Las Vegas, Part II

It’s been awhile since I last blogged. Honestly, I had some post-trip blues. Every time I did something part of my of my daily life I would get this achy feeling in my soul, thinking, “I would rather be traveling.”  After the post-trip blues resolved I discovered that my PC with all my pictures on it from the trip had crashed. We finally got around to having it fixed, so here I am!

Las Vegas, Part II. I feel like I have nothing revolutionary to say. After 2 days in Vegas we hardly scratched the surface. But by reading this post I hope you can get some ideas at least of what to maybe not do in Vegas! 😉

What not to do:

1. Bring quarters with you to Vegas. I feel like I did research on Vegas but I felt silly when we got there with $40 in quarters to realize that all of the machines do not take change. They can take dollar bills but to “cash out” your earnings (*cough cough* or the money remaining after your losses) they give you a receipt to bring to a machine and that will give you the money. Maybe this is a no-brainer but it sure fooled us! So unless you are planning on visiting Freemont Street and some of the older casinos I would leave your change in your piggy bank.

By only playing the penny machines and betting $0.03 per bet I left the slot machines with more money in my pocket 😉

2. Buy tickets ahead of time. Unless you expect that the show may sell out (i.e. it’s a special show or a weekend) I would wait until you are in Vegas to buy tickets. When I priced tickets to Blue Man’s group I was astonished to see that they would be more than $100 per ticket for decent seats. We ended up scoring 2 tickets for $40 (they came with a price though!—> see #3).

Blue Man Group at Monte Carlo

3. Don’t see a timeshare for cheap Blue Man group tickets and a free dinner at the Venetian…unless you have a lot of time to spare and TONS of patience! More on this later!

4. Do not walk from one end of the Las Vegas strip to the other wearing “cute” sandals. You may end up with blisters on your feet. Just sayin’. Your hotel may look like it’s close…BUT IT IS NOT. Especially when some street crossings require you to go inside of one casino, walk a bit, take an escalator, walk some more, take another escalator and 5 minutes later you are on the other side of the street. I have to say, walking the strip was one of my favorite parts- being able to visit all the different casinos and see the different decor. However, my feet hurt SO bad by the time we got to the hotel and I was exhausted and dehydrated I’m sure for walking in the heat and humidity for an hour and half during the hottest part of the day.

The beautiful Eiffel Tower at Paris

From the bridge between the Venetian and Treasure Island

Fresh and ready at the start of the day!

5. Try not to take a taxi, unless you can split the fare. A taxi ride at 11pm would have cost us $25 from the Bellagio to Treasure Island, but we were able to split the fare with 4 other riders in a van and spent $10. Next time we go to Vegas we are going to better take advantage of the free or low cost trams that go from casino to casino. We only took it once but it was quick and efficient.

So, on to our second day. We had a quick and expensive breakfast of Starbucks and then waited for our “2 hour” timeshare presentation. The promoters had found us at the Sirens of TI show the night before and convinced us to see a 2 hours timeshare presentation and we would get 2 tickets to Blue Mans group and dinner at the Venetian. They targeted us because we were married and stated that we owned a home. These promoters are easy to spot, as they will find you anywhere that there is a crowd on the strip. Note though–> It didn’t appear that they were very interested in non-married people because they aren’t their prime target for timeshares. There were multiple packages to choose from (such as free Mystere tickets + $40 cash back) but that is the one we liked.  We had to pay $50 up front and would get our gifts and $10 cash back at the end of the presentation. The van picked us up at 10:20, 2o minutes after they were suppose to. We ended up at a new timeshare resort at the end (or beginning?) of the Las Vegas Strip. We sat for about half an hour waiting for our names to be called before a kind couple asked us if we had filled out the form. Uh, no? Half an hour later we finally got started on the presentation part. This apparently was where the “2 hours” started. The first hour we wasted meant nothing. The presentation was convincing and made us feel like we wanted to buy one until we heard the price and started asking questions. Our representative was nice enough (a woman from Bulgaria) and with her words she said she didn’t want to pressure us, but she most certainly did with her actions when she invited her boss over to talk with us. I honestly have never felt so angry at a person I had just met. We told him we weren’t interested at this time due to finances, etc. and really just wanted the tickets. He continued to offer us lower offers though and basically said that we lacked common sense to pass up this “phenomenal deal.” Oh, but wait! “what if we lowered the price to this? Or this? Still no? Do you not understand what an amazing financial decision this is? If you pass it up it would be a terrible decision for your future,” etc., etc. Jake saw how angry I was getting with my red face and clenched fists and eventually said, “you’re pushing too hard, buddy.” He eventually stopped but not after making us feel like complete imbeciles and completely disgusted with their company. We were sure to give him a less than favorable review. 😉

All in all we sent about 4 hours on the whole timeshare deal. Granted, they fed us yummy “free” sandwiches and lemonade and we left with a better knowledge about what a timeshare means (still not convinced it’s a great deal). When it’s all said and done though I’m still not sure if it was all worth it. We got to see a phenomenal show (never actually made it to dinner at the Venetian) for $40 which is something that we could never have done otherwise-but we ended up having to spend half of our day listening to a boring presentation to do it. I think for us it probably worked out okay this trip, in the future though we will not spend our valuable time listening to boring presentations or being harassed by over-zealous salesman.

We got some pretty stellar seats- we were sitting in row D, seats that currently go for $135 A PIECE if you book online. The show was so worth it in the end. It was honestly one of the funnest hour and a half (ish) of my life! The blue men were SO talented! Both musically and comedically. They didn’t say a word the entire show but they conveyed so much with their facial expressions and gestures. If you don’t know what it is about here is a cool video (make sure you watch it at least until 2:15 in-that’s when it gets REALLY fun!!!)

After the show we walked down to the Bellagio to watch the show, it was the only thing on our Vegas “to do list” that we actually did! It was so beautiful and definitely a must do when in Vegas! So here is a few lovely photos and video to end this post! Next time I will talk about our tour of the Hoover Dam in Nevada!