Vegas IX: July 19-29, 2015 (10 Days, 16 People, and 1000 Great and Horrible Memories)

[maxutilsperusd]

Vegas IX
Dates: July 19th - July 29th 2015
Hotel(s): Harrah’s, Mirage, SLS, Encore, Caesar’s
Cast: Max (26), Nikki (25), Funny (29), Marine (26), Bubbly (26), Gray (29), Foodie (26), Navy (26), Stick (26), Fail (27), Gabby (26), Bling (30), Vibram (28), JKart (26), Ginger (26), Jean Paul (28) [Names changed]

This was quite the trip. 10 days, 16 people coming in and out of the story. Lots of drama, lots of fun. I’ll do my best to including anything interesting or useful, but realistically I could keep writing forever. Feel free to ask any questions, I know some of the best info I've gotten from these forums are from the trip reports.

Day 0 (Saturday)

I started planning this trip in January to give everyone enough time to get their plans together, take time off, and make sure the maximum number of people could come.

Flights from our area were unusually expensive so we decided to have Funny rent a fuel-efficient car and drive Nikki and I to Vegas (Funny is too paranoid to let anyone else touch the car). He seemed to have no problem with the plan. We start our drive to Vegas July 18th, Saturday, with the car rental and a drive up to our family cabin, so we can get an early start on the 19th. Funny is a little uncomfortable with the mountain roads on the way to the cabin, but everything works out well enough, and we make it to the cabin without incident.

Day 1 (Sunday)

In the morning we are delayed 30 minutes by waking up a bit late, but we scheduled enough time where that isn’t remotely a problem. The cabin driveway is gravel at an incline, and Funny, who we began to realize is not the greatest driver in the world, gets the car stuck in the gravel just close enough to the trees on the side of the driveway that we had no option but to call a tow truck. 30 minutes of attempting to maneuver the car out, 3 hours waiting for the tow truck, and $80 later we finally hit the road.

At this point the car isn’t going to be dropped off at LAS in time to make the 24 hour rental deadline so we are looking at another $97 to rent the car for another day. We are now so late that we are even pressed to make Kaskade at Nightswim by a reasonable hour so Funny is driving with some gusto. Nikki and I are constantly having to watch his speed, which through the Nevada desert can go a bit beyond reasonable without the driver noticing. At one point Funny is doing 110 mph without any idea of what he was doing. This is the point that our full understanding of how bad a driver he is settles in. Never carpooling again, I’ll definitely pay the difference to fly and not fear for my life in all future trips.

We are making great time (random spurts of 95+ mph is definitely helping) , until we make it Tonopah, NV. I warned Funny repeatedly that the small towns love to give tickets to help fund their local governments. He gets pulled over for going at the speed of traffic but the speed limit is a lowly 25 mph, down from the 70 mph that was the norm the rest of the desert. He gets clocked at 44 mph, cited at 40 mph, and is issued a $250 ticket.

Funny at this point is not having a good trip. We tell him we’ll split the costs, but still we’re not exactly off to a great trip.

We make it to Vegas and he drops us off at Harrah’s. Nikki checks in to her 5 nights of a comped room at Harrah’s. We get to the room and it’s not exactly stunning but it’s hard to argue with free (besides the resort fee). Nikki quickly runs to Walgreens since we didn’t get to do our Total Wine run we were planning on doing on our way through Vegas. She grabs some cans of Mike’s Harder (8%, we definitely need alcohol at this point) and we drink those on the way to the cab line.

We cab over to Encore, Funny uses his presale to get in instantly, we use our guest listing to get in moderately fast and with a free drink ticket for Nikki. Kaskade has an ok set, nothing particularly interesting in my or Nikki’s opinion. It’s raining off and on, which is kind of fun, but definitely a bit colder than would have liked. Funny isn’t in the best mood and is striking out with the ladies. We stay until Kaskade leaves, walk out of Encore, and find it raining heavily.

We try to walk on the sidewalk but it’s foaming with soap from whenever it was previously powerwashed. I end up slipping and falling, thinking I may have just really messed up the rest of my trip, and we proceed to take a cab home from Wynn.

Nikki does a White Castle run since as West Coasters we’ve never properly had it. We are all pretty disappointed in it; salty, mushy, not even cheap. We fall asleep thoroughly defeated by Day 1.

[wat]

Yikes. Rough start - looking forward to the rest with the big group!

[bob0413]

Great TR! Things can only get better from here on, I hope...

[maxutilsperusd]

Day 2 (Monday)

We wake up late and realize the waterproof case Funny used for his iPhone 4S failed while he was in the pool last night. It’s the same brand and model of case Nikki and I have used multiple trips without a single problem, and Funny has it fail the first night. We’ve now decided he is perhaps cursed.

Nikki and I have been playing MyVegas for years at this point so both of us have hundreds of thousands of Loyalty Points saved up, so Nikki runs across the street to the Mirage to quickly check into a free room there so we’ll have some privacy since we are sharing the room at Harrah’s with Funny.

The first thing on the agenda while we still have the car is a trip to Total Wine, so we head out toward Henderson. The whole group wanted me to buy alcohol and they’d chip in (never doing that again). I buy 8 handles and a few fifths for an absolutely amazing price after I get 3 manufacturer’s coupons attached to the bottles to all work. Things are finally looking up.

We go to the Galleria at Sunset mall since it’s close by and they have a Best Buy mobile store. Knowing cellphones I find Funny a $99 Moto E 4G, which is definitely slow, but AT&T compatible, water resistant, and Micro-SIM compatible. Funny’s wardrobe is woefully lacking, so Nikki takes him shopping, while I decide that I’ll get a new pair of sunglasses at LensCrafters. Amazingly LensCrafters gets me a perfect pair of sunglasses less than an hour after stepping into the store. Nikki has gotten him at least a few shirts and t-shirts that are more Vegas appropriate, and we head back to Harrah’s.

We’ve got free tickets to the 7pm Beatles Love show through MyVegas so we are a bit time crunched at this point, so Funny drops us with all the stuff, and goes to return the car, and we say we’ll meet him at the show. Harrah’s bell hops are completely incompetent so I end up carrying the alcohol up to the room myself, one of the reasons I never want to have to have that much alcohol with me again.

We meet up inside Beatles Love with minutes to spare. The show is great. I’ve heard every seat in the house is good but they can be very different. We were in the back of section 2, which gave a great view of all the action, but doesn’t get to participate in many of the audience interactions. I’d probably say middle of section 2 is where I’d have sat if I had any choice. There is far too much going on if you sit closer than that.

We rush outside to see one of the two now reduced showings of the Mirage Volcano since it’s Funny’s first trip. The strip is absolutely packed, but we managed to get an okay spot to see it. I suggest going earlier and getting a better spot if seeing the Volcano is on your agenda, the reduced hours made it much more packed than I’d previously seen.

We head back to Harrah’s, change, pregame, and take a cab over to Encore.

Nikki and I guest list and Funny does pre-sale, so we are all inside XS quick and easily. Once inside Funny is as much a fish out of water as ever. Nikki and I slowly move to the center front of the dancefloor while Funny strikes out again and again with girls. I tried to explain that the dance floor isn’t the best place for that (especially with his lacking dance moves), but my advice falls on deaf ears.

Funny disappears, and we watch RL Grime’s fantastic set. He’s surprisingly dorky, doing finger guns, and generally dancing like a white guy up in the DJ booth. We stay until his set ends and contact Funny. He’s been gambling a lot and is down a bit. Not surprisingly he is again not in the best mood.

I was disappointed that XS didn’t have drink runners using the space between the DJ booth and the crowd. In previous years they sold $10 shots to people in the front of the crowd there, and I always thought that was an innovative mutually beneficial service. Anyone know if they still do that ever? Nikki was also disappointed that she didn’t get to use her drink tickets either night at XS since immediately following the end of the headliner sets the bars in the club closed. This also seemed like a new development, but could have been due to slightly lower than average demand on those nights.

We all cab back to Harrah’s, grab some McDonald’s next door, and Nikki and I walk across the street to the Mirage finally for some alone time.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

I wake up thoroughly impressed by the room at the Mirage. It’s not the best I’ve stayed in but it’s much better than I expected. I set up a proxy on my phone (can’t purchase rooms on MyVegas if you are currently geoIP located to be in Vegas), log into MyVegas and get myself another free night there. Now we’ve got another night to ourselves and not having to listen to Funny be morose and disappointed. I go to the check-in and unlike Nikki go for the $20 trick. End up with a high floor, corner room, overlooking the Volcano. Now that’s more like it.

We contact Funny, and tell him to come over and we’ll go down to the Mirage pool. We get there and it’s nice, but with quite a few children. We head over to the Private Oasis pool, they ask us if we want lounge chairs for $50 each. I ask if we need to purchase them, they look surprised and say no, so we hang out there all day in the water and on the edge that has a nice bit of shade to rest in. It’s not exactly bumping in any sense of the word but it is relaxing and I could use that at this point.

Nikki orders Chipotle from her phone (one of the better timesavers in Vegas), skips the line at pickup, and we eat it back at our corner room. We pregame, watch the volcano from above, pregame some more, and then walk over to The Cromwell.

Same thing, guest list for us, pre-sale for him; inside fast and easy. I’m shocked to see a $5 charge for towels, which I have to say, everyone on this forum should be protesting. It’s outrageous and unnecessary. That’s the kind of cost creep that doesn’t happen if enough people complain about it.

The corner table facing the fountains isn’t sold, so we, along with some other guests, stand in it’s area to watch the amazing view of the fountains. I’d highly recommend that location if you are the kind of person to arrive at a table early, the view is stunning.

The pool is a little cool, but we have a blast throwing beach balls from the pool toward the people standing on the walkway in the pool back and forth. Funny buys a couple girls drinks this time. Still no real luck though, so he’s again having less fun than I’d want him to. We end up leaving without buying towels in protest, and practically end up freezing to death. We retire back to our respective hotel rooms.

[tomm0]

Funny's nickname should be changed to Gameless!!

[dnix]

Drais charges for towels??? Thats news to me. Ive never experienced this all of the times Ive been there.

[Brooklyn Marc]

Drais charges for towels??? Thats news to me. Ive never experienced this all of the times Ive been there.

Ummm literally went 4 times last month once GA two other times with a daybed and once with a grand cabana at no point was i charged for a towel. If it's happening it's happening on some random days.

[maxutilsperusd]

They were charging $5 per towel for non-table guests during Yacht Club 7/21 and 7/28.

If you check Yelp there are a multiple reports of the $5 towel charge going back into 2014. I mean it's not a big deal, it's only $5, but they are the only nighttime or daytime pool party charging for towels and they were doing it when the temperature was actually somewhat cool which just screamed exploitation.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/drais-beach-...-vegas?q=towel

[ENC012E]

Last time I was Drai's I remember someone in my group mentioning that they were charging for towels as well but since it was 110 degrees out none was needed as you were pretty much dried up within 10 mins lol

[Brooklyn Marc]

They were charging $5 per towel for non-table guests during Yacht Club 7/21 and 7/28.

If you check Yelp there are a multiple reports of the $5 towel charge going back into 2014. I mean it's not a big deal, it's only $5, but they are the only nighttime or daytime pool party charging for towels and they were doing it when the temperature was actually somewhat cool which just screamed exploitation.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/drais-beach-...-vegas?q=towel

LMAO, wasn't doubting you dude, i just don't think its a everyday thing that's all.

[maxutilsperusd]

Day 4 (Wednesday)

Another good night’s rest at The Mirage and we begin day 4. We check out, go across the street with our overnight bag, and find that Funny woke up early, gambled, and won even more money than he had previously lost. We drink some and head back to the Mirage Pool.

I get a call from Navy who was planning on driving over Thursday night and crashing in our room. He’s now changed it to flying in on Friday morning, and for some reason his girlfriend, Stick, has just decided to come and entertain her mom and brother in Vegas at the same time. I tell him that’s a horrible idea, and I have no idea what she is thinking. He seems to think it will all work out.

Funny during this time is supposed to be socializing, but he ends up picking a poorly located lounge chair and proceeds to get moderately sunburnt.

Nikki and I end up retreating to the Private Oasis pool again for some of that shade and hang out there for the next few hours. Funny again squanders a day of interactions by joining us in that more laid back pool.

Nikki and I have free tickets for 7pm Zumanity tonight, so we cab over to NY-NY. We find the Zumanity box office, get our tickets, and walk into the theater. Nikki is carrying a Forever 21 bag filled with pre- and post-gaming drinks, our new go-to cheap alcohol transportation plan. Zumanity is known to be a hyper-sexual comedic Cirque de Soleil show so they have a guy heckle people as they are walking through the hall into the theater. He makes a joke asking if Nikki has didlos and buttplugs in the bag, and I know we’re in for a show.

We immediately get upgraded to a better seat than our ticket was for. It’s a Wednesday at 7pm for a show that has been running forever so I guess they are running into a slight lack of demand. It’s pretty funny, the acrobats are all top notch, and I have to say the two girls in the martini glass were downright impressive.

We leave the show and head to Shake Shack, another first for us on the West Coast. The burger is amazing, the cheese fries are pretty blah (but Nikki loved them), and the vanilla milkshake is perhaps a bit too milky, but overall I’d recommend it if you haven’t been.

We’ve got some time to kill before Wet at Night at Wet Republic, so we go to the Coca-Cola store and get their Around the World trays of soda from different countries. That milkshake from Shake Shack was definitely too much to do before trying to share 16 cups of soda so I stick with some of the flavors that aren’t horrific while Nikki has a great time trying them all. Definitely not a bad way to spend some time and $8 if you are by the MGM Grand.

We walk over to the MGM Grand, navigate all the way to the Wet Republic entrance, get inside on the guest list, and Funny meets us inside using presale. There’s a Scentsy (direct sales scented candles) convention at the MGM Grand, and it seems like entry to Wet at Night is free for those attending the convention. I’m actually pretty happy with this since the crowd isn’t stacked with bros like Wet Republic is typically known for and the ratio is surprisingly great.

There’s an open bar for ladies for an hour and Nikki abuses that as much as possible. It’s limited to 3 different drinks, all including one brand of flavored vodka, all of which I thought tasted terrible, but Nikki was pretty happy with one of them. The three of us feast for an hour on the open bar, so we are all in pretty good shape at this point.

We head into the pool and have a great time. The DJ is forgettable, but at least the venue is good. There happens to be a Bud Light promo cabana so Nikki ends up scoring quite a few Bud Lights from that, so we ended up full night of drinking all for free, definitely makes up for the lack of reentry.

Funny tries his luck with some girls and is definitely doing better than typical. Eventually he does something quite ballsy and buys 2 of the large plastic cups for 2 girls he was chatting with, an $80 investment in his night. Slowly however, Funny gets boxed out by some aggressive bros (I mean I’m talking wearing “Turnt” cap kind of guys) and Funny strikes out again.

On exit, security routes us a really weird direction through the MGM property, and I’m absolutely starving at this point. Funny is again in a bad mood so he just wants to get back to the room. I say lets go to the McDonald’s here, but he’s having none of it. So we cab back to Harrah’s. We end up arguing about something stupid, and Nikki and I head directly to McDonald’s. We arrive at exactly 4:00am, just missing the cutoff for non-breakfast food. I’m completely done with Funny at this point. He’s not being particularly Funny, mostly just being disappointing, and it’s ruining the vibe.

Nikki and I head back to the disappointing White Castle, since that sounded better than disappointing McDonald’s breakfast or disappointing Denny’s, pretty much the only things open and nearby at that time of the night. There’s a group of foreign tourists sitting near us who are plastered and having a great time so some of that positive energy helps get things feeling back on track. I get some “onion chips” and “chicken rings” (they don’t seem to like normal food shapes at White Castle) and even though Funny isn’t having the best trip, and I’m stuck eating at White Castle things are pretty good.

We head back to the room, find Funny dead to the world and we too pass out.

[maxutilsperusd]

Day 5 (Thursday)

Thursday we wake up late and Nikki and I are going to Bare without Funny since at this point I was done dealing with the negativity. Just as we are about to leave, I get a phone call from JKart.

JKart was originally supposed to come on the trip Friday through Monday but couldn’t due to family obligations, so her boyfriend Vibram was going to be coming in solo tonight. About a week before the trip I find out JKart could come for all of Sunday and most of Monday since the family obligations were on Friday and Saturday, so I convince her that she should do that, since Sunday is one of the best days anyway. The idea of surprising Vibram by having her just show up comes up in the conversation, so she gets some cheap last minute tickets from LA all without anyone but Nikki and I knowing about it.

Turns out JKart is calling because Vibram woke up with a moderate fever and nausea and cancelled his flight and his rooms without contacting her, me, or anyone else first. So I spend a decent portion of the morning trying to get ahold of Vibram. Once he found out about the surprise plan after he called JKart to tell her he had cancelled everything he knew I was going to be pissed that he didn’t think to call anyone first, so he wasn’t answering his phone, texts, Facebook, or Hangouts (Coward!). I also then try to convince JKart to come to Vegas anyway, saying she can just crash on our couch Sunday night, since it’s a waste to just not use her non-refundable plane tickets.

Nikki and I eventually head down and over to Bare, get in on the guest list, and then realize in all the stress of trying to contact people we forgot sunscreen. Nikki grabs her free drink, we exit, go back up to the room, apply sunscreen, walk back down, and get back in. By this time the place is dying down and about to close, so I’ve gotten almost no time in the pool, which is pretty much the opposite of how I like a day to go.

From the limited amount of time I saw of Bare I was surprisingly impressed. Nice looking venue, younger crowd than I would have thought, and overall it looked like a great midweek place to spend some time.

We head back up to our room, drink more, and then I remember that Harrah’s is supposed to have their pool open late on Thursdays with a DJ for a sort of lame night swim party. We go down to the pool, and are surprised to see no DJ setting up or any sort of crowd to go with it. We had seen them building their small shallow pool that had these nice looking chairs in it on a previous stay, but that pool was filled with children under 5 and smelled heavily of chemicals (a sign of an unhealthy pool). We talk to security about the DJ and they say the pool is closing at the regular time of 6pm with no DJ, so the daylight hours of the day were a total loss for relaxing in the water.

We go back up to the room, change, and Nikki does a McDonald’s run for the two of us. Funny was tired of McDonald’s (I can’t necessarily blame him) so he was going to go to Ruth Chris Steakhouse, but gets rejected for not being up to the dress code with shorts. He heads over to Guy Fieri’s and gets the most expensive ribs I’ve ever heard of to-go. They are good but I’ve had better for half the price.

I always make sure to have hotel reservations early since it can save a lot of money. This weekend, July 24th-26th the pricing was somewhat high for the number of conventions, concerts, and boxing matches on the various schedules I follow and I had constantly been talking to everyone who was going to see if they knew what was causing it, including Funny. It’s around this time that Nikki has a sort of revelation. She notices that there seems to be a lot of really tall, really young people in Vegas all of the sudden. I assume she’s just seeing patterns that aren’t really there, but she asks one of them, and they say they are here for a national high school basketball tournament. Funny, a high school math teacher, then proceeds to say that it happens around this time every year, was shocked that we didn’t know about it, and I’m just shaking my head since I’ve been wondering what had been affecting hotel pricing for the weekend for months now and yet he made no mention of this obvious tournament.

We pregame, cab over to Encore, and do the same free even ratio guest listing and presale to get into EBC at Night. We arrive early so Nikki gets her pick of the giant inflatable animals to ride and I immediately get in the water and finally get some relaxing in.

Funny starts chatting with two British girls sitting next to us at the edge of the pool, so we leave him be and hang out near the island in the middle of the pool. Jermaine Dupri has a pretty decent set, not my kind of music, but he’s keeping it mostly to the hits so everyone knows the songs. The British girls leave since they “have an early day tomorrow” and Funny once again strikes out.

We walk back to our final night at Harrah’s and get some sleep before the long day ahead.

[ArmyVegas]

Come on Funny...I'm rooting for you to turn it around and make Vegas your Bitch.....don't give up!!!

[wat]

Man, still waiting on the punchline with Funny.

Good on you for having the patience to deal with people flaking left and right, though

[ponch62]

Come on Funny...I'm rooting for you to turn it around and make Vegas your Bitch.....don't give up!!!

Count me in as a member of the Funny Fan Club. You got this Funny!

Great TR, entertaining stuff!