i April 2017 The Night the Lights went out on Fremont

Wednesday

We fly out via Spirit Air from O'Hare, yes the same airport that is currently making headlines due to United Airlines having a passenger roughed up and tossed out before a flight.

Its the whole "Not enough Seating, time to take a Beating" ordeal that's being played on a loop around the world as I type this

We had no such luck on our flight, the only excitement was my brother snoring nearly the entire time like a bearcat.

Just two Dudes this trip, no wives, no kids, just gambling and debauchery. In typical Vegas fashion.

I have been spending more and more time in Atlantic City these days, its cheaper, easier to get to and just feels more like a vacation to me as I get older. But since stupid Spirit Air just canceled their direct flights to/from Chicago, I'm trying to get back in the Vegas mood.

But so much of Corporate America has bled into my beloved Vegas, its getting harder and harder to find a reason to come back. Resort fees (I don't pay them) Parking fees (I don't drive here) Timed Video Poker to get a drink slip (I don't play VP at the bar) are all annoying. And while it doesn't effect me much directly, it still tarnishes the value I always saw in Vegas.

I dont shop, I dont club, and I'm not into high end dining. I go to Vegas to gamble and ironically enough, that's starting to suck there as well.

Let's reflect on that nose dive these casinos have taken. And I dont just mean the 6:5 Black Jack, the shit pay tables on video poker of the higher than holy holds on the slot machines. But the fact that the casinos are shrinking, and the slots are slowly disappearing.

MGM Grand has a huge hole in their casino now, they took out all the machines by KA and made some weird slot tourney area. Worthless to me. Same thing happened at Luxor near LAX. Mirage took out a huge chunk of slots and added some tables. Monte Carlo dumped a bunch as well. Rinse and repeat all along the strip.

I used to have favorite machines at each place. And it was one of the reasons why I loved going to Vegas and casino hopping. MGM had my Lil Mrs Martians slot. Wynn had my dollar Phoenix Gold. Luxor had dollar King of Cash. NY NY had my dollar $100 or nothing machines. Treasure Island had Munsters for quarters. Venetian had Top Gun ETC.

Each casino had something fairly unique that I liked to play. The themes in the casinos were great as well, you felt like you were playing somewhere exciting. Now, Corporate America has pulled out most themes, and each casino pretty much has the exact same assortment of machines. Its sad, at least for me, since I can play nearly every game on the strip that I can at my locals.

Almost all of the fun older slots, that paid fairly, have been yanked from the strip. Climbing off my soapbox now...

Enough bitching, I'll do that as I go along, on with the show!

Two nights at Treasure Island. In all fairness their sign reads ti, but if you actually call it ti (pronounced tie) they look at you like you are the dumb fuck.

I never get tired of this place. Hands down the best casino in town. Big enough, with a great assortment of slots, and (IMO) very fair payouts!

My stay came with $225 in Free Play. I stick $40 in a Monte Carlo machine and quickly build up a $134 ticket on my 1st $100 converted. Not great, but not bad. I end up converting the rest of it on $1.00 Video Poker and soon I have a $240 TITO (Ticket in Ticket out).

View from the room, I wish they stopped putting this advertising film shit on hotel windows. Its hard to see anything. And I love me a good view of the strip!

Back to gambling, I do fairly well on their Sherlock Holmes slots. Slowly I built my ticket up to $430.00. Not bad for my $40 seed money and some free play!

Fart around for awhile and end up just over $500.00 before the wheels fell off the cart. Fresh off the flight and horny for gambling, we started to over do it a bit with bet sizes and slot assortments. It happens to the best of us...

I took that $500 TITO all the way down to $50 before finally getting a bonus game on some new Marilyn Monroe slot. At $6.75 per spin, it went fast, but I did get a bonus game for $165.

Played around for another hour or so and with just $6.78 of my original $500 TITO left, got a bonus game on Wonder Woman for $135. It didn't stop the bleeding, but its better than going belly up!

I do eventually shit out and start with a new hundo, played Baywatch, even though I know I probably shouldn't. G-Tech has stolen so much of my money in the past, its not even funny. About 60 bucks in I get a bonus on max bet for $87.

Better than a kick in the dick I suppose.

Take a break and head over to the Venetian, I win $100 there. Lost that at Palazzo. Hit up Wynn, where I never "Wynn" and head back to ti for dinner.

I would have placed a bet on my beloved Cubs to win the World Series again. I used to do so for years. More of a joke than anything, I'd collect those bet vouches and show my buddies how I pissed away $20.00 on a 150-1 shot. I thought of it more as a novelty souvenir.

But at 9-2, its not even worth my money. Best odds to win it all in baseball!

Eat, grab a beer, and play through the night. A series of hits are below. I actually got back up to $500 again at one point before slowly bleeding out.

Ran through just over $10,000 of coin-in before going to bed. End of the night, I'm down $300.00. Not a bad start!

Thursday

Still on Chicago time, I'm up at 5AM. My brother is still fast asleep, so I head down to gamble. I am a degenerate and all. Pretty much have the entire place to myself. Outside of some foreign visitors and just a couple of hookers.

You get the BEST drink service before 6AM!

I head outside to watch the sunrise and snap a picture from their side door. Man, I love being in Vegas. And the vacation is just about to start, its our first full day in town and plenty of shit to get done today.

My brother eventually comes down from the room. For whatever reason he thought I was in the shower for the past hour. Knowing he is a little punchy, I ignore his silliness.

He finds me just after a bonus game on the below. I leave ti, at 7AM, with an extra $60 on the day.

The plan is to cash in a 'Buy One Get One' buffet at the Mirage I got from MyVegas. I don't even play that shitty game online any more, since the rewards now suck, or you have to pay to stay in a room to use the better ones.

But I have a small fortune of loyalty points built up from over the years, so I cashed in a few to eat with. Knowing I would have to pull my Mlife card to get the BOGO, we decided we will play at the Mlife casinos up and down the strip for some diversity.

I used to be Platinum with them, but stopped going to Vegas 3 or 4 times a year. I did get them to match my Borgata Black Label card to Mlife gold. So I didn't have to start all over from the bottom.

Hit the Mlife desk, get the BOGO loaded and stop for a smoke on a machine before we head in. it was the right call. Almost immediately I turned my $100 buyin into $296 with a decent $240 line hit.

Took that over to a U Spin machine and get a bonus for $92.50. Played a little more, and won a little more, before finally cashing out up $300.00.

Add in my win from this mornings play, and I'm back to being up for the trip. Pay my share of the buy one get one buffet in cash and we scarf down breakfast.

The Mirage buffet is decent. It wont win any awards, but even at full price of $19.99 for brunch its a solid deal. Since we got there so early, we were pretty much alone. That just means the omelette station was at our service!

Leave Mirage and walk right in to Caesars Palace. I have no clue what they are doing in front of the Forum Shoppes. But the sidewalk is all ripped up and the construction crews were hard at work.

I'm sure they will just fuck it up like everything CP does. 10 years ago, it was the nicest property to walk in front of, sans Bellagio when their fountain show was going.

Now, its a chaotic shit storm with night clubs bursting out the front, a silly circus tent and too much random eateries polluting the space. That didn't stop us from checking in on the casino though.

The first game we played was Dumb & Dumber. Got a bonus about 10 whacks in for $113. Played a few games here or there, I was a little surprised to see mostly the same games here that I've already seen at ti, Venetian, Wynn & Mirage.

With nothing new or different to play, we headed over to Bellagio.

See ya later CP, thanks for the hundred bucks suckers.

Walking into Bellagio is like walking into my happy place. I used to stay/play here all the time.

Ever since I started having kids, we moved on to more family friendly joints in town.

Sure I resent them for that. Well, not just for that but for many things. So being able to come back home and spend a couple hours was like slipping on your favorite pair of bra & panties when the wife is out shopping.

I'm now up almost $400 on the day, and $100 on the trip. I'm feeling invincible. My brother sadly is down $500 on the trip and feeling a little timid. We play the "Winner - Loser" game and softly split up here to see what we want to play.

I have some fleeting luck on the dollar slots.

But end up pissing that away. I was up $100 and then down $100. Got a bonus on some lame penny slot for $98.50

And parlayed that into all my money back on Batman.

And then I took a shit and ended up heading towards the free monorail here, losing $300. Up just $100 on the day, and back to negative for the trip. Still not bad for wall to wall gambling. My stupid brother? He won $1,500 at the Bellagio. Bonus game for $500 here, another one for $700 there. He was on fire.

Just proof that you can gamble yourself out of a hole. Or in my case, just how quicklt your luck can sour.

See this surly looking prick on the way out.

If you are taking the monorail to Aria, don't be a sucker and get off at Crystals. Yes the sign says "with access to Aria" but its much easier to take the ride all the way down to the Monte Carlo and just hang a left when you get inside. Puts you right in the backdoor. And who doesn't like some backdoor action? Am I right?

Get off the tram and take a peak at the Monte Carlo's transformation into Park MGM. If this is all they have for aquatic relaxation, that's going to suck. No more lazy river? Lame. They also ripped out "The Streets of Dreams" shopping complex. It never was much, and the name was much grander than the shopping. But now its just an 8 foot wide plywood tunnel that gets you into the casino.

Getting back to the story, we head into Aria and I play some nickle Top Dollar as soon as we get in. She does me alright with an $80 bonus game.

I lose that pretty fast in their dollar slots but make up most of it with a line hit on a different Top Dollar.

From there on we both lose at Aria and leave before walking their entire casino. A fool and their money I guess.

I lost $200 more here and stupidly another $200 at Monte Carlo. For those keeping score, that's me up $400 walking in to Bellagio and down $700 in the matter of a few hours. It happens.

Head over to whats left of New York New York and check out their selection. I like NY NY. Its good with kids, the food court area is awesome and fun. And I do enjoy their casino.

I have been playing this exact same Bagpipe game here for 15 years now. I have never gotten burned on it, but I've also never gotten the bonus. Until today.

I switched the machine from pennies to dimes and played it at just 4 bucks a yank. Got the bonus for almost $180 and I started to feel a little better now.

I will give them credit, they do still have a decent selection of their older machines on the floor.

We crossed over to MGM to convert some of the comp dollars we built up on the card, and realized we just played through $7K of coin in about 5 hours. Not too shabby. Since we doubled up our play on my card, we both shared in a free lunch at the Deli in MGM.

I almost never win here, but I still play like an idiot. Glad I did. I was down to $25 before I hit the below. The wilds stick and you get another spin. It ended up being a $100 victory.

Moved over to Elvis and won $105 after the bonus with a line hit. I'm almost doubled up here now.

Finally find one of these new Cirque machines and get the bonus for 80 bucks. I cash out $200 at the MGM for a $100 profit.

We have zero intentions of playing at any CET casino. We never win, for years, playing with them. We were both Diamond Players at one time and went cold turkey about 2 years ago. Sure it was nice getting some free cold chicken wings in the Diamond Lounge. But not when you are hemorrhaging thousands of dollars in slot losses each trip.

But we did stop to play this King Kong game neither of us has ever seen before at Planet Hollywood.

You'll have to trust me when I say I just won $149 on it. Stupid Ainsworth does not have a victory screen. Such shit. Either you sit there for 5 minutes while it slowly counts up your pennies. Or hit the spin button, which would normally rack up your total after a win, only to see the machine actually spin again.

Such fail on their part, I hate it. I also hate "winning" 12 cents on a $5.00 bet on their machines. I usually stay away from them, but I do like me some King Kong. It was the right call.

After farting around on the strip most of the day, we head back to ti and hang out close to home base for the night. We cross over to the Fashion Show Mall for dinner, only to find their fading food court even shittier than ever.

Not a single chain left. Well expect Subway. I end up overpaying for a mediocre Philly Cheesesteak and fries.

Back to the machines, and I had a little luck going my way. But very slowly that faded. Over the span of 4 solid hours gaming here this night, I hit the below.

All and all I did lose at Treasure Island. But not that much and it was a very slow bleed. Did I mention the fair casino? Really, if you play slots you should play here. I'm not getting paid for that plug. Its just solid advice.

Ran through another $10K of coin here, and I'm only down about $600 for the trip. A small victory considering I could have gotten killed by this point with the amount of time we have spent on the machines.

Friday

The plan today is to head over to Circus Circus for some lowbrow fun and yet another BOGO buffet from MyVegas. Why CC? Its smelly, and its dirty but so are we! The last time I was here the players club booth didn't open until 8AM. Not sure why so late, but hey, who are we to argue with the clowns right?

We walk over there around 7AM and plan on playing in their casino for an hour and stroll in for the breakfast buffet. Wrong! Their club doesn't open until 10AM now, on a Friday no less. No way we are hanging out in this shithole for 3 hours.

So we hoof it over to SLS to see what new there. The answer? Nearly all of the same things we have seen at nearly every casino we went to. I'm starting to see a pattern in town.

I stayed here once. It was OK. Tiny Tiny casino and you really felt like you are on an island this far down in no mans land.

We each played just one game. And we both won. So I take the money the King has bestowed on me and we head over to see what the Lucky dragon is all about.

The answer? Its not really about much. The casino is roughly the size of my living room. Maybe a a hundred slot machines in there. The dragon chandelier, that looked pretty cool in the preview pics I saw online, really not that cool in person. Seemed much smaller in real life.

I'm all for themes, but they didn't really have one. I get that its an Asian inspired joint, but it looks like an office building's lobby with signs in Chinese.

We both got a card since you could win between $8 & $888 dollars. We both won 8. The 2 people in front of us looked homeless. I guess 8 bucks is 8 bucks. I went and played my 8 on a video poker machine, next to 2 other homeless guys.

They were trying to figure out how to switch their machine to nickles.

Maybe I just didn't get it, or maybe it just wasn't a casino meant for me, a visitor, and their angle is local Asian players. I wish them well but there is nothing there for me to come back to see.

Any way, we killed enough time by now and we head back to the Circus. Eat their buffet, which really isn't that bad, and lose in their casino.

I use the fine folks at URComped and they set me up in a room at the Golden Nugget. Since I don't have the kids dragging me down, I wanted to get a little seedy on Fremont.

I have been in the Golden Nugget before, but I never spent much time there. So we were both looking forward to the new experience.

Sort of like 2 trips in 1. The limo was set to grab us at 1PM. He was on time and very friendly. Shout out to my boy Grant if you see him. He took our crude humor well and it was a fun drive in.

Check-in desk, took about 45 minutes. Not so great, but it was Friday afternoon. What can you do? I'm a new player here, so I have no clout in skipping the lines. No biggie

View from the room? Wonderful... Every now and then I got to see some pigeons.

I get it that they didn't save a good view for me, since I'm a new player. But my Independent Host did tell them my level of play, they did send a limo and gave me $100 in resort credit to eat with for the stay. You would have thought someone would have said "Let's not put the new guy in the basement room".

But outside of a small shower/tub combo. The room was decent and very comfortable.

But I'm not here to look out a fucking window anyway, so lets see what Fremont has to offer.

And here I thought the view from my room was shitty. Here was my view from the exit of Golden Nugget.

Sexy!

We make our way down the street and soak in the sights and smells of downtown.

We played a little here & there. Nothing much to report on. I did find a Marilyn Monroe machine with a max bet of just 9 credits. Beats the 27 credit machine I played on the strip.

This is a fun game. The multipliers also count as wilds for the bonus symbol. If I hit a bonus symbol on the below, it would have been a 7X multiplier for the bonus game. So these machines have plenty of potential!

Back to Golden Nugget and we get to work on their machines. They have to have the biggest most diverse casino down here.

I get 5 mining pans (like quick hits) for a $155 progressive to kick things off.

I have been hitting on these IT Money rain games, in various flavors, all trip. That didn't stop here. I also did well on Top Dollar.

Then the party stopped. And here comes the theme of this report. While the "Lights didn't go out on Fremont", the machine sure did at Golden Nugget.

After 2 hours of playing, I went to cash out on the game I was playing. But it went on lockdown mode and needed an attendant. What the fuck? I sat there, alone, for 20 minutes until I found my brother to come watch my machine.

Found a slot dude in the High Limit area, told him what happened and asked for help. His reply "The entire fucking casino just went down. Someone will help you when they can"

So no help there, I walked back to my machine and saw a few dozen lights flashing on various other machines and pissed off players everywhere. You couldn't cash out! This went on for 2 hours!

The casino never said anything to us, players just had to warn each other when they came by to play. It was madness. You could play your machine, but you couldn't cash out! At least most people couldn't.

If I didn't have $100 stuck in my machine, I would have left. A lot of people did. They didn't come by offering drinks or water for those of us stranded there. And everyone that worked there was just panicked and running around.

They had to wait for the system to come back online and then they had to clear each machine one at a time. Only 4 slot attendants working on a Friday night. It took me nearly 2 hours to get paid.

I asked what happened and they wouldn't say. I asked if it would happen again if I went to another machine, I didn't want to burn my host, and they said they didn't know.

I have never been more pissed sitting in a casino then I did that night. Finally after 90+ minutes of sitting glued to my chair, I got my bootleg "Hand Pay" and we left to eat at Claim Jumpers.

It was good, but I was still pissed about wasting my last night in town sitting, and not playing, all that time.

We head out after eating and take our business elsewhere.

Spent about 2 hours wandering around and playing with my money that I should have given the Nugget. But if they didn't give a shit about me...

I did hit the below at Binion's, which IMO is the second best slot assortment downtown outside of the Nugget.

We finally go back to the Golden Nugget. And even though I was still sour, I didn't want my host to think I was a dick bag. It looked like they fixed their issue so we tested the waters again.

I did OK. But the below are really the only hits worth mentioning the rest of the night. I think the machines at ti are a little looser, or maybe I just have better luck there.

At the end of our run, I lost about a thousand dollars that night. And I was tapping out for the trip. Not sure exactly what my coin in was. They said $4.00 of play gets you a penny in resort credit. I had $23.00 that bought me 2 packs of smokes, so I assume I played through about $9K. And my host later confirmed my half-assed math.

Saturday

Last day in town. We fly out at 6PM and we decide to spend the rest of our dining credit at the buffet here at GN. The room it was in was nice enough. The view of the pool was cute. But the buffet was shit. And I mean shit.

How do you fuck up breakfast? The bacon was warm paper, hardly cooked and very fatty/chewy. It almost looked pink. The corned beef hash had chunks of weird shit in it. If it was warm I could have stomached it. But it was cold and smelled funny.

It seemed like everyone there was unhappy, so the line for omelets was around the block. If there were 30 people in the buffet, 25 of them were in line for the made to order section.

View from the buffet.

Since we have 7 hours to kill, before heading to the airport, we waive goodbye to Fremont and hop on the Deuce to get us to Mandalay Bay.

We played at all of the other MGM casinos a couple days earlier, so we wanted to hit them all. Just Mandalay Bay, Luxor and Excalibur to go.

I know people rag on taking the buss, but sitting on top of those double deckers is like a $6.00 sightseeing tour.

I snapped all of these pictures on our way back to the strip.

Now for some bonus content. I have been vacationing in Vegas for nearly 20 years now. I have stayed at Mandalay Bay at least a half dozen times. I like their pool and their casino. But I have never once entered in from the front door. It was always either the Excal monorail or the Luxor shops.

Man have I been missing out! The below is the strip frontage entry. Its like a fancier Adventureland from Disney World. Waterfalls, rope bridges, very tropical and peaceful.

The next time I piss away all of my money, I'll spend a few hours here reflecting on my life choices.

Thanks for reading!

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