to the routines and 2) they never took off their masks, not even at the end when they’re doing the curtain call. They were good and entertaining and I can see Jabbawoceez becoming kind of like Blue Man Group with outposts in several cities. If they haven’t thought of that yet, I’d like to claim credit for the idea and collect royalty.

After the show the plan was to go straight to the Palms and try Moon. The girls decided they wanted to change first so we didn’t get out of the hotel and to the Palms until almost 1. So we decided to just drink at the Palms and watch the people. From what we heard, Moon was PACKED! There was a group called Sex Panther that I’ve never heard of there but they’re from LA so perhaps they had a strong showing.

Anyway, around 3 the girls decided they had such a good time at Drais the other night they needed to go back. We go back to the hotel and I hit up Zane again to check on tables. He says no problem, and I send them over there. I was exhausted by this point so it was just 3 girls heading over there. I realize this was a huge mistake because evidently they had the best time in the history of humanity. They needed to tell me this when they got back around 9am. They even saw the Situation, which to them is like seeing Brad Pitt. Evidently they were very VERY well taken care of again and couldn’t say enough good things about the night. So, thanks Zane and send my thanks to your security!

[sirdeez]

Ok, the final day didn’t include much but I’ll close this bad boy out. The wife and friends after their epic morning at Drais get to bed around 10am. It’s all I can do to drag her out of bed by 8pm so we can go see Zumanity.

Everything that has been said about Zumanity on here is correct. It’s great for couples. We had one of those love seats and they were very nice. They had a LOT of interaction with the crowd, most of it quite filthy considering the folks they picked out. They basically picked out the people you would LEAST want them to pick out for your own viewing, but I think that was kind of the point. The “couple” that act as the comedy breaks was probably the best part, especially the girl, she was hysterical.

After Zumanity, we take a cab over to In and Out and one last disgustingly unhealthy meal. It was actually better that I expected and the Animal style was nice.

Overall an awesome trip. Had great results from JC hosts, even those I didn’t end up using. Ate a shit load, drank a shit load, partied a SHIT load. Slept… very little.

[dnix]

Lol. Nice TR

[ccc]

Sounds like an awesome time. These new trip reports are getting me pumped for May.

[Chitown Rik]

Great TR. Sounded like a blast!