Las Vegas podcast #261 includes:
- Russell Brand opener
- Three more years of Gossiness at Caesars
- Louie Anderson ends Excalibur run
- Fleur de Lys becomes a tapas restaurant for international cows
- ESPN Zone closes
- Tropicana gets mobile gambling and Brad Garrett
- Wynn adds lame resort fee
- Harrah’s makes staying at Caesars even less appealing
- RJ goes lawsuit crazy
- Harrah’s arena idea is dead(er than it already was)
- Our sponsor: VegasMate
- Dear Tim and Michele
- Listener calls
- Call us at (702) 866-9494
Five Hundy By Midnight 6/13/10 (68:36 min, 62.9 MB)
First off, Screw harrahs for the whole pool hopping thing. Caesars pool is about to be ruined from all the people from IP, Ballys, Paris!
Now i need some help… whats the best deal someone can find for the nights of august 27th and 28th. Preferably at Mgm Grand. i really appreciate the help
and keep up the great work on the podcast guys!
Glad you’re back Michele…Nancy Grace was about to devote an entire hour to you this week.
BTW, 12% room tax IS added to resort fees. I just paid it at NYNY. The small print now reads “A daily resort fee of $12.95 (Subject to applicable lodging tax) will be added to the guest room account.”
Has Planet Hollywood established itself yet to no longer be referred to as “P Ho?” While the joke was funny when the quality of the product was up in the air, but now that we know that the place isn’t a dump, and should no longer be a joke. “P Ho” just aint funny no more.
So sad to hear about Fleur de Lys changing! I had dinner there for the first time last fall and had one of the best meals of my life. It was fabulous and I’ve been dreaming of going back. I guess I’ll just have to visit the San Francisco location instead.
Harrah’s always floats an idea like “free pool hopping” just to see what you’ll do. It will be free for maybe 2 weeks, then it’ll be pool hopping $10., then $30, etc. Soon “pool hoping” will be $20. per night added to your room at check out, no matter if you use a pool or not.
The quality of the people at th Wynn has gone way down since it opened. At that time I phoned to say that there were mostly beautiful women there.
Now with the increased access and low hotel rates, the quality has gone way down. They should charge a non-beautiful people resort fee based upon the perceived quality at the front desk.
But I do agree that the skirts have gone way up.
Dan
BTW the RJ suit is suiing for the cost of the article taken, i.e. $2.95 per line of type.
Talk about a nuisance law suit.
Dan
Harrah’s swapped the Summer Bay timeshare lands for a condo buiding they had. It is now a vacant lot behinf there properties.
Dan
What forums do you all surf?
Alow me to blow your mind. MINDFREAK! time. Harrah’s isn’t offering guests an opportunity to lounge/pool at other properties. They’re allowing people (men) to go past the gates and see boobies at more than half the pools in town. Harrah’s. They are playa.
Megan,
Good question I’d like to know where five hundy people surf? I look at vegastripping.com once a week, lvtripreport.com (with a good safe browser) has trip reports that give me a fix, trip advisor has some really good vegas forums if you navigate around– with good dialogue about rooms and food. I also follow yelp! reports on vegas eats, and opentable.com has a vegas forum. I have a lot of vegas blogs I follow, but they are so nerdy, I’m not ‘fessing up to them. Where do you surf?
ps. B’Gosh! (sorry)
Maybe I’m just being too practical, but I don’t see the pool hopping thing working out for entirely practical reasons. Are people going to walk around in bathing suits and carry sunblock in a back walking up and down the strip just to go to another pool’s hotel? I mean, I understand the concept of Daylife and all, but I can’t see getting into bathsuits, going downstairs, out onto the strip, either walking or taking a cab halfway up-or-down to another hotel and going to someone elses pool, and then repeating the process back to my hotel room.
The only tangible benefit I can see is if you have a large group of people split up among multiple hotels and you all want to hang out at the same pool.
I only really look at tripadvisor and here. Unfortunately vegastripping is blocked at my work (prob due to “stripping”). What blogs do you read?
I typically only spend hours reading Vegas stuff when I have a trip planned, otherwise it pains me. Lucky for me, I have my trip planned for beginning of Sept! yay! It will be almost 2 years since we last went. That’s what happens when you buy a house, you have to cut back. I might have to start listening to old podcasts so I can pinpoint which places to eat.
Come to think of it, the pool pass thingy is probably to directly offset the fact that Harrah’s doesn’t have the Encore Beach Club, MGM Daylife, or the Mandalay Bay pool complex.
Simon and Garfunkel suspended their tour dur to Artie partally losing his voice.
Didn’t stop Wayne Newton. 🙂
hey t & m, in l.a. and espana it’s a tah-paas restaurant but in minnesota and las vegas its a tap-ass restaurant. especially in vegas. 😉
Poker After Dark. 🙂
I’m almost ready to go “t-minus” on my 12 day vegas jaunt. The first 3.5 days will be work related. And, while I turn a blind eye on the promised land during those first few days, my heart will beat for the rest: 8.5 full days in heaven! For the guys part of the trip, we’re doing a man vs food thing, as I’ve picked 9 places to have a hot dog, rather than the usual challenge of of a shot in every joint on freemont thing. I’m also hitting some of the off strip stuff like “luv-it”. But what I really like about having this kind of time is a “guys trip-lets eat like barbarians and party and make stupid bets at craps and black jack for 8 hours!” but a few days after that to party like bacardi, enjoy expensive food and spend 8 hours at a video poker machine. It’s all about mixing it up, people!
I’m staying at :
Day 1-3 Encore “King suite” or whatever their basic room is
Day 4-5 Mirage “Tower Deluxe Room” (I LOVE these rooms, so un vegas-internets mafia of me, but I do really love these rooms)
Day 7-10 Palace Towers Senator Suite (send me $20 and I’ll tell ya how)
Day 11-12 TheHotel H-Suite
I will burn most of my ratings here, as there’s no way I’ll play enough to earn future comps at some of the places here, it’s been a bit of a game to get these kind of rooms. But, I can’t wait to go– it’s going to be such an awesome vacation!!
Hi Megan – go back to episode 249 from March 2010. Lots of good restaurant updates in that episode. Also, I love VegasChatter.com. Fun info about openings and happenings around Vegas.
Anyone stayed at the Spa Suites at the Monte Carlo? We are going to Vegas in the Fall for 8 nights. We know 2 are going to be at the Golden Nugget but we can’t decide where to stay on the Strip. There are some really good deals at Monte Carlo right now and reviews are mixed online. A friend of ours LOVES the Monte Carlo, but I don’t know if I trust his judgment. I’m a bit more “fussy” than he is.
Al in San Diego – I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before but a good game similar to your 9 shots or 9 hot dogs is 9 hole Casino Golf.
You pick 9 casinos, bet $50 and have an alcoholic drink in each of the 9 casinos. Does seem expensive as you have to start with $450 each but you can always play less on each hole.
You have to bet your full $50 in each casino, no more, no less, and whoever walks away from the casino with the most money wins that hole, first to 5 holes wins the match.
We try to play a different game in each casino and have included craps, blackjack, slots, video poker and horse racing. We’ve found it a good way to gamble because you have to walk away when you’ve bet your $50 win or lose.
For example: if you sit at a $10 blackjack table you can play 5 hands then you have to walk, if you split a hand and pay the extra $10 you only play 4 hands. At a $5 craps table you could do 10 x $5 pass line bets, but if you place an odds bet you need to keep a count of what you bet and walk when you’ve bet your $50 and there’s a 7 out. On a $1 slot with 3 reels you have to count how many spins you do – you get 16 spins at $3, and one at $2 for $50.
In 2007 we finished after 8 holes because my husband couldn’t win. I won 5 holes ($540.50) and my husband won 3 holes ($442). A full day gambling and drinking and a combined profit of $82.50.
In 2008 the first hole was a tie, and so it became the best of 8 holes, after 6 holes I’d won 4 and my husband had won 2, so the best he could do was draw so we abandoned the game. I walked away with $512.60, and my husband had $273.50, so we started the day with $900 between us and finished with $786.10 a loss of $113.90, not bad for a full day gambling & drinking
Steve Wynn: Whenever Steve Wynn is giving a tv interview, I like to record it on my DVR and re-watch it, pausing and freezing the screen at random times whenever he is on and speaking. You will witness the most amazingly contorted facial expressions known to man.
Monte Carlo: Nice, classically designed casino with nice restaurants, rooms are getting threadbare, but my biggest gripe about Monte Carlo is that it is a “fun suck”. Everytime I walk in there, it’s like walking into a funeral parlor with slot noise- even if people are there, it FEELS like no one is there, like they just opened for the day 5 minute before, and the dealers, for the most part, have the interpersonal skills of a depressed mortician. As opposed to the energy level of most every other casino on the Strip, the MC is just like walking through a vacuum.
And you know gamblers and nature abhor a vacuum.
Just had a trip to MGM at Foxwoods and noticed something ideal for Tim – the new show Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy starring Debbie Gibson; starts next month
David,
That sounds more like a show for a generation.
Hey Lou,
That’s an interesting game. I like the concept of it also because it requires only a modest bankroll, and a few folks in my group would appreciate that. Plus, it motivates the group to hit a lot of casinos. like the idea of playing with black jack, or a slot. It would seem to me at craps a lot of us would have the same bets.
Hi Al – we always play craps but it usually causes problems in our game as my husband can’t leave Casino Royale after $50 on craps, we’ve had to abandon the game for a couple of hours while he plays there. Craps has been our best earner though, we took the Venetian for about $400 thanks to a really good shooter, and the fact that we had to walk rather than playing till our money ran out.
Gambling this way got us trying new things too like visiting the sports book to learn how to bet on the horses, it’s different in the US to the UK. I’d recommend Mirage, 2 drinks vouchers for each bet, we were putting maximum $10 bets, great staff who explained what we needed to do, and I hit an Exacta so I won that hole.