l Jan 2015 Palace Island Pyramid

Flight for the wife, kid and I was $128 round trip. Total! $30 to fly to Vegas with all taxes and fees. The kid flies for free. The catch was we had to fly out on a Wed and home early the following Tues. I don't know how my foreign fellow gamblers do it for weeks on end. Anything over 4 days is too much for me. Yet here I am, always the value hunter!

I only have 1/2 my normal bankroll, and since I have the family in tow I can only gamble 1/2 the time I would normally. But with 2 extra days in town, can I still be a max bettor and survive?

First 2 days is at Caesars Palace comped with $450 in Free Play.

Next 2 is at Treasure Island comped with $300 in Free Play.

Last 2 is at Luxor with $100 in Free Play. Sadly Bellagio had a better offer for me, but with the kid, I'd rather do Luxor.

Wed

Fly out late at 4PM. The plan is to check in right away at Caesars, grab something to eat and get the kid to bed. So first night will pretty much be a waste.

About 4 days before check in I find out that Total Rewards decided not to honor my Free Play. Sure it was booked and confirmed for a month by then. But it turns out there were many policy changes after they filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago. And one of those changes was to pull Free Play from players that had already booked. Not everyone, but I guess I was one of the lucky ones.

Nice right? If it wasn't for that $450 I would have never booked this trip. It took 3 days of emails and phone calls until I finally found someone to make it right. The only problem is, they would only give me the $450 on the day of check out. I guess the mix up was them now limiting how many players they will allow a certain offer to. The offer I booked was over booked. So they would honor the room, and told me to piss in my face in regards to the free play. Nice!

Normally I wouldn't want to hurt my ADT, but if Total Rewards wants to alienate one of their Diamond players maybe its time to move on. I'm hearing this is happening a lot. Plus I never really win in their casinos. They are tight, but the comps were great.

Moving on... I grab us some Earl of Sandwich subs and the kid is already asleep and the wife is ready to hit the hay. Its only 7PM Vegas time so I hit the slots and see what I can get.

And... I hit nothing! I play for over 3 hours and I drop $900.00. I really didn't get much play for that cash either. My biggest hit was for $79 on a Dolly Parton slot. I end up with just 700 points. So I paid almost a grand for $3500 in action. Not good.

At least the view from our room was great!

Thurs

The kid has no idea that she is no longer in Chicago. She wakes up at 7AM but in Vegas time that's 5AM. Lucky for me Mom is a sport and takes the baby downstairs for a tour and some Starbucks. They still get me up before 7AM and we all decide to play in the empty Forum Shoppes.

The kid has the run of the place. For some reason CET didn't want to spring for anything new for the Chinese New Year. "So what if it's the year of the Goat, we can use this big Dragon from storage!"

We play by the big fish tank in the mall for awhile and wait for any place to open for breakfast.

I sneak off into the casino, trying to chase my losses from the night before, and I do get a decent bonus game for about $150 before we head off to explore some more.

I used my 2 free show tickets per month, Diamond comp, for 2 passes to the High Roller. We did it last trip and its OK. We had a little more fun this time since we had the pod to ourselves.

From there we stop at Ghirardelli's for a hot fudge sundae. For you Mr. Rodgers fan's I found out what Mr. McFeely is doing these days. He is busy making ice cream speedy deliveries now. For $10 we all ate our fill.

Since Mom woke up so early, the girls head off for a nap and Dad wonders back over to the Linq to play the new Captain Nemo slots.

Glad I did! In about 5 minutes of play I hit for $540! Add in the $150 hit from earlier and now I'm just down $200 for the trip. When you're down, just gamble your way out of a hole!

From the Linq I head over to Flamingo and drop off $200. Head back to the Palace and lose another $100 before finding an awesome Miss Red slot. Playing max bet of $2.25 I hit for $35 & $76 pretty fast. So I change the denom to 2 cents and play on at $5.50 per spin. Finally I get the bonus for almost a hundo and cash out up $200 on this session.

I go grab the girls and we wander around for the rest of the night. I use my $100 Diamond Celebration credit for the Bacchanal Buffet. Dinner was $100 and the kid was free. No way I would ever pay for this out of pocket.

It was a nice space, the food seemed fresh and the service was great. I'm a low brow eater. Its in my Hillbilly roots. I once eat a gyro I found in the back of my pickup truck weeks after I bought it, and I was fine. So I can eat low budget food and my system treats it as normal.

So when I rate any high end eats I grade it on the potty scale. In other words, how many times I take a shit that night. Every buffet gets 1 squirt for free since that's my norm. Fancy food and I seldom agree, so I have a feeling this might end up with a high rating.

Sure enough, about half way through desert I put the anal in BacchANAL and we head up to the room so I can clear some space.

So right off the bat it gets 2 stars from me.

I help put the baby to bed and start to head off to the casino when.... 3 stars now! The buffet is moving up in the rankings pretty fast.

I play on through the night without any major hits. Slowly I'm finding myself back in a hole. By the time I head back up to the room I'm back down to where I started for the day.

Including the money I won earlier, I ended up losing another grand all over again. And still just 750 points so only $4k coin in to go with those losses. -$800 now.

Just $700 left again for the entire trip and 4 days ahead of me. This isn't looking good. Damn you Caesars! At least I have my $450 in free play to look forward to tomorrow. I wake up twice that night to hit the head. Bacchanal is now officially 5 stars.

Fri

Check out day today. I have to wait until noon to pick up my Free Play. The plan was to just convert my Free Play and leave. Turns out you have to use your players club card in order to convert the slot coupons. Looks like I'll just be getting 100 points today. What with them pulling offers at whim, and they already reduced my future Free Play in half, I really don't care.

I see some machine with a must hit by progressive at 47 bucks. It has to hit by $50. So I slip in one of my 9- $50 tickets and I end up with a bonus game of $165.00.

That mini progressive still didn't hit so I slip in another $50 and hit it. I ended up playing 3 tickets here and cash out just over $300. Pretty decent conversion.

I play some $1.00 Deuces Wild video poker but only convert to $30. I play around and slowly build up a $400 ticket. Just 3 tickets left and I hit a bonus game for $45 and now I'm almost at $450 in real money.

I move over to Dolly Parton and hit a bonus for $76 within 4 spins. Normally I'd cash out after a bonus but you cant cash out the Free Play. Good thing since I hit another bonus for $112!

So I have $650 and 1 coupon left. After 8 hours of gambling the 2 nights before and not hitting anything I go on one great run in 20 minutes. Sure it helps when they spot you $450.

I have some decent luck on a Triple 7's game hitting a progressive just over a hundo.

By 1PM I'm holding $800 and I'm right back to 100% of the money I started the trip with. Viva Las Vegas!

We check in at Treasure Island and the room is OK. A little worn, some duct tape on the windows. Nothing like the Augustus Tower we just spent 2 nights in. But the toilet paper here is better than at CP, so I guess that's something on the positive.

We head over to the Fashion Show mall and play in the Disney store for awhile. We end up buying a bag full of goodies.

The baby tried playing with some older kids, but they didn't want anything to do with her. She went off and found a Mickey doll to bribe one of them with. Sadly there were no takers :-(

It really is not nice to ignore another kid that wants to play. My Mom used to make me play with Timmy down the street. He was dirty, smelled like tuna for some reason. And liked to set things on fire. On the plus side, his Dad had a great stash of Penthouse mags for us to rummage through. Not sure if Mom knew, when she would force me over to his house, that i would just be setting shit on fire and looking at titties. Back to the story!

We eat at the mall and I head back to TI to convert my $300 in free play. First up to bat is a $5.00 Top Dollar machine. I get the bonus but end up with just $75. What a kick in the face!

I play this Triple 7's game right next to it in the high limit area for $6.25 per spin. I end up with a bonus for $160.00 Pretty solid.

Next round of my Free Play is on a $1.00 Instant Spin. Turned that into $175.00.

I end up turning my $300 into almost $600 here. I went from being down $800 on the trip just 4 hours ago to now up $600. I love it when a plan comes together!

A few more hits at TI that night.

I play a lot here. I racked up a ton of coin-in, but I end up down $700 from my high point. Since $600 of that $700 was converted Free play I'm good. I still have $1400 left for the trip and I'm pretty happy with the days events.

Sat

Wake up and head over to the Venetian. We have some private mall time here as well being so early and all. They have the money for some Goats and their display is below.

We fart around and have breakfast in their food court. We all head back to home base for a girl's nap and a Daddy gambling session.

Not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to take the kid to the wax museum. I figured we would get some awesome pictures out of it. The trashed suite was part of their new Hangover section.

But in the real world babies, it turns out, are terrified by wax people! I think she thought they were alive or asleep, maybe even dead. She was pretty freaked out.

After that calamity we headed over to the Auto Museum. Its always free with passes you can print out online. Lots of room for the kid to run around and Mom seems to like the fancy older cars.

I was at their gift shop when they had Imperial Palace stuff on sale after they changed the name of the resort to the Quad. Now that the Quad is gone as well, all of that stuff is on sale. I'll be back when they switch it from the Linq to complete my set of failed names for one resort in a calendar year collection.

Back to TI and back to winning!

I went on one crazy ride. Up and Down by hundreds in a matter of minutes. They still got me in the end for $400. I still have $1,000 left and 2 days to go.

Totals for TI: I ended up with 7400 points.(1.50 = 1 point) so that's nearly $6K coin in per day. Almost twice as much play as I got at CET for less than 1/2 the loss.

I'll be back to TI. It has, in my opinion, the most fair casino on the strip.

Sun

Check out of TI and start the walk over to Luxor. Its not that bad of a jaunt. Normally you would get on the free monorail from TI to Mirage, walk past Caesars Palace and into Bellagio. At the B they have plenty of goats to go around.

From Bellagio you hop on the free monorail there all the way down to Monte Carlo. Walk through NY NY and its yet another free monorail to Luxor. All told it takes almost an hour with a kid. But not too much walking and plenty to see.

Check in was easy at the pyramid and we get up to our room just in time for the nap. I like Luxor. I like the casino. I like being connected to Mandalay Bay and Excalibur. I like the food court and I like the slots.

What I don't like is their shitty rooms. We got a tower room and those are a little bigger. Still much shittier than at CP. And even the toilet paper failed compared to TI.

I pick up my $100 in free play and make good on a Grease slot. I also had some MyVegas points that we used on 2 free buffets. The buffet was terrible this time. And I only pooped once so there you go. The system works!

After the nap we head over to the castle. They recently updated their Fun Dungeon and added a toddlers area with lots of little rides. Everyone had fun for a couple hours.

Luxor had these little soaps shaped like a pyramid. I can only assume it was to clean inside your butt-hole.

With the girls asleep, I head off into the night. I got in a hole early, but pulled this rabbit out of my ass at Mandalay Bay.

Took that money all the way over to New York New York. Had a decent hit on this Monte Carlo slot, but ended up losing that.

Still, with most of the days money left, I went over to MGM. Not sure why I gamble there. I never win. Its like my white whale. Just once I want to walk out a Conquering Hero. Today was not that day. They got me for $400. Not a single decent hit.

I end up the day down $500. I was doing great except for that MGM run. Still have $500 left and never expected to play the way I normally do and have ANY money by this point.

Mon

We start off the day at Mandalay Bay and use yet another MyVegas comp for 2 free buffets. It was good. But its hard to fuck up breakfast food. So far this trip all of our food was pretty much covered with comps. So that's always a plus.

We goof around before the mid-morning nap and I head down to the casino and pull off a $100 hit pretty fast.

I bang out the below 2 hits as well. Still plenty of play during a 2 hour stretch and I wasn't down any money.

The girls come down and we head over to the giant arcade in NY NY. I end up losing more money here than I did in the casino over the past couple hours. I did end up with a Spongebob doll. I'm pretty sure that's worth $40 so I'll call it even.

We head over to MGM for some nachos and to play in the Rain Forrest store.

We have dinner at the Chicken Strip place in Luxor. Its good, but the mashed and gravy sucks. Up to bed for the ladies and its now my last night in town, so I'm going to make a run of things with my last $500.

If I go belly up from here I'm cool. 6 days of action on my seed money is not bad.

I play around and lose a few hundo. With just $200 left I play an older Monte Carlo slot and................

Back in business! I have exactly $1177 left.

I head out from Luxor and walk my big ass all the way down to Monte Carlo. I drop off $100 there in a blink. Hop on the monorail and over to Bellagio. Plenty of play here over the next 2 hours but end up losing a hundo as well.

Back over to Aria so I can convert my points into free play and I end up dropping another $100.

I have almost $900 left and I call it a trip.

During these last 2 days playing at Mlife casinos I lost $500 and won $400. Total points those 2 days was 5800. Now most games I play are 3 bucks = 1 point others are $10 =1 so I'd say my coin in was around $8K per day there.

On par with TI and twice as good as with CET. The entire trip ends up costing me $600 in gambling losses, just $100 per day. Not too shabby for $35,000 of coin-in.

Tues

We fly home First Class!

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