Set up, journey there and Friday - Halloween night:
Yes, you are reading that right, I am finally getting around to doing a trip report from about a year and a half ago, so bear with me if some of the details are a little fuzzy. Being that I'm hitting Vegas on Friday for UFC 200, I figured I might as well try and relive the last time.
Myself and four other friends from New Zealand made the trip to Vegas for the second time (well, four of us did with one first timer in the group) we would be joined on the last evening by a friend who lives State-side and is a Vegas veteran.
Since I'm setting up a Halloween TR, I'll call them by their costumes: Penguin (animal, not the Batman villain), Robin Hood, Eagle (from Eagle VS Shark), myself as the Karate Kid and Jesus (yep, that one got mixed reviews on the strip).
We know each other from college and now live in seperate areas of New Zealand, so we assemble like Voltron in Auckland International Airport, for our flight to San Francisco, land there and have enough time for a burger and a couple of Sierra Nevadas before it's wheels up to Vegas.
I normally find the getting to Vegas parts of TRs a bit redundant but I thought I'd include this for my fellow non-US citizens. Everything you have heard about how much Americans love Halloween is true and it became apparent the moment we went to check in for our flight to LAS as the Virgin Air counter staff had all ditched the uniforms for costumes. The girl checking us in was the hottest Tiger I have ever seen so I approve!
Anyhow, we get to Vegas feeling as good as you can after spending about 16 hours going from front door to the Cosmo lobby. It was our first time there and I had only breifly walked through during my first visit. Dam son, what a place! We had two queen rooms and were hoping to get a rollout for one of the rooms and draw straws, we also attempted a $50 handshake but it was met with mixed success, must have had a supervisor close by or something. We were informed that due to the shape of the queen rooms, we could not put a rollout in due to fire regulations, so we upgraded to a king suite (I think, again, details fuzzy) it was a few doors down from the one queen room we kept so every one had a spot to sleep and we had a pre-game room. We had to pay for the upgrade but the guy said it was cheaper than the standard upgrade cost and he gave the $50 back, our organiser said it was a good price so I'll take his word on it (Penguin was on hotel and flight duty, I got the club nights)
Our first night was at Tryst on Friday so since that's no longer a place, I won't spend too long on this part! I really had a good time though, we had a table in a great location, thanks heaps to Bobby Y for setting it up, great guy to work with and I would have most definetly gone back to him if I was in charge of organising tables this time around.
There we are with two bottles of Grey Goose and some form of bubbles between five people, so the mission was clear, make new friends or die from alcohol poisoning. We went with the make friends option, cycled through many groups of girls at the table, I was the only single one in the crew and all the other guys are loyal to their S/Os so no stories to report there, sorry I could not provide one.
One of the groups we hung with included a bride to be already dressed in white. A photo of her and I made it to Facebook and due to the time difference I woke up to 100s of messages all along the lines of 'What did you do?'
Our table was one row back from the dance floor, we ended up combining forces with a large group of Australians with a table on the dancefloor and had a great night.
Saturday:
Woke up feeling like death and had leftover secret pizza for breakfast, seriously, find this place if you are near the Cosmo, is legit for dinner and is also a complete breakfast food.
Didn't do much of note during the day, sat around in the room and watched a Rugby game, then wandered the strip a little. Not everyone in the group wanted to do three nights of bottle service so we did Marquee on presale for Saturday night.
I had been worried about doing a club on presale after reading thread after thread of 'don't do it' on here and not being the biggest EDM fan myself, I'm more in it for the Vegas experince than any certain DJ.
I'm not sure what Marquee is like every weekend, but on the Saturday of Halloween when I expected a shit-show, it was actually a good time. The place has plenty of bars so we were never in line very long, a few times I walked straight up to the bar. There were quite a few open outside tables, they were still roped off so we couldn't sit at them, but at least the space by them gave us a place to stand and chill in relative comfort when we weren't on the dancefloor, speaking of which, I did dance a lot more than I would when I'm doing bottles. None of the boys are real EDM fans but we crushed that floor and shut the place down (by 'crushed it' I realise I have no moves and most likely look a fool, but I had fun, so who cares?)
Overall, my first big club without bottles was a tonne of fun, not the best for meeting people because who wants to know five guys without a table? So if you want to pick up girls, get a table, or have better game than me (not that hard to be fair) but if you just want to tear the place down with a small crew, presale is fine there imo.
From there, we moved to Chandelier Bar and continued the drinking, we met an American who loves Rugby, so obviously he loved us, we dubbed him 'Rugby' and continued to smash it with his crew.
Now, it's at this point I need to finally give Penguin the wingman of the year award. It's a bit of backstory but given that it's taken me so long to give out, it deserves the full speech.
Rewind one night, we arrive at Tryst and Eagle does not have his passport, being that we are not from the US, driver's license is not an accepted form of ID so the doorman sends him back to the hotel to go grab his license, Penguin volunteers to go with him and the other three of us sit in Tryst waiting for them to return.
While Eagle makes his way up to the room, Penguin uses a money machine and then waits for him by the lift, while he waits a girl runs up to him and asks for a photo with him as she loves penguins. Eagle returns to find Penguin talking to these two girls, upon further chat they find out they are both going to the Wynn but the girls are going to XS, in the cab ride the girls explain that while they love the animal, they are from Pittsburgh so they also love the hockey team. Penguin then goes onto say something like 'That's funny, one of our friends on this trip with us is a huge Pittsburgh Penguins fan' (he didn't make that up to try and get me an in, I am Pens 'till I die btw) so they both freak out at the idea of a Kiwi even knowing hockey, let alone following their team. Penguin gets the single ones number and says 'shame you girls are going to a different club tonight, but come have a drink with us tomorrow' so by the time we are in chandelier, he delivers, literally. One minute I was talking to the boys, next thing I am talking to a cute girl about hockey. A gentleman never tells, but I once again would like to thank Penguin in a public forum (and the Pittsburgh Penguins in a way, let's go Pens!)
Yes, you are reading that right, I am finally getting around to doing a trip report from about a year and a half ago, so bear with me if some of the details are a little fuzzy. Being that I'm hitting Vegas on Friday for UFC 200, I figured I might as well try and relive the last time.
Myself and four other friends from New Zealand made the trip to Vegas for the second time (well, four of us did with one first timer in the group) we would be joined on the last evening by a friend who lives State-side and is a Vegas veteran.
Since I'm setting up a Halloween TR, I'll call them by their costumes: Penguin (animal, not the Batman villain), Robin Hood, Eagle (from Eagle VS Shark), myself as the Karate Kid and Jesus (yep, that one got mixed reviews on the strip).
We know each other from college and now live in seperate areas of New Zealand, so we assemble like Voltron in Auckland International Airport, for our flight to San Francisco, land there and have enough time for a burger and a couple of Sierra Nevadas before it's wheels up to Vegas.
I normally find the getting to Vegas parts of TRs a bit redundant but I thought I'd include this for my fellow non-US citizens. Everything you have heard about how much Americans love Halloween is true and it became apparent the moment we went to check in for our flight to LAS as the Virgin Air counter staff had all ditched the uniforms for costumes. The girl checking us in was the hottest Tiger I have ever seen so I approve!
Anyhow, we get to Vegas feeling as good as you can after spending about 16 hours going from front door to the Cosmo lobby. It was our first time there and I had only breifly walked through during my first visit. Dam son, what a place! We had two queen rooms and were hoping to get a rollout for one of the rooms and draw straws, we also attempted a $50 handshake but it was met with mixed success, must have had a supervisor close by or something. We were informed that due to the shape of the queen rooms, we could not put a rollout in due to fire regulations, so we upgraded to a king suite (I think, again, details fuzzy) it was a few doors down from the one queen room we kept so every one had a spot to sleep and we had a pre-game room. We had to pay for the upgrade but the guy said it was cheaper than the standard upgrade cost and he gave the $50 back, our organiser said it was a good price so I'll take his word on it (Penguin was on hotel and flight duty, I got the club nights)
Our first night was at Tryst on Friday so since that's no longer a place, I won't spend too long on this part! I really had a good time though, we had a table in a great location, thanks heaps to Bobby Y for setting it up, great guy to work with and I would have most definetly gone back to him if I was in charge of organising tables this time around.
There we are with two bottles of Grey Goose and some form of bubbles between five people, so the mission was clear, make new friends or die from alcohol poisoning. We went with the make friends option, cycled through many groups of girls at the table, I was the only single one in the crew and all the other guys are loyal to their S/Os so no stories to report there, sorry I could not provide one.
One of the groups we hung with included a bride to be already dressed in white. A photo of her and I made it to Facebook and due to the time difference I woke up to 100s of messages all along the lines of 'What did you do?'
Our table was one row back from the dance floor, we ended up combining forces with a large group of Australians with a table on the dancefloor and had a great night.
Saturday:
Woke up feeling like death and had leftover secret pizza for breakfast, seriously, find this place if you are near the Cosmo, is legit for dinner and is also a complete breakfast food.
Didn't do much of note during the day, sat around in the room and watched a Rugby game, then wandered the strip a little. Not everyone in the group wanted to do three nights of bottle service so we did Marquee on presale for Saturday night.
I had been worried about doing a club on presale after reading thread after thread of 'don't do it' on here and not being the biggest EDM fan myself, I'm more in it for the Vegas experince than any certain DJ.
I'm not sure what Marquee is like every weekend, but on the Saturday of Halloween when I expected a shit-show, it was actually a good time. The place has plenty of bars so we were never in line very long, a few times I walked straight up to the bar. There were quite a few open outside tables, they were still roped off so we couldn't sit at them, but at least the space by them gave us a place to stand and chill in relative comfort when we weren't on the dancefloor, speaking of which, I did dance a lot more than I would when I'm doing bottles. None of the boys are real EDM fans but we crushed that floor and shut the place down (by 'crushed it' I realise I have no moves and most likely look a fool, but I had fun, so who cares?)
Overall, my first big club without bottles was a tonne of fun, not the best for meeting people because who wants to know five guys without a table? So if you want to pick up girls, get a table, or have better game than me (not that hard to be fair) but if you just want to tear the place down with a small crew, presale is fine there imo.
From there, we moved to Chandelier Bar and continued the drinking, we met an American who loves Rugby, so obviously he loved us, we dubbed him 'Rugby' and continued to smash it with his crew.
Now, it's at this point I need to finally give Penguin the wingman of the year award. It's a bit of backstory but given that it's taken me so long to give out, it deserves the full speech.
Rewind one night, we arrive at Tryst and Eagle does not have his passport, being that we are not from the US, driver's license is not an accepted form of ID so the doorman sends him back to the hotel to go grab his license, Penguin volunteers to go with him and the other three of us sit in Tryst waiting for them to return.
While Eagle makes his way up to the room, Penguin uses a money machine and then waits for him by the lift, while he waits a girl runs up to him and asks for a photo with him as she loves penguins. Eagle returns to find Penguin talking to these two girls, upon further chat they find out they are both going to the Wynn but the girls are going to XS, in the cab ride the girls explain that while they love the animal, they are from Pittsburgh so they also love the hockey team. Penguin then goes onto say something like 'That's funny, one of our friends on this trip with us is a huge Pittsburgh Penguins fan' (he didn't make that up to try and get me an in, I am Pens 'till I die btw) so they both freak out at the idea of a Kiwi even knowing hockey, let alone following their team. Penguin gets the single ones number and says 'shame you girls are going to a different club tonight, but come have a drink with us tomorrow' so by the time we are in chandelier, he delivers, literally. One minute I was talking to the boys, next thing I am talking to a cute girl about hockey. A gentleman never tells, but I once again would like to thank Penguin in a public forum (and the Pittsburgh Penguins in a way, let's go Pens!)
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