Vegas 2010 (Spring)

Just got back in last night from Las Vegas. Had a blast, and didn't lose too much money. Even though its only been since yesterday morning, it already feels like a week has gone since I was in Vegas.

I'm only gonna highlight interesting points. Hopefully this won't get too long...

The flights to Vegas went smoothly. We had a lay over in Atlanta. Fortunately the gate we had to go to was not far from wear we got off at. Waited a bit, boarded and had no problems taking off. Right about 20 minutes before landing, the pilot announces that the hydraulics are leaking on the plane, and that the hydraulics control the parts of the wings that are basically the breaks. There is an electronic backup, but he had to declare it an emergency landing anyhow, and that the fire department was standing by on the tarmac. Everyone else is kind of panicky, but seriously I wasn't worried. The pilot even said its happened before, and the back-up had no problems. Despite not being worried, I still kind of braced myself on the landing, just in case. The landing MIGHT have been a bit bumpier than normal, but the back-up worked and there were no serious problems. Except the plane couldn't taxi, so we had to get towed by those little car thingies. And of course, the Delta Airlines terminal is ALL the way on the other side of the friggin' airport. Took about 20 minutes just to get to the terminal.

We stayed at two hotels this time. First we stayed at the Golden Nugget, which is an AAA Four Diamond ranked hotel. It was nice, but honestly I'm not sure it warrants that distinction. We stayed there for two days. Its in downtown Las Vegas, so its an older hotel. One of the main draws of the hotel is the pool. In the center of the pool is a large shark tank. There's quite a few sharks and a bunch of Tuna in the tank. There is also a waterslide that goes through the tank. The other draw of the hotel is that its right on Fremont Street, which you can read about in my earlier post.

The second hotel we stayed at was THEhotel at Mandalay Bay, which is the hotel we stayed at the last time we were in Vegas. The reason we didn't stay at THEhotel the whole time was because its fairly expensive, at the promotional pricing was only available at certain dates. You can read more about theHotel here.

Hotels owned by Harrah's Entertainment had a special promotion for their buffets. For 35 dollars you could eat all day at any of the hotel's buffets. If you don't know Vegas, this kind of sounds expensive, but it is not. In fact, its dirt cheap. At breakfast Vegas buffet's can be 12+ dollars, lunch around 16+ and dinner is 22+. The deal is good for 24 hours, so you could go to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then still be able to go to breakfast the next day! What this really means is that I ate way too much food... We also went to other buffet's that we don't normally go to. At the Paris buffet, the manager was an retired Navy vet, and my dad happened to be wearing a retired-Navy hat that day, and the manager gave us VIP access to the buffet the next time we came in, so we wouldn't have to wait in line. Unfortunately, we never got around to taking his offer.

I didn't too much gambling, but I never really do. I might have lost a total of 25 dollars. The whole point of gambling is for free drinks. The problems can be getting a waitress. The Mandalay Bay makes an awesome Jack & Coke. Jack & Coke is (according to Wikipedia) 1 part Jack Daniel's to 3 parts Coke, the Mandalay Bay must have made it 2:1 or something. It was STRONG. It was great.

We saw Penn and Teller's magic show at the Rio. That was great. They are probably the most famous magicians known outside of Las Vegas that still perform. I thought their show was going to be a bit more dirty/violent than it really was. I mean, from what I've seen of them on TV, there are pretty messed up. There show for the most part was actually pretty clean. Except for the classic Sawing a Woman in Half trick, which they begin to explain how the trick works and then make it look like they accidentally REALLY saw the woman in half and blood splashes everywhere. One interesting thing is how Teller never talks during the performances. You can see him talking to the audience on a few occasions, like when he's picking someone for the next trick and so forth, but unless you're near that person, you won't here him talk at all.

And because one of my twitter followers wanted to hear about it, the "Hot Ladies" story. The last night, we gambled at the Mandalay Bay. After losing some money, we went to the fishtank by the lobby. My mom went to the restroom and was going to meet my dad and I at the tank. On the way back from the restroom my mom said that she was walking and saw two girls, both were fairly attractive. One wore a white shirt and was quite cold. The other girl apparently wore a very low-cut shirt that apparently left nothing to the imagination. My mom also said that an older man, went up to them and commented about how cold it must be to the one girl, and then said something about the other girl about to fall out of her shirt. As we were walking around the casino, we saw the girl in white, and she must have been very cold, if you catch the meaning. She was talking to a guy about "massage" prices. The other girl apparently had already found a client, so I didn't get a chance to see her.

Thats more or less, the more interesting elements of the trip. I'm probably forgetting something, so I might make a follow-up post if I do remember something interesting.