I married a "Vegas Person"....

[ryan850]

tic toc tic toc....we're waiting for the next part....

[ponch62]

tic toc tic toc....we're waiting for the next part....

Done!

Saturday Night Continued….

So first off, I left a minor detail out about Saturday afternoon, I lost my debit card. Not a huge issue on the surface because my wife is there with hers, but we share the same account. I am pretty sure that I left it at the bar at MDC, but not positive. So now I am faced with the dilemma, call and cancel the card to eliminate risk, but at the same time shut down my wife’s card which would leave us no cash the rest of the trip. To most rational people, you go ahead and shut down the cards and just use plastic or limit yourself to the cash you have on you, but I have “Vegas Brain” at the moment, I am willing to gamble the card turns up!

So after dinner I run down to the Cosmo security desk, after a couple of phone calls, they inform me they have my card but its going to take 30 minutes to and hour to get it brought over to the desk, “vegas brain” kicks in again and I tell them I can’t waste that kind of time, I will stop back over tomorrow! At least now my card is not lost, it’s just not in my hands, major difference, at least that’s how I justified it to myself. So we grab a cab down to Caesar’s, we pull up about 10:15pm. We have presales for Martin Garrix at Omnia, but entry is guaranteed until midnight, so we decide to go grab drinks. Initially we walk into Fizz, the vibe is great, but the ladies want to be able to sit before heading into Omnia and the place is full, so we went down the way to another lounge (I forgot the name, but they had a DJ playing some open format stuff), it wasn’t bad. We ordered a drink and I told the group I wanted to run down and get a look at the Omnia lines (the cab dropped us off in the garage, so we hadn’t had a chance to see the chaos yet). I get down to Omnia and see a complete circus. People that have no interest in Omnia can’t even get through the crowd without pushing people around. I go back to meet our group and tell them what I saw, also recommend that maybe we wait for things to settle a bit longer before going in. My wife asks if I want to go gamble a bit, so we tell MN/FN we will meet back up around 11:45. We ran out and played a few slots and had a couple more drinks, then we decide to start heading toward Omnia. My wife needs to use the bathroom, so we stop off, I wandered around a little in the meantime in front of Caesar’s when suddenly I see Martin Garrix walking right at me! I have had a few cocktails at this point and coming off my Prydz photo op, I am feeling good about adding a second photo to the collection. I reach into my pocket to pull out my phone and it sticks a bit causing a bunch of slot change to come flying out. At this point I looked like and idiot, so I missed the chance to ask for the pic, so opportunity lost, but still cool to have another run-in with a high end DJ.

Wife comes out and we run over to meet up with FN/MN. Here is something important to know if you are buying presales to Omnia. The regular presales and the VIP bard card presales have completely different lines for entry and they are nowhere near each other. MN and myself had bought bar cards for us, and regular presales for the ladies. When I bought these, I thought we could go in together, and we didn’t really need $400 worth of bar credit since we were going to be doing a lot of pre-drinking. So we had to send the ladies to their line and MN and I got in our line. As I mentioned before, CRAZY amounts of people trying to get into Omnia on this night, Calvin Harris had canceled last minute on Friday, so I think a lot of people shifted their Omnia plans to Saturday night. I asked the gal who checked us in if the size of the crowd was abnormal and she confirmed that the place was absolutely nuts even for a Saturday. It took MN and I about 30 minutes to get in, it took our wives a little over and hour to get through the regular presale line.

Once in, MN and I grabbed a decent spot to watch the show from while we waited for the ladies. As you can imagine, it was tough to move around much at all, but we got a pretty decent place to stand off to the side. There seemed to be a lot more room to move around behind the DJ booth by the back bar, but the ladies wanted a better view of the show, so we stayed packed in tight. The bar cards actually worked pretty well, they speed up the process at the bar and I tipped well, which got us served quickly. I also managed to leave the bar card behind on one trip, but I noticed quickly and the lady who served me saw me coming back and immediately handed it to me (my wife assumed all future plastic transactions from this point on!)

Martix Garrix came on around 1:30am and had a ton of energy. He dropped his brand new song he made with Third Party and actually brought them out as surprise guests which was cool. Garrix has quite a few of his own songs for being so young, but not quite enough to carry the whole night, so he dropped in several fun remixes and even broke into a mini hip hop set for a bit which was a nice change of pace. Between Omnia’s crazy production value and Garrix energy, this really was a fun show. I think what was most enjoyable watching him was how he interacted with actual individuals in the crowd. You could see him several times pointing at and acknowledging individual people and even grabbed a few phones from the crowd to take pics from the stage for people, which was a really nice touch. I would definitely recommend seeing him if you get a chance, he at least gives off the impression that early success has not completely gone to his head.

We stayed til about 3:15am, MN/FN were staying at Caesar’s, so they wandered back up to their room a little before us, and they were actually set to fly out on Sunday, so I had a feeling this might be the last we saw of them this trip, and if so they had once again been great traveling companions! My wife and I ended up walking across the street to the Linq to catch a cab so we could avoid the long cab line. As expected, there was no line across the street, so we made it back to our room by around 3:45am.

That pretty much wraps Saturday, up next is Sunday. Two clubs left and two really solid DJ performances coming up, and another “Secret” dinner location yet to share! Thanks for reading!

[ponch62]

Moving on to Day 3!

I was up around 8am, went down again to grab a breakfast sandwich from Earl of Sandwich again, then decided to go ahead and play a few slots while waiting on my wife to wake up to get our plan for the day situated. Coming into Sunday, this was the only day of the trip that we didn’t either have presales already bought or a table lined up, so whatever we were going to do, we needed to get a plan figured out. We set it up this way intentionally, we weren’t sure how we were going to be feeling at this point and I know that navigating the Vegas club scene on a Sunday is MUCH easier than on a Friday/Saturday. I got a text from my wife around 10:00am telling me she was up and asking where I was, her timing was perfect, I had just won $120 off a penny slot, which was a great time to cash out (penny slots aren’t REALLY penny slots anymore, you are still betting $.50 a spin, great marketing trick by the casinos though!).

Before running back to the room, I ran across to the Cosmo to see if I could get my debit card. While I was waiting for it to be brought out, I chatted up the guy running the security desk for a bit, he goes on to tell me that this happens all the time with debit cards, but he just had someone’s dress shoes turned in that they had left on the casino floor, that was a new one even for him. Got back up to the room around 10:30am and my wife was almost ready to go. I asked how she was feeling and what she wanted to do for the day, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but she asked me what our pool club options were for the day! As always, I had a plan in mind. I told her of our Sunday options, I thought Disclosure at Daylight would be best due to the fact we wouldn’t be doubling up on any clubs and I had heard great things about Disclosure’s sets (this decision was 100% about Disclosure and 0% about the venue). She agreed, so I hopped on trying to find a way to get us in without having to much hassle. I didn’t have a direct contact at Daylight, so I jumped on twitter and started searching for promoters. I found one pretty quickly and texted asking if we could still get added to the guest list. He told me he could put us on as a “late add” and we would have to show the person with the list the text message he was going to send me for entry. Really easy process, took all of 10 minutes to get this setup, and he told me as long as we were there by 2pm we would be fine.

So my wife is ready to go by about 11am, we decide to go ahead and grab a cab down to Mandalay Bay. This is the only time it took us a little while to catch a cab the entire trip. I even tried to get an Uber, but they were at 2.5x surge, apparently everyone was trying to move around town at the exact same time!. We got down to Mandalay Bay about 11:45am and decided to grab a bite and a few drinks. Stopped into the Border Grill and had a quick bite and slammed down enough drinks in a short period to have a good feeling as we head into Daylight. My wife had decided to throw her swimsuit in an empty backpack before we left the room and just quickly change before we went into the pool, not knowing this would cause an issue I will get to in just a minute. She quickly changed in the bathroom and we headed over to get in line for Daylight about 1:30pm. There are about 10 people in front of us in the line at Daylight when we walked up, and we waited about 15 minutes for them to let us through, but just as our promoter told us, we showed them the text message he had sent and they ushered us on through to security to enter the club. This is where things turned sideways. My wife’s backpack is small and literally has 3 items of clothing in it and that’s it. The security guy tells us that the backpack will not be allowed inside today because they are expecting a big crowd and there won’t be room for it. Apparently our only option is to take the bag to the bell desk and check it before we can come in. He tells us if we do that, we can come right back to the front of the line and he will let us in. If you have ever been to Daylight then you know, the bell desk could not be any farther from the entrance to Daylight even if they tried. I grabbed the bag, told my wife to hang back and I would go check it (we really wanted to catch Disclosure, otherwise I might have just walked away outta principle). Apparently this happens a lot, as I got to the front the guy at the bell desk told me to take a pic of my claim check just in case it got wet, but about 20 minutes later I was back with my wife and we walked into Daylight.

Overall I would say the venue itself was a disappointment, it started rocky with security and not long after my wife got turned down when she asked for a cup of ice, even though she had bought multiple drinks just minutes before. Apparently at a pool club where people are drinking in the sun, providing something to help keep them hydrated is not a concern. I went back up because I needed another drink and asked for a cup of ice with it, and got one without issue. Crazy if you ask me! Also there are not as many of the bells and whistles at Daylight as you see at MDC or EBC (less bottle presentation effects, less CO2/streamers, etc.) It is a good place to watch a show, the stage is elevated and you can see well from all angles, which at the end of the day is really what we came for, so we tolerated some of the frustrating service issues we ran into. On a related note, there were lockers available and it had a nice crowd, but it was not overly packed, and we counted 10+ bags much larger than my wife’s that were being carried around by people without tables!

As far as the show goes, Disclosure was fantastic! They definitely appeal more to the crowd that likes real “house music” more than the EDM craze that’s going on now, which really is more of what my wife and I like. Most of the shows we saw over the weekend were DJ’s that were fun to watch, but mostly played the popular EDM songs that you hear on the radio all the time (I think we heard “Lean on” in 4 different sets over the weekend!). These guys played all their own stuff with some different kind of house beats that are not being used by everyone under the sun. I highly recommend their show if you are looking to change things up a bit, this was my second favorite show of the weekend in spite of the frustration we faced with the venue.

As Disclosure was finishing up around 5:15pm, we talked about what the plan for the night should be. We had come into the trip thinking we would surely do Nightswim at XS, but the weather had not been extremely warm all weekend, and they were calling for night time lows to fall into the 50’s, which seemed a little too cool to really enjoy. So we decided to try Hakkasan on a Sunday. Once again, I hopped on Twitter and found a promoter quickly who had us set for the guest list within 5 minutes, and we had free entry guaranteed up until 1am. Highly recommend going with guest list if you have even ratio or better on Sundays, would not recommend this for Friday/Saturdays unless you are planning on extremely early arrival at venues.

Gonna stop here for now, we have dinner at a “secret” spot that I am sure many of you have been to and a trip to Hakkasan ahead, thanks for reading, more soon!

[KinStock77]

Awesome TR so far! Keep it up!

[ponch62]

On to Sunday night!

We finished up at Daylight and started the long trek back to the front of Mandalay Bay to pick our checked backpack up. I was still a little upset about the whole thing, but the Mandalay Bay bell desk was excellent when it came to customer service which made things a little more tolerable, the guy who brought our bag out smiled and said “light travelers I see”. This is normally the point that I take my wife back to the room so she can get a nap before the night time activities, but with this being our last night, she decided she wanted to power through. I was happy, proud, and a little nervous all at the same time, I didn’t want our last night to end early due to her wearing down.

We decided to go ahead and try to grab something to eat and gamble a bit before going up to get ready for the night. My wife really likes the “Willy Wonka” slots, so we decided to have our cab take us to the Cosmo, as we knew they had a lot of these slots there. As we were walking in be talked about what we should grab to eat, we weren’t really dressed for a nice dinner, and suddenly I remembered hearing about the secret pizza place in the Cosmo. I threw the option out to my wife and she was in. Now that we had decided, I just had to find it, so I hopped online and did a quick search and figured out exactly where we needed to head. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s called “Secret Pizza” because there are no signs leading you to it and it’s down a narrow hallway on the 3^rd floor that looks like it leads to nowhere. I think they keep it hidden because they aren’t really set up to handle large crowds, we were about 8 people deep in line and it took us about 20 minutes to get through the line. The pizza slices are huge, one is probably enough for most people, but get two because its good enough you will want it. We grabbed our food and went out to the Cosmo third floor common area to eat. The place was full of people that had just gotten out of MDC. We saw a group finish eating and leave their pizza box behind when a guy who was waiting to enter one of the restaurants that looked like a mobster called them out for leaving their trash behind. This set a young blonde gal off, she started cussing at the guy and her friends had to finally pull her away, they also picked the pizza box up on their way back out which was probably a good thing for them, this guy and his crew looked like the type you don’t want to embarrass in public!

After dinner we went down to gamble for a bit, we played and ordered drinks for about an hour before we decided to head back up to get ready for the night, I think it was around 7:45ish at this point. I let my wife start getting ready and went back down to gamble for a few, since it takes her just a bit longer than me to get ready! We were both ready to go by around 9:30, we wanted to grab a few drinks somewhere and be on track to get to Hakkasan around midnight. My wife had been disappointed that Fizz at Caesar’s had been so crowded the night before because she really likes champagne cocktails, so we decided to cab back down to Caesar’s. Fizz was almost completely empty this time, plenty of seating which we quickly grabbed and ordered a couple of drinks. The drinks were great, music was a little different than what we had heard here in the past, kind of a lower key vibe than what we were loking for, but I think it had a lot to do with this being a Sunday as opposed to a Saturday. One other thing that was odd, there were just the two of us here, but the ticket included a 20% service charge when it came out. I assumed this was an auto-grat, but it was never really made clear by anyone. I am not used to being auto-gratted on a party of two, but its what we would have tipped anyway. I am assuming this was for the server, if not there is definitely one cocktail waitress in Vegas that is not going to welcome us back!

We grabbed a cab outside of Caesar’s at around 11:00pm and headed toward MGM. We were there by 11:15 so we decided to gamble for a few and grab some free cocktails. The free cocktails ended up costing $25 a piece as we both dropped some money pretty quickly! We decided to head into Hakkasan right around midnight. We found the guest list line pretty easily and once again checked in without issue. The line took about 5 minutes to get through, and as a heads up we did see a guy in front of us wearing trendy sneakers get turned down at the door because of his shoes. We got inside and started looking for a decent spot to hang out and see the show. Showtek was on the decks for the night, and honestly we were not expecting a lot, I had heard several of their sets before and my general feeling was that they sounded a lot like many of the other acts that are out there today. We grabbed a spot on the wall in front of the pavilion just behind the tier 2 tables which worked out pretty well. There was a pretty decent sized crowd, but not so big that we felt uncomfortable.

Showtek came out right about 1:00am, and from that time on never slowed down once. The energy they came to this show with was absolutely insane, and even though the music was not overly unique the energy they brought and the way they interacted with the crowd was without question the best I have ever seen. They also had Sonny Wilson with them (I am not sure if he regularly performs with them or not, but it was definitely a nice touch as he sang live to many of the songs and sounded amazing!). Just as my wife was starting to hit a wall around 2:30am, they brought out Lil Jon to join them! Honestly he didn’t do a lot, said a couple things on the mic and waved his hands a bit, took a few pics and that was about it, but it definitely provided a quick boost at just the right time.

Showtek finished up a little after 3:00am, I think we were both starting to hit a wall at this point. We stopped off at a slot for just a few minutes on the way out so my wife could rest her feet, it had been a long day of standing! We got outside to the cab line around 3:30 and I was really happy we had not decided to do nightswim, it was really windy and cold, and Showtek was a fantastic show! We got through the line pretty quickly and were back in the room before 4:00am, we were both pretty wiped out at this point!

So for the club portion of the trip, that pretty much closes things out. Our flight out is set for Monday night, so I will have a little more to add, and I like to leave off with some closing thoughts on things we learned this trip, so there will be one more update. Hope you have enjoyed it so far!

[artedm]

nice!

[ponch62]

So let’s put a bow on this thing! It’s our last day, so not as much action as most days, but I think there will be a few things that will be helpful to people in here.

I woke up about 8am, decided to go gamble for a bit while my wife was sleeping. She called me about 9am and said she was up, so I went back up to help pack up the room. I hadn’t eaten yet because on our last day we always like to finish up at the Wicked Spoon over at the Cosmo. We were packed and out of the room by a little after 10am and checked our bags downstairs before heading over to eat. I can’t recommend the Wicked Spoon enough, especially when you are starting the recovery process following a long weekend. Has an amazing mix of breakfast/lunch/dinner foods and a huge dessert bar. It’s not cheap but well worth the cost. Even though we always intend for it to be the start of recovery, it never seems to work out that way as they have a bottomless mimosas option you can add on to your buffet, which is just not possible to pass up on. We stayed here until a little before noon, multiple trips to get food, multiple drinks, great experience.

Following brunch, we just decided to gamble and enjoy a few more cocktails as our time was winding down. We gambled and drank until about 3pm (overall I think we came out as a couple up about $250 gambling for the trip, which is good, cause I always go into each trip expecting to lose!), then we decided we should probably pick something up for our kids and head toward the airport. We were in a cab to the airport by 4:30pm and on our way outta Vegas by 6:00pm. Overall, a great trip, could not have squeezed much more in if we tried. Already discussing a return trip in November, because that’s what “Vegas People” do!

I have been on these forums a long freaking time. I cannot tell you how much better being a regular follower has made my trips to Vegas. I owe a lot of my great experiences to people providing info through these forums, so I write these trip reports hoping to give back to others (plus its fun for me, gives me a chance to think back to all the fun I had, and I like reading them a few months before my next trip!) That all said, here are a few things I think we have learned.

1. Use the “Get Connected” section of these forums, it works! Even if you see posts where people are looking for others to join that don’t have responses, that doesn’t mean people have not been sending PM’s to people to join their group. We met some great people and got a table that was way better than what we would have gone for with a smaller group.
2. Keep track of the hosts that get mentioned regularly on this site. They get mentioned regularly for a reason, they deliver on their promises. I have never shown up at a club and been disappointed when I used someone that has regular positive feedback here.
3. If you have even ratio or better, use guest lists if you don’t have a table on any night/day other than Friday/Saturday. I am not saying you can’t use guest list on Friday/Saturday, just plan to arrive extremely early or wait a long time if you do. The guest list lines on Sunday were extremely short, the lines on Friday/Saturday were ridiculous. Actually Friday pool wasn’t so bad, might be able to pull that one off.
4. I think I said this on my last trip report, but tip people often and well. At the end of your trip its going to add a little to your overall cost, but there is no better return on your tipping investment than you will find in Vegas. If you are tippling for table location, make it clear before you are seated.
5. Though we did not use UBER this trip, I can see it being a good alternative to the late night cab lines, I recommend giving this a shot, cars seemed to be arriving quickly for people. I am just so used to the cab system out there that we didn’t try it. Crazy because I never cab at home, 100% UBER.
6. If you are pulling off a dayclub/nightclub in the same day, either pace your day drinking, or get a good nap before round two. I can’t see the need for two tables in the same day, some people will probably argue with me on this, but I don’t think we would have gotten the value out of a night table if we had one during the day.

I think that’s all I can think of for now, I had fun writing this thing, hope you enjoyed reading it and can take something out of it to help on your next trip. I’ll be around the forums for sure, maybe even coordinating a table with some of you in the future, I really miss Vegas already!

[fromBtoD]

Impressive. Most impressive. Thanks so much, so many great CPTs!!!

[ccc]

Nice trip. Multiple tables usually has everything to do with how many people you have in your group and where you are spending the most on mins.

[ponch62]

Nice trip. Multiple tables usually has everything to do with how many people you have in your group and where you are spending the most on mins.

Definitely see your point here, we generally have been at tables with a max of 8, and we aren't usually handing out drinks to randoms. A table of 8 guys can turn into a party of 16 pretty quick, spreads the liquor out better!

[drew84]

Awesome trip report! You guys know how to keep the party going!

[ponch62]

Awesome trip report! You guys know how to keep the party going!

Thanks Drew. We have a few year of experience over most people hitting the Vegas scene, and it helps when both people are really excited about a Vegas trip, one never let's the other slow down!

[drew84]

Thanks Drew. We have a few year of experience over most people hitting the Vegas scene, and it helps when both people are really excited about a Vegas trip, one never let's the other slow down!

That really makes the difference there! No fun when one is a Debbie downer :P

"At least now my card is not lost, it’s just not in my hands, major difference, at least that’s how I justified it to myself" <--- Hahaha, exactly!