Interesting info and sounds like you're enjoying what you do. My advice would be to play for the money and not for the comps--the freebies & perks will come naturally. That's what gets a large share of vp players into trouble when they don't need to, because the perks are not the end-all. If you don't make it to your desired level and you won some money along the way, you've out-smarted the entire slot card program and, you did it YOUR way instead of the casino's way.
Good luck.
From: campus_chic13 <campus_chic13@yahoo.com>
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2011 6:59 PM
Subject: [vpFREE] lurker: research and in depth questions about seven star perks - loooong
Hey guys! First I just wanted to thank you guys for the excellent resource you've all put together. You've got me spending/losing the same amount each trip, but now I'm staying in really nice rooms, eating in nicer places, getting comped spa treatments I never would have spent money on, and I don't run out of money to gamble on anymore! You guys rock, and you make me look like some kind of goddess to my boyfriend, who likes to play live poker - and plays it well - but doesn't get much of anything in terms of perks.
It happens that said boyfriend's mom is a slots player. I can't really wrap my head around it, but she's 7* in AC playing slots. It makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit to think about putting $500,000+ through slots. It seems she's either got a sugar daddy or debts or is exceptionally rich, but they do all sorts of nice things for her all the time, and I don't think my boyfriend has ever paid for a bottle of cologne in his life.
ANYWAY, sorry, you don't need to know any of that, this is going to be long enough - the point is, I think I'd like to make 7* to impress them =P Fortunately for me, I am mostly of sound mind, and won't do if it involves losing a lot more than I get. I'm trying to assign dollar values to the perks, both guaranteed and possible.
The perks I've seen so far are:
$1000 minimum in comps, plus anything I get via bonus credits or multipliers
$500 dining credit for four people
$1200 airfare credit for getaway
$500 folio credit for getaway
---------
$3200 in retail numbers
$? room (suite?) on getaway
$? complimentary rooms every time we visit
$? discretionary comps above and beyond reward credit comps
$? marketing mailers
$? savings on NCL cruises (30% discount, free drinks in casino)
Because I'm frugal, I can't really count those values above at face value - we definitely wouldn't spend $1200 in airfare for a single trip, or $500 on one dinner. A more reasonable value would be $600 in airfare for one trip, and $250 for one dinner, making the guaranteed comps worth $850 less to me. We've never tended to spend much on hotel rooms - we'd get a night or two free, and book another couple at never more than $100 a night, so $50 a night is a decent figure. I suppose being able to book multiple rooms is of some value to me, because I can get friends to pay for part of my airfare on some trips by booking them their hotel room. Call that another $400, and I'm looking at $3500 in very real dollars I would have spent anyway.
This way, though, I get a lot of nice things I wouldn't normally pay for - room upgrades, line passes, wifi, show tickets, upscale dining, ski lift tickets... I don't know that I can assign these a value, but they are very nice perks.
END BACKSTORY, BEGIN QUESTIONS:
I recently read that you can DRIVE to your annual trip instead of fly (http://jscott.lvablog.com/) and that would make it where we could use every penny of the $1200 set aside for travel allowance. Is that the case for everyone, or just people like Jean Scott? I'd happily take an annual drive to AC from Florida when the leaves change.
If airfare is the only way to do it, I think we'd take the cruise instead. The annual getaway really has a maximum value of roughly $1100 to me - and a balcony NCL cruise to the Caribbean is worth a very minimum of $1200. Would we get in trouble for gambling virtually nothing on the ship? It seems like it'd actually be better than not gambling during a getaway to one of their casinos, right? Has anyone actually made use of the annual cruise? We are usually loyal to Carnival, but a cruise is a cruise =P Heck, with 30% off and free drinks in the casino (can't lose much playing the quarter push game!) we might end up making NCL our regular cruise line.
I'm mostly wondering about the less guaranteed comps - will my ADT get me anything if I stick exclusively to 99.54 or better VP? Even with $1mil through the machines, that's less than $5k lost with perfect play. I'm sure they don't assume .46% loss, but can they possibly value this high enough to ever comp me any more than those base minimums? If so, can I get things that are worth real money to me, like airfare reimbursement? Heck, will they even 'invite' me to 7* with a low ADT but high cash in?
Sorry this is so long, but we spend probably 10k a year on travel, and I'd be willing to lose most of that at VP, if the benefits were things we'd enjoy spending travel money on anyway.
I have a feeling this board is full of people like us - can you guys shed any light on this? Thanks,
Karen
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
