Got up about 6:00 a.m. without an alarm or wake-up call. Kind of amazing actually because that's when I normally wake up three time zones east. Has my internal clock adjusted to the local time after three nights?
Anyway, I got a text from the s-i-l at 6:15 a.m. letting me know that he was ready to roll. I told him to meet me down in the Bellagio Casino in the nickel video poker area.
We played some terrible video poker for a while, waiting for a cocktail waitress--to no avail. Apparently I hadn't learned my lesson earlier in the trip. We finally gave up and headed down to the Avis Focus. (Still 0 of 5 Royal Flushers for the Bellagio cocktail waitressess in the cheap seats).
Off we headed out of the self-parking garage onto something--The Strip, Flamingo?--I'm not very good with street names, but I'm great on landmarks (4.5 out of 5 Donner Party Guides). Anyway, as we waited at the stoplight to get onto whatever street it was, we got to watch a boffo slugfest on the sidewalk in front of Caesars. I thought the two young men were messing around until I realized that they were swinging pretty hard for just messing around.
(I think my Yahoo email has a little touch of the Ebola. My continuations of Day 4 keep disappearing. If they don't show up, you didn't miss much. I'll try and finish this with a big "copy and paste").
Anyway, the s-i-l and I were at the Gold Coast. It was 7:30 a.m. and I was to return my car to Avis by 9:30 a.m. We weren't scheduled to leave for the airport until 3:30 p.m., so I called Avis, whining about keeping the car past 9:30 a.m. The Avis person very graciously agreed to let me return the mighty Focus at 11:30 a.m. First hurdle crossed.
The s-i-l and I then headed out to Red Rock Casino. We settled in at the "Up to 99.8%" machines. I was playing dollar SL NSUD and temporarily turned my $200 into $490. Of course I managed to cash out $0 by the time we left. And leave we did.
Hurdle #2 involved checking out of MGM by 11:00 a.m., Bellagio by noon, and Caesars by 3:30 p.m. (5 out of 5 Roman Emperors). The Honeymooners who were staying in our room at MGM had departed early, so we were going to check the room and check out of the room. So the s-i-l and I picked up The Little Woman and the Spendthrift Princess at Bellagio and headed up (or down) the street to MGM. It was a wasted trip as housekeeping had already declared the room vacant and our key no longer worked. We went to the front desk to check out along with the other several thousand people who were leaving at the same time. We ended up just throwing our key in some check out kiosk that didn't seem to work anyway and drove back to Bellagio.
The four of us got the Focus into an Avis parking slot before 11:30 a.m. and I slid the keys into the drop box. The Spendthrift Princess and the s-i-l headed off to Caesars to use the last of our resort credit for lunch. TLW and I headed up to our room, gathered up our belongings, cried about leaving the world's greatest selection of complimentary toiletries (6.5 out of 5 Avon Calling) in the room as we checked out. Boy they have nice toiletries.
I'd like to point out here that on our last morning, I asked the Bellagio VIP Service Beautiful Young Woman if I could get a late check out. She said she could only give me until noon because the Salon Suites were all rented that day and they had to be cleaned (0 out of 5 Front Desk Pinocchios), but that was okay because we were just lugging our luggage to the Spendthrift Princess' room at Caesars. And so we did.
The great desk person at Caesars had basically forced me to take a 3:30 p.m. check out so we could relax in the room until we were to leave for the airport. TLW and I dropped our luggage in the Caesars room and headed down to the casino. We found two side-by-side Lord of the Rings slots and we slapped in $20 each. Then another $20. I smashed a troll or something with a catapult, so I won most of our deposit back. I think we ended up losing about $13.
Back up to the Caesars room to watch more TV. I think Caesars has better TV programming than Bellagio. The Spendthrift Princess and s-i-l enjoyed the free movies, by the by.
So the four of us went down to the valet area a few minutes early. Our limo zipped up with a young woman driver who would be called gorgeous if you considered a beautiful, shapely, blonde woman with a delightful eastern European accent gorgeous (8 out of 5 "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"). Not that I really noticed. She got us to the McCarran without incident and home we headed a couple of hours later.
So that's about it. Here's the wrap-up, all on my and The Little Woman's prior play:
Comps:
3 nights Bellagio Salon Suite,
3 nights Caesars Palace Augustus Tower,
3 nights MGM Grand.
$600 food and beverage at Bellagio,
$250 food and beverage at Caesars.
$700 free play,
4 GREAT seats at Zarkana,
Bellagio limo for six from McCarran,
Caesars limo for four to McCarran.
Expenses:
Airfare for me and TLW--$518 after partial reimbursement,
About $190 in tips (mostly for limos and a couple of bigger meals),
$62.81 in miscellaneous food/drink expenses and Red Rock Canyon,
$197 for Focus,
$16 gasoline.
I ended up about $340 ahead on video poker (which means I went home with about half of my free play).
The Spendthrift Princess and s-i-l and the young Honeymooner couple covered their own airfare, taxis, and some of their food and drink.
I wrote this report as a thank you to all the vpFREEers who take the time to share information with the rest of us. I want to salute the Royal Flusher, whose ribald tales I enjoy, and especially the king of trip reports, Westie, to whom this report is an humble homage (Come on. Let's all use our Cockney accents—"'umble 'omage").
The end.
Max
