VEGAS!

Just got back from a five day trip to Fabulous Las Vegas (pictures forthcoming, which means they'll never get posted...).  It was a lot of fun.  When we finally got there...  The flight we took was kind of retarded.  We go from Tampa to Minneapolis which is 1300 miles, and then from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, another 1300 miles.  Its probably only 1500 miles from Tampa to Las Vegas directly.  But Northwest Airlines was significantly cheaper, even when paying for luggage, than Southwest Airlines (who we usually use).  Plus on NWA you get to choose your seat, instead of having a free for all on seating like SW.  Anywho the flight to Minneapolis went smoothly, hell, I think we were even ahead of schedule.  But upon disembarking the airplane, thats when the nightmare began.  

Once we got into Minneapolis we had to switch planes, and we had to find where the plane was.  Fortunately it was just two gates over from where we landed.  The plane was already there too.  All seemed good.  Boarding for the flight would be about a half hour from when we got off the first plane.  So we had sometime to relax/stretch before boarding.  About ten minutes prior to boarding the lady at our kiosk makes an announcement:  The plane needs to undergo maintenance and an update will be given in roughly 30-45 minutes.  At first we were kind of pissed, but it was only a half hour, who cares?  We look out the window and see that there is a maintenance crew working on the left engine.  The update came, something along the lines of, we're waiting to see if we get an okay to use the same plane or get a new one.  That didn't sound good.  About 20-30 minutes later we're boarding that plane.  It takes forever to board, but we do, and everything seems normal.  Well, apart from the smell of jetfuel...  Anyways, we get an okay and the plane starts taxi-ing towards the tarmac.  Then the plane sits there for another twenty minutes, before the pilot goes on the intercom and tells us that the plane cannot go on.  I really do believe we might have died that day if we actually took off.  

So now we go back to the terminal, and wait another twenty minutes to find out what our new plane is.  Its all the way at another gate.  We were at Gate G 18 and had to go to F 13.  Ooh.  F.  As in Failure.  And 13, the unlucky number.  Great.  Also the walk from G to F was like a mile.  When we finally get there there are a few announcements by the lady at the kiosk, which went along the lines of "we don't know what the fuck is going on" and "you'll all get compensated."  Compensation sounds good.  I was hoping for free alcoholic drinks on the plane, but now.  Eventually, probably about 45 minutes later we board the plane.  The compensation was a 25 dollars off your next flight voucher.  Woop-de-fucking-doo.  Once boarded we sit there.  And sit there.  And sit there.  Fortunately there was nothing wrong with the plane this time.  I'm not entirely sure what happened, but basically we had the same crew from the defected plane, but for some reason we needed a new co-pilot.  I'm guessing the original pilot had to stay with the original plane or something.  Well the new co-pilot was already on a plane that landed in Gate G, so he had to walk all the way to Gate F.  Thats explains the first twenty minutes of waiting.  About 40 minutes later the pilot explains that the new co-pilot was already on a plane, but all the terminals were full, so his plane had to sit on the tarmac for 25 minutes before a terminal opened up.  After that announcement, the co-pilot finally arrives and everything goes according to plan.  So after about 6 hours we finally get to take off.  And no free drinks.  Damn.  Well, once we got off the plane we got another voucher, this time for 100 dollars.  We were supposed to arrive in Las Vegas at 1pm, but instead we got there at like 7pm.  Killed the whole night.

After getting the rental car (a Kia Spectra, nice car) from Alamo we checked in at the hotel, which ironically is called THEhotel.  THEhotel is owned by MGM Mirage and is basically the all-suite tower of Mandalay Bay. It even has its own lobby.  The hotel is really nice, and I must say, dressed in t-shirt and shorts, I felt very underclassed.  The employees were all nicely dressed and such.  The lobby was decorated with natural stones, like a one million year old quartz sandstone and a 500,000 year old quartz crystal.

After we checked in, we didn't even go to the room, since we were starving, so we just went to The Orleans and ate at Fuddrucker's which is an awesome burger joint.  And then we just went back to the hotel and slept.  The whole day was pretty much wasted from the airlines screwing up.

The room was great.  Instead of typical hotel rooms where there are just one room and a bathroom, THEhotel has two rooms and two bathrooms.  In the entryway theres the bathroom, nothing special, just a toilet and a sink.  The first room is the living room area.  The couch was kind of uncomfortable to sit in.  There was a chair, which was kind of "meh, chair."  And there was a desk with a really nice office chair.  The desk had stationary and a drawing pad, which I thought was pretty nice.  Finally there is the wet bar.  All the stuff in the wet bar you have to pay for, but there is some interesting stuff in it.  For instance, the "Love Box" which contains condoms and such. The second room is the bedroom.  We got two beds, but I slept in the couch in the living area, which although uncomfortable to sit in, it was actually pretty comfortable to sleep on.  I'm sure the beds were nice though. There is plenty of room for clothes in the cabinets and dressers.  The master bathroom is in the bedroom area.  The bathroom is huge.  The bath and shower are separate, and the sink area had a lot of cabinet space too.  The toilet room is just that, a separate room with a toilet in the bathroom.  However the plumbing sucked.  The toilets are really weak, and I swore it wouldn't be able to flush toilet paper.  Each major room has a flatscreen TV in it.  Even the bathroom.