So I took my wife to Vegas....

[ponch62]

Look, I get it. Most of the people that post on these forums are guys and a lot of what is discussed is the best way to meet girls and hookup. If that's what you are hoping to read about, this trip report is not for you. However, my wife hit Vegas with me this last weekend and we absolutely killed it as a couple. Also, I am older than most of you on these boards, and this trip was to celebrate my wife turning 40 (I turned 40 last year), so you are about to get the breakdown of how to kick it old school as a couple in Vegas. Stick with me, learned a few things that could be helpful.

Let me start with some of the setup for the trip. We planned this trip about 5 months ago. My wife is a huge Kaskade fan so when we saw he was gonna be in Vegas for the Summer, we picked a weekend and started planning. I put a post on the boards about a month before the trip looking to connect with members on the forums for a table at XS for Kaskade and connected with another couple almost immediately. We exchanged some information and I started the process that almost every experienced forum member does when planning a table at XS, contacted Bobby Yeadon (much more on this later).

When you get older and plan to kick it with the younger crowd, you want to look as young as possible (honestly everyone fits in out in Vegas, us older folks just get a little self conscious), so we started running 4 times a week to lose some weight. Two days before we leave, my wife's foot starts hurting while running, she goes to get it checked out and finds out she has a stress fracture. We leave in 2 days, and my wife is in a walking boot. Disaster. I am freaked out but not letting her know how worried I am, we have huge plans and my wife has a 10 pound anchor on her leg. She is crying cause she thinks she ruined the trip. We are off to a horrible start and the trip hasn't even started! She swears she won't hit the clubs without wearing heels and I can only imagine the drama this is going to cause...


Day 1 coming up next....

[EastCoast]

I strongly suspect this will be a great TR.

[ponch62]

Day 1

We are running late on the way to the airport, and as mentioned, my wife has a broken foot. As we are pulling up to the airport my wife recommends I park up front in $28/day parking instead of long term parking at $7/day. Now you will find in this trip report that we aren't "cheap" people, but I also don't like to throw money away. I tell her I will drop her off cause I can move faster than her and meet her on the flight. I go park the car, am on a shuttle back to the flight and my wife texts asking where I am at because she has already boarded the flight and I haven't even cleared security. I am freaking out at this point, flight leaves At 1:30 and I get off the shuttle at 1:15, if there is any holdup at security I know I am screwed. I am pissed at myself at this point for not paying the extra money to park, it's way more important to be on this flight than to save a little cash. I get lucky, security is a ghost town, I make it through quickly and am the last person to board the plane. Wife is already giving me the "what were you thinking" look and doesn't have to say a word. I am determined to get things turned around, so as soon as we get in the air, we quickly get some drinks ordered to change the mood of this trip.

We land in Vegas at 2:30 on Friday, quickly grab our bags and grab a cab to the hotel. We are staying at Elara for the first time in a 1 bedroom grand suite. We don't really know what to expect, but check-in is a breeze, and things are starting to come together. We get to the room and as we open the door the shade automatically drops on the window and I notice it doubles as an 8 foot projection screen tv. When you raise the screen you have a really great floor to ceiling view of the strip. Room has a large sectional couch in front of the TV, a full kitchen, a bedroom with a king bed and a large hot tub right next to it. I'm a few drinks in, feeling ok and now I am stoked about the room, things are definitely starting to take a positive turn.

We decide to knock dinner out early so it's out of the way and we can let her rest a little before we head out to the club for the night. We go down to Planet Hollywood (if you are not familiar with Elara, it is connected to the Miracle Mile shops right outside of Planet Hollywood) and we head to Gordon Ramsay's BURGR. Expensive burgers, but they were outstanding, we washed down with a few more drinks, and I walked her back to the room to rest a little bit. I don't rest in Vegas ever. I can't. I really don't even try, I hate to waste a single second when I am out there. I go place a couple bets at the sports book and then decide to go gamble a bit in order to score a few free drinks while she rests. Now when I want to drink "free" in Vegas, I play Pai Gow poker, mostly because you "push" on 80% of the hands so it is easy to survive awhile. I look around for a low limit table, but the only seat I can find is a $25 minimum bet table. I want a drink pretty badly so I go ahead and sit down. I immediately lose the first three hands! I am down $75 before I even order a drink! I then push on what seems like the next 30 hands, so I am 33 hands in without a win. I then lose a few more and am down to $150 and only gotten 3 drinks. It's costing me more than double what a drink at the club is gonna cost me! I hang around a little longer, finally catch a little streak and make my way back to only being down $25 when its time to go get ready for the night. I consider this a huge win at this point.

I get back up to the room, my wife is half ready so I make us a couple of drinks before I jump in the shower. I finish getting ready and get a text from the couple we are meeting up with, they are on track to meet us at Encore at 9:45 so we can get to know each other a little before heading down to meet Bobby at XS, this is huge because when you are coordinating with only 2 other people, if they no show, the cost doubles, and no way am I telling my wife we cancelled the table at this point! My wife puts the heels on, she is in pain and moving slow, but at least we are not canceling any plans yet, the drinks are definitely helping her! I won't use the other couple's name, if they want to chime in they can, but they were really easy to talk to and we hit things off pretty quick, so things were looking up. I text Bobby to let him know we are on the way, and as always, he responds immediately. We head into the table line, give Bobby the agreed to shake and he delivers a table that is ridiculous for the small minimum we locked in at. Being just two couples, we weren't gonna lock in a minimum that would put us inside, but we had the 4 seat table right outside the door just behind the DJ booth. Here is CPT#1 (couple pro tip), this is an amazing location if your goal is not to pick up chicks. I can TOTALLY understand why groups of guys want to be inside, but these outdoor tables are PERFECT for couples. The CO2 blows right down at your table, you are closer to the DJ than most of the indoor tables, and you totally feel connected to the vibe of the club. There is no way we should had this table on a Kaskade Friday for such a low min, Bobby over delivered big time. So much so that I think our waitress was pissed, we didn't get great service but I think it was because she paid more attention to the tables with the bigger bills. Kaskade plays his set, we dance and party with our new friends, the tables next to us are cool. Even the guy next to us apologizes for hitting on my wife when she tells him I am her husband, but it's cool, I am feeling great, and actually excited my wife got hit on, I take that as a badge of honor at our current age! It gets to be about 315am and Kaskade is winding down, and to my shock and amazement, my one legged wife looks at me and says "where we going next?". I am pumped and as always prepared ( I always overplan for Vegas), so I text the contact I had made prior to our trip that works the front at Drai's Afterhours to ask if he can get us in quickly, he responds fast and says he can for a fair shake. We tell our table share friends we are headed to Drai's and they wanna come along. This is nice, cause I want to get a car outta Encore to avoid the huge cab line, now we have someone to split that with, and they were fun people to hang with. We walk outta Encore and straight past the cab line into a car, and in 10 minutes we are walking up to the Drai's line. It's a mess out front at this time of night, people everywhere, I find our host, give him the shake and we walk straight in with no wait. It's actually not that crowded inside, definitely a decent number of people there, but most of the tables are empty. My wife sees a lady walk by that works for the club and asks if there is anywhere we can sit, and she says "sure" and immediately walks us over to an open table not far from the dance floor to enjoy our drinks. We hang out a bit, dance for awhile, and this is where details begin to become sketchy. I honestly don't remember anything past about 430. I am told I had fun, we got back to the hotel around 6am, and apparently I was flirting with the female cab driver on the way back to the hotel. My wife told me all of this Saturday when we woke up, I tried to apologize, but she just laughed and said I was hilarious. This is why Vegas works for us, my wife is pretty frigging cool, and we both are laid back enough to understand what it means to have a good time.

Day 2 up next....

[JoeyJoeJoe]

As a married man heading to Vegas this weekend, I am really enjoying this so far! On with day 2.

[weathergirl]

Great start, can't wait for the rest.

[TimWhalen]

Unless your wife does a complete 180 she deserves a medal for the playoff like performance that night. Toughin' it out injured is how you build championships!!! I love going to Vegas with my fiancee so I'm glad I'm not the only one. Keep the updates coming!

[wat]

Good stuff - stress fracture ain't gonna hold you back!

[ponch62]

Thanks for the positive feedback so far. Yes, I was proud of my wife up to this point, but still expecting a hard crash to be on the horizon. Let’s move on….

Day 2—
I woke up about 10:30am, I can’t help it, no matter how late I am out or how much I drank, I just can’t sleep the day away in Vegas. My wife woke up briefly to share some of last night’s stories with me. We look at her foot and it is about twice the size it normally is, so I run down the hall to grab her some ice. I told her I was gonna head down to grab some breakfast and explore for a bit, and she decides to go back to sleep. I honestly wanted to try and fit a pool party in, but following AfterHours last night, I wasn’t sure it was going to help us make it through the rest of the weekend successfully.

I grabbed breakfast at Earl of Sandwich, it’s quick and easy, and I just needed something in my stomach to soak up some of the alcohol that was clearly still hanging around in my system. Finished that, put in a few more baseball bets and went to walking the strip. The plan for night 2 was to check out Afrojack at Omnia, but I had originally dropped the ball by not buying pre-sale tickets before the price shot up to $95 for guys and $50 for girls (this is definitely a rookie mistake that if you learn nothing else from this TR, learn not to make this mistake, buying early would have made our total cost about $65). So my plan was to find a promoter and ask what could be worked out for even ratio that night. I had also previously contacted a host about helping with a walk-in about a week before our trip, figuring I might be able to buy my way in for say $100 and save a little cash, so these were both options I was considering.

I found a promoter right outside Planet Hollywood and he told me he could add my wife to the guest list and he gave me a ticket that would allow me to get in free if I went in with her as long as we are there before 1am. Sounds great, right? As a grizzled Vegas veteran, I know better than to think this is going to be a solid entry strategy for a Saturday night, but it’s too early to try and confirm my walk-in with the host I had previously contacted, but at least I have an option now.

I walk around for a bit, going from casino to casino, gambling enough to score a drink at each place I stopped, hung around even for about 2 hours before my wife called and said she was ready to come out. I get back to the room and she is ready to go, she is happy to where the walking boot during the day, just refusing to show up in it at night at a club. She is wanting Mexican and to do some shopping, so we headed down to Caesar’s and grabbed a bite at the Border Grill. It was pretty good stuff, and actually had some pretty amazing drinks there. Following lunch, she shops for about and hour and decides she needs to go back and rest before we head out for the night. This sends me back to do more gambling and drinking, which I never complain about.

The original plan for Saturday dinner was to go to Andrea’s at the Wynn, but we ate a late lunch and decided to skip that and just do some fancy cocktails somewhere that night before going into Omnia so my wife can rest a little longer (broken foot or not, she is one of those women that takes 2 hours to get ready to go out for the night, so adding that on to the rest she was gonna need was gonna make this a tight squeeze). So it gets to be about 7pm and I decide to text the host I was in contact with at Omnia to try to confirm the walk-in, he responds but now apparently has decided this is something he can’t help me with. It was a weird situation, not sure what happened between last weekend and this weekend, but he suddenly suggests I buy pre-sale tickets instead. Now I am in scramble mode, I know the only way this “Free ticket”/guest list thing is gonna work is if we are in line by 9:45ish, and since we have no table, no way is my wife gonna be able to stand until 3:00am. I decide to just go ahead and fork out the cash for pre-sales, so I hop on to wantickets.com, but quickly find out they are sold out of Male GA tickets for the night. Next move is to text Bobby at XS and see if he has a contact. Bobby, if you haven’t gathered this yet is amazing (he’s far from done on this trip) and says he does for tables, but walk-ins are very tough at Omnia because the hosts are so busy right now and he is not sure he would trust the guy could pull it off. He offers to contact the guy and ask, but it doesn’t sound solid enough to go on. As a last ditch effort, I go directly to Omnia’s website and find that there are tickets available there, but yes, I am paying $145 for my wife and I to go GA. Like I said, buy your pre-sales early.

So I am calmed down now, we have the night worked out, I gambled a bit more and went back up to see how close to ready my wife is around 9pm. She says about and hour, so I make some drinks and decide to start getting ready myself. Wife gets all done up and immediately straps on the heels, amazingly they still fit over her swollen foot. We decide to go have cocktails over at Fizz in Caesar’s, so we can kind of scope out the Omnia line situation. We get dropped off at Caesar’s about 10:15pm and dear lord is it a circus. The “free ticket”/guest list line is already lined up out the front door and all the way down the sidewalk out in front of Caesar’s. At this point I am patting myself on the back for not going that route and feeling WAY better about my decision to drop cash on pre-sales. We walked past the pre-sale line, and strangely it was pretty long already too. We are in no hurry to get in, we just want to be there in time for Afrojack, so we walk into Fizz and immediately find a place to sit and order drinks. There are plenty of people in here, but it’s not too crowded, and it’s mostly a little older, but good looking crowd. There are a couple bachelorette parties at the tables, and the music they played was mostly 90’s hip hop, which was a pretty cool thing. REALLY good drinks here, they cost about the same as you would pay at the club, but it’s a pretty unique setting. I would not recommend it for the 20-somethings, the vibe is more chill than party, but it’s a perfect spot for us.

It gets to be about midnight and we decide to head into Omnia. We walk to the pre-sale line and we wait behind NO ONE. The pre-sale line is completely empty, so we are in immediately. We wlak around for a bit, check out the main room and the terrace, we jumped on the dance floor briefly, but it is way overcrowded, then we decide to try and find a place to stand to watch Afrojack. Let me go ahead and say, this place is totally undersold. This is by far the best looking club I have ever been into, the chandelier or whatever you want to call it is amazing, and the sight lines to the DJ are clear throughout the main room, a huge improvement over Hakkasan. Here comes CPT #2, when you enter Omnia, if you want to watch the DJ, instead of going right like 95% of people, veer left. If you look at the wall on the left side there are posts that stick out into the walkway about every 20 feet. Duck in right next to one of these posts and stand against the wall, the bouncers keep the walkway clear but will allow people to stand against the back wall. Again, not ideal for guys looking to pick up chicks, but perfect for couples, it keeps you from getting leaned on, stepped on, knocked around, whatever because the post is a perfect shield. Afrojack hit the stage about 1am, and honestly I wasn’t too excited to see him, but he played an amazing set, great energy throughout, we danced, drank and enjoyed the whole show. We rolled out right about 3am, decided not to push it any further on night two because I had big plans for the next day. I knew the Caesar’s cab line would be a mess, so I carried my wife across to the Linq, where we hopped into a cab without a wait and were back to the room by a little after 3:30am. Night 2 ends here for public consumption, but those of us that take women to Vegas know there can be a little bonus to going in just a little early at least one night!

Day 3 still to come, how long can she hold up….

[Brooklyn Marc]

Good stuff makes me want to write another TR but as your probably figuring out that shit is time consuming lol. Keep it coming.

[wat]

Great work! Y'all are a good party couple.

[nautical]

love your TR, especially since i'm well into my 30s and often feel i'm in a minority for being this age and still hanging like i'm in my 20s. nicely done, sir.

[ponch62]

Good stuff makes me want to write another TR but as your probably figuring out that shit is time consuming lol. Keep it coming.

Ya Marc, first one of these I have done, didn't realize what I got myself into. May take a few days to get day 3 out, and might have to put it in multiple parts, too much happened!

I appreciate the support from all for tackling Vegas as a couple, we just have always enjoyed a good party, and Vegas for us feels like being on another planet for a few days before returning to our jobs, kids, and everyday life. Hang in there for day 3, its our last full day out there, and going into I had plans to push ourselves as far as possible since time was winding down on us, tune in to see how far we got!

[matt1983]

Ah yes, Omnia. I was a part of a group that had a table up on the balcony in July, and it was a great time. The club is fantastic.

[HeySuburbia]

The “free ticket”/guest list line is already lined up out the front door and all the way down the sidewalk out in front of Caesar’s. At this point I am patting myself on the back for not going that route and feeling WAY better about my decision to drop cash on pre-sales.

My wife and I made the mistake of trying to rely on the guest list line at Hakkasan over Memorial Day Weekend this year and even though we got in line fairly early and were probably less than 100 people back it never ended up moving a single inch and after we stood there for about an hour we just said fuck it and went to a strip club instead. Probably had way more fun there anyway, haha.

I have no idea how long some of the other people waited in line, but I felt bad that people were basically just wasting their entire night standing out in front of Rainforest cafe.

[ryan850]

I know other people have had success with Guestlist on weekends, but in just reading your trip report, you're willing to spend quite a bit on drinks and gambling, an extra 50-100 total for presale and peace of mind to me is always worth it.

Glad you guys had a kick ass time! You're wife sounds like a rockstar!