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

[maxutilsperusd]

A tip for that North end of the strip for a quick bite is Tacos el Gordo. Cheap and tasty and has good reviews. I ate there a couple of times on my last trip.

Thanks for the tip, might have to check that out on my next trip.

One of the reasons I don't like changing hotels is precisely because of the issue you had. Get back late from the club feeling awful, but then can only sleep for a bit while needing to pack in a panic. Then you have to get to the next hotel, check in, etc (hoping your room is ready)

I completely agree with the changing hotels being pretty unpleasant at times. Realistically though most of the time we'e done it it's allowed us to save hundreds of dollars and check out a wide variety of hotels in Vegas. If you switch right you can party where you are staying more, so you are making your morning worse to make your night better, so there's always a trade-off.

[ENC012E]

A tip for that North end of the strip for a quick bite is Tacos el Gordo. Cheap and tasty and has good reviews. I ate there a couple of times on my last trip.

Unfortunately Tacos El Gordo at the location next to Encore has been closed for awhile now =(

[SuZQ]

Unfortunately Tacos El Gordo at the location next to Encore has been closed for awhile now =(

So good..... We took a ridiculously long cab ride off the strip to the other location.

[AeroSKI5150]

So many ups and downs, truly a roller coaster of a trip! I'm usually the "planner" amongst my vegas friends/crew as well, and with the exception of one other close friend, none of the others have the patience to read/research and just network with all the awesome people on here, hosts, etc...

Kudos to you and your girl for having so much noise going on that you were still able to push thru and have an amazing time!



mAyOD '11, '12, '13 veteran
Coming up: 8/28 - 9/6!

[ocam]

Unfortunately Tacos El Gordo at the location next to Encore has been closed for awhile now =(

Ha! My bad. Shame - that place was the bomb. So cheap but so delicious

[maxutilsperusd]

Good news is Tacos El Gordo has reopened, so hopefully I get to try that on my next trip.

[maxutilsperusd]

I just realized that I wrote the entire trip report but somehow only posted up till Sunday (Day 8) so I'll post the rest even if it is somewhat anticlimactic.

Monday (Day 9)

We wake up at a decent time and start to get ready for the day. I had everyone use a promo code for Encore that included breakfast or lunch buffets for 2 people per day, so everyone is supposed to meet up for that. Before we leave for the buffet I call to make sure the room is serviced. We get down there and find everyone but are told there would be a significant wait for a party our size so we split into 2 smaller groups and we avoid the autogratiuty anyway so that’s fine by me.

Wynn’s lunch buffet isn’t super impressive, but it’s got a few good things going for it like like a decent carving station and hand-scooped ice cream. We’re sitting with Funny who fills us in on the details of his night. While he did get her back to the room, she disappeared in the night while he slept and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. I know some of you on this forum are going “That’s the best outcome!” but for Funny I think he would have hoped to take her to breakfast at the least.

Ginger, Jean Paul, Gabby, and Fail are all leaving after the buffet so we say goodbye to them. Bubbly and her group came down to the buffet in the swimsuits so they head straight to the pool, while we go up to change. JKart has family in Vegas so she’s going to spend the day with them so she at this point says her goodbyes and leaves.

We head down to Encore’s European Pool which is just what they call XS’s pool during the day. It’s a familiar place to us but it’s interesting to see it during the day and not absolutely packed. They have security wave us through with our room keys so at this point I’m almost disappointed we didn’t stay at Encore the first night of the trip and just go to their pool the whole trip. We grab some lounge chairs next to our friends and generally just have a relaxing day in and around the pool.

Once they close the pool at 7pm, we leave back to our respective rooms with Foodie deciding that her, Gray, Marine, and Bubbly are going to go out to fine dining dinner somewhere off property, while we decide to sit that out. Nikki and I are both hungry again, but I’m having some trouble with heartburn from some spicy chicken wings from the buffet earlier. She decides to head back to Kabobs N More for food for us and comes back with some really non-traditional Indian-Chinese-American fusion food that luckily came with some simple naan to help with the fireball burning in my stomach. While she’s away I’m looking up things on my phone and stumble upon the fact that Lil Jon has canceled last second at XS tonight and has been replaced by Jermaine Dupri.

After eating I talk to Funny who is really disappointed in the fact that it’s Jermaine Dupri again, so he’s pretty uninterested in going out. I talk to Bubbly who isn’t super enthused either, so we decide to take the night off from partying and just do our own things. Turns out our thing is enjoying the view, the room, and then crashing surprisingly early for once in Vegas. After 9 days it was bound to happen sometime.

[maxutilsperusd]

Tuesday (Day 10)

We wake up and Nikki, Funny, and I are checking out of Encore today and moving to Caesars, while Bubbly and the others are staying at Encore for the final day. To use the buffet you have to actually get it charged to your room before you check out so we have the bell desk hold all our bags and head down to the buffet and check out by phone.

The buffet is disappointingly the same exact food as the previous day, but this time at least it’s easier to pick out what everyone likes and I know now to stay away from the wings. Funny tells us about his night again at the tables and he’s now up a total of $1500. We end up meeting Bubbly and the rest of them coming into the buffet right when we are coming out. Nikki and I head to the pool, while Funny spends some time in the casino.

I keep texting Bubbly who now thinks her part of the group wants to just spend some time in the room, so it’s just the two of us at the pool. Funny wanted to do a limo ride during the trip so I spend some time working on scheduling that to take us from Encore to Caesars which Nikki had gotten a comped night at to close out our trip.

I’m in contact with both Funny and Bubbly, and it turns out that Bubbly’s group is now wanting to go eat somewhere so they aren’t going to join us for the limo if we are leaving so early. Funny tells me he’s fine paying the difference between a limo and a cab and that he never got to do it in high school due to various sad stories. I schedule a limo with Presidential Limos for a bit later than I originally planned in the hope that they are done wasting time and being antisocial.

It turns out that they ended up taking a cab to the Bellagio which I’m just totally shaking my head at since they could have just ridden with us and walked over or eaten at any of the fine dining restaurants at Encore or Caesars. We are over at Encore valet and Presidential Limos shows up 5 minutes early and we get in. Inside waiting is an ice cold bottle of champagne, some bottled waters, and a stereo system with some preloaded songs to select from. I tell the driver that we want to go down to the sign and then back up to Caesars and use the whole hour and he sounds happy to oblige.

The limo ride is fun and Funny gets to see the south parts of the strip that we never made it down to. We actually get Funny to drink a bit which hasn’t been happening nearly enough during this trip and then we arrive at Caesars, I had Nikki use their eStandby program to upgrade from the Forum Tower to the Augustus Tower for $26.88 and after requesting a high floor room with a view of the fountains we head up the elevator to the room.

The room is surprisingly spacious but perhaps a bit dated and has a fantastic view of the fountains. We shower, change, and get ready for the night. We had already bought Groupons for the Happy Half-Hour Open Bar at the High Roller Ferris Wheel but held off using them earlier in the week since Bubbly was initially interested in joining us. I get in contact with her and turns out they now are actually heading over to Caesars to eat oysters (why this couldn'’t have been coordinated better I’ll never know). Funny had already decided earlier in the night that he’s not doing a club or a pool party tonight and that he’s essentially done for the trip after the High Roller.

Tonight for a club the plan was Drai’'s Yacht Club since that’s what Bubbly and her group wanted to do, but Nikki wasn'’t necessarily wanting to get as cold as that pool party tends to be when it’s a pretty windy day. I originally figured we’ll go to the High Roller, then to Omnia to quickly peek inside, and then to Drai’'s with the rest of the group and possibly back to Omnia if it’s too cold at Drai'’s and Omnia has reentry.

This plan now isn'’t looking viable since pushing back the limo means we don’t have enough time to get to Omnia before having to go to Drai’'s, so I switch it around to Omnia, High Roller, and then Drai’'s, which is still a really tight schedule but should mean we can make it to Drai'’s before the guest list closes.

So we head down to Omnia at 10:05pm when Chris Hornak'’s guest listing service had suggested an arrival time of 10:10pm. Turns out the there’s absolutely no one in line, so I figure that 10:30pm is the open time and he was essentially just recommending to show up slightly before that. That means my schedule is even tighter than I assumed, but oh well, I’m in Vegas I’m going to gamble and see if I can make it work.

We are in line, and at 10:32pm we are let into the club. It’s absolutely beautiful although a bit maze-like. We go through the venue looking around for the exit to see if we can get a reentry stamp. 4 different staff members give 4 different answers of whether or not there is reentry. One guy says absolutely, one guy says probably later in the night, one guy says no, and one guy says give me a good reason to let you out and back in. At this point I don’t have time to deal with that nonsense so we head out and find Funny.

We beeline it to The Linq. Funny is smart and had printed out his Groupon confirmation, while I’m trying to pull up mine on my phone while quickly dodging my way through crowds. We get closer to the box office and my phone has no service so I can’t pull up my ticket. I quickly take Funny’'s phone, logout, login, and pull up my ticket while I’m letting people cut me in line. We get our tickets, head down through there line, finally get to the person who takes the tickets and it turns out the box office had given Funny the wrong kind of ticket, he handed over the paper copy to the box office and they kept it, so now he’s having to pull up his confirmation on his phone.

So during all this I’m absolutely stressed since one single delay and I might not make it to Drai'’s and then Bubbly and them are going to have a hard time getting in on the guest list using my name without me being there. Luckily the phone copy is good enough for the ticket lady so we are let onto the first available Happy Half-Hour pod.

The High Roller gets a major thumbs up from the 3 of us. I could see it being kind of boring without the open bar and especially during the day, but if you haven’t checked it out doing the open bar pods during the night is a pretty decent deal and fun time. The bartender was great, the alcohol was of a decent quality (Jack Daniels,, Tanqueray, Grand Marnier, etc.), the view is definitely amazing, and having a bunch of drunk fun people along for the ride makes it even better.

To destress I start getting Jack and Pepsis (sadly no Coke) and drinking them with some speed. At one point Funny tries striking up a conversation with a girl and he says that I planned the trip and know a bunch of random facts about Vegas and prompts me to say one. By this point I’m definitely past tipsy having just slammed 3 drinks after drinking all day, but I start playing tour guide and giving out facts of cancelled construction projects, what used to be where, tallest buildings, etc. She was surprisingly interested so I guess I have a fallback career if my future falls apart.

We get toward the end of the ride and I have the bartender make me a double and dictate a unique concoction for Nikki that’s strong yet tasty. We exit the ride, Funny again fails to get contact info from the girl for probably the hundredth time this trip, and we split up with him returning back to the hotel and us rushing over to The Cromwell.

I'’m messaging Bubbly and tell her we’re on our way and that we’d meet her right by the entrance. We rush over there, find Bubbly and Foodie, but it turns out Marine and Gray are off on a drunken mission to White Castle. The guest list line is closing in 15 minutes, so I tell her we should get in the line now, and they should be running. They show up 5 minutes later and join us in line, scarf down the food, and we make it in just in the nick of time. Being constantly worried that someone is going to be late is something I’m not going to miss on my next trip with just Nikki.

We’re at Drai'’s and it’s a little cold, but not horrible, so it’s decided that we’re going to go back to Caesar’s and change into swimwear since Bubbly and company hadn'’t changed and Nikki and I are still dressed for Omnia from earlier. We change, drink some more, and head back. At this point both Gray and Marine are far too drunk but Drai’'s bouncers don’t seem to care or at least notice so we get right back in.

Drai'’s Yacht Club with their copious amounts of beach balls and the beautiful view is definitely a fun night. DJ D-Wayne was actually pretty good too, which goes with Drai’s strategy of finding smaller yet quality DJs for their venue. Nikki starts to get too cold relatively early so she leaves on her own. Eventually the rest of the group is tired so they head back to our room for a few last drinks and goodbyes since we all leave tomorrow.

So we finally get to sleep and end the last night of quite a trip.

[LXJEDi]

Still easily one of the best trip reports to get Vegas ready. Wtf did this stop? MDW loading let?s go!