V April 2012 Miraggio, Mirage & Bellagio

Post date: Jun 21, 2012 8:42:43 PM

I wont bore anyone with tales of the airport. I always skip right over those in other peoples reports. Its not like this is the aviation forums, I'll jump right to the action! Spirit Air is, what Spirit is. Dirty little plane. But for $230 round trip for 2 from Chicago to Vegas I'll suffer through it.

Day 1

Landed on time, the NAB convention was in town and the airport was packed. I have never seen so many people in the cab line. It took 3 & 1/2 hours to fly into town and almost an hour to get a cab! It was nuts. But by 2:30 we were in a cab and off to Bellagio. My host there is a Chicago ExPat and he did me well. 2 nights comped in a lakeview room. Hands down the best views I have ever had in Vegas. Dead Center with the Eiffel Tower and perfect view of the fountain show.

You can tune to channel 22 in the room and get the music from the show on your TV. Pretty neat. It was a new Blue Room. Pretty nice. Nice big bathrooms, but the soaps & Shampoos were not my taste. A little on the Old Ladyish smell for me.

The atrium was set up for Spring.

Now that I am staying here I hated all the Looky Lou's walking through! They should make this off limits unless you are actually staying in the hotel! So many tripods and tour groups crowding every section. We wasted no time "paying" off the room and hit the casino. The goal this time around was 80,000 tier credits. Enough to hit Platinum. I was averaging about 50,000 my last 3 trips, but a handful fell off and I'm 80K short before the next batch drop in July. I'm not a penny player.

I don't much like the newer video slots. I'm old school and play the mechanical 3 reelers Like Top Dollar or 3X4X5X. With that said almost all of our hits came on pennies! I have no idea what these games were something with Robin Hood but it had a random bonus game with a little Leprechaun that bounces around. I got it on my 3rd spin and the little devil took me to his clover patch. Got up to a 3X multiplier and picked his golden clover. When all was said and done I had almost $105.00 for my $1.20 buy in. I have a rule, I don’t post hits of under $100.00 in my trip reports. Honestly I don’t bother taking pictures under a hundo unless they look really cool. But while I was playing with this little green money giver Mrs Grid hit a line pay for $82.00 on an $0.80 bet.

Thinking we just pulled a rainbow out of our asses we cashed out and moved on. Plus these games are "Specialty" here and only get you a point for every $10.00 instead of every $1.50 (we are gold) and I'll never get my 80K in tier credits on these things. Over to Fix for diner. I liked it. Not nearly as much as the wife did. Kobe Beef sliders were good. Really just a meatball on a tiny muffin. If we were in Chicago I'd never cough up $30.00 for 4 of these things. But comped on vacation, why not?

They have these weird mac & cheese sticks with truffle oil to dip. It was OK. But the Kobe Beef chili cheese fries. Simply delightful! They brought them out stacked up like a jenga game. You pull out the fries and put the chili on yourself. A little pitcher of cheese and you are set. No pictures of food. I like to pretend I belong in a fancy joint. I could only imagine the wife's embarrassment if I took a picture of our food. Plus we were pretty much the only people in there. I did everything I was supposed to do to act fancy. I put on a nice shirt, took off my sunglasses, held in every fart, put my napkin on my lap. Really tried to act like a grown up for the wife.

But they have a team of servers for you. And since we were the entire restaurant they were all over us with constant water refills and such. When they took away our plates when we were done, one of the walked over with some wet towels. I thought "I know this one! I saw it in a movie; they give you the wet towels to clean your hands like Robert Downey JR did in Ironman!" So when he got near me I went to snatch them from him, but he really just wanted to wipe down the table. So I pimped it off. Total bill for Fix was $65.

Left a $20 tip and express comped the rest. Round off the night with a ton of action but no photo worthy pictures of slot hits, past the atrium at night Over to the free monorail to take us to Monte Carlo Since the last time I was in here I took them for $10,500.00 I figured I owed them some action.

Got that Leprechaun thing again in the 1st $5.00 for 3 spins of a special wheel but that only got me $80.00 moved over to $1.00 Wheel of Fortune, since these were specialty slots I didn't play much but did manage to hit spins of $75 & $40 and bars 4X for $50 I think. The wife moves over to some old school Triple Eagle and hits for this. Went to bed down my bankroll, about $300 & the wife is up $100 a ton of play but its 2:00Am Chicago time and we hit the hay.

Day 2 Part 1

Wake up early, still on Midwest time, and hide in the bathroom while the wife slept. I didn't want to wake her up. I have everything I need in here anyway. My cigarettes, an iPhone to text my brother about the previous nights adventures. And a telephone next to the shitter! You know you are in a fancy place when you see the coveted ShatPhone! Why they didn't pull these things out when they renovated the rooms I have no idea. Like people don't use Cel phones.

I don't even want to think of the emergency that would necessitate me using that phone while I was on the pot. But I digress. After an hour of hiding I wake her up and we are off to tackle the world!

I've been a gambler for the past dozen years or so. Ever since my Pops took me to Vegas for my 21st birthday. So I will go on record now saying this was the worse gambling day of my young life. I budget. I don't break my budget. If I dip into the next days money I feel like a jerk. Since the next day I'll wake up $50.00 short on my bankroll I'd get pissed at myself. So I try not to set me into Hulk Mode and I'd just retire early, or watch the wife shop or something. But what happens when you crap out before noon?

We'll we are about to find out! Its not as if I was playing high risk games, I was playing what I normally do. I was just getting the worlds shittiest bonus rounds. I'd play $1.00 Top Dollar and get the bonus for $15.00 or $20.00. Normally these would be in the $75-$100 range. Hell getting $300-$400 isnt out of the normal for these. I got the bonus in this Super Times Pay machine at the $1.00 level. $5.00 max bet but if each symbol says Super-Times-Pay you get 10 free games. And those games can retrigger as well. I've taken hundreds off these in the past. This time, when i got the 10 free games I had 2 hits for mixed bars and a Super Times Pay of $20.00.

The morning just stayed like that and by noon I lost $200.00 Mrs Grid wasn’t doing much better and gave back her $100 victory from the night before. So now I can’t even watch her gamble to get me through the day. We have to kill time before lunch so we head over to Caesars Palace to shop in the forum. But the siren call hits me and I walk to the mall via the casino. In the front door grasping a hundred dollar bill and by the time I stepped foot in the mall I was grasping a fistful of air. They got me.

We cross the street to pop in at Paris, again I'm not trying to trigger a visit with CET and hurt my ADT so we were just going to look around the place. Entered in at Ballys and did OK, left with $20.00 of their money. Got into Paris and all of my older slots are gone! No more rows of King of Cash or Money Mad Martians in with newer video slots. A few losing cracks on $1.00 WOF and I am now negative for the day, stealing $50.00 from tomorrow Grid. Boy is he going to be pissed! Gordan Ramsey's new place is just about done. They didn't seem to mind me walking around on site.

Lunch at Olives. Todd English seems to run a popular joint. But it was just OK. The place was packed. My host made the reservations, and put in to make sure we had a patio table. Which we did. But that was the highlight of the meal. The waiter was a little pushy. I ordered the Burger and he pushed the steak saying we were on vacation and should live it up. I said nope, I'll take what I want and thanked him for his suggestion.

The wife placed her order for a Turkey Panini with cranberry sauce. She just wanted water ( we are kinda health nuts and don’t drink much booze) but this jerk again up sold her, "You are on vacation, don't drink water order this fancy grapefruit juice drink you'll love it!" So he got himself a sucker! It was a good drink, but cost like $16.00 or so. Food was just OK. Not nearly as good as fix. Total came to almost $70 + Tip. Express comps so I dont care. That just means free for me so I'm letting her live it up. Now that our bellies are full the problem remains what to do with the rest of the day.

Day 2 part 2

The legend of the silver dollar! Every gambler has their own superstitions. I once heard that carrying a Morgan Silver Dollar is good luck. So I picked up a nice 1900 one for $30.00 at a Flea Market 2 weeks ago. I convinced my team of shoppers that day it was lucky and made them take me to a casino when we were done shopping. I clinched that bad boy in my hand and won and won and won.

Not much mind you, I didn’t have a bankroll on me. But in 30 minutes I had won the $30 that I paid for it. So now I set up rules for its magic. I'll flip it in the morning. If I catch it and its heads I'll win, or at least not lose my stake for the day. Day 1 of this trip and its tails. So I knew I was screwed. But played anyway. Got action but lost my money. Today I flipped it and it was the coveted heads. So why I'm down all my money by 3:00 is beyond me. How could the Morgan be wrong? So I take out another $50.00 from tomorrow Grid and play on.

Get to MGM and go on a small streak. But I end up losing it again. Now down $100 from the next days stash and my original $300 gone. Take some more from tomorrow Grid and hit NY NY.

I was actually winning here. Up about $50.00 and see these new Lord of the Rings slots and heard good things about them. The wife got 2 bonus rounds pretty fast. Each got her no more than $3.00! I never even got the $3.00 bonus rounds on my $50.00. Leave NY NY with no money. Get into Monte Carlo and I have no idea what happened to my money. I remember playing and losing but somehow I pissed away another $80.00 and just had $20.00 left of yet another next day’s funds dipped into. So I'm sitting at -$480 on a $300 bankroll.

Normally I'd take more with me to Vegas, but we are buying a new $4,000 air conditioner for the house so I have to stay in budget. I'm ready to waive the white flag and just deal with a $120.00 bankroll tomorrow. I am going to be soooo pissed in the morning! The wife says we should hit Aria, even though she is down as well and hates the place. Of everyone I go to Vegas with I'm the only one that wins in there. So I take that $20.00 and play a .25 Super Times Pay and get the bonus, cash out double my money.

I

Now have $40.00 left to get back to even for the day. Play my old stand by Triple 7's 5 line game that I always get a ton of play on, rack up some points but cash out at just $20.00. So I do what any good gambler does. I start to Chase! No more baby quarter games, I walk up to a $1.00 5 line Super Times Pay and on the 1st spin I hit this! Now I have $300.00!

The wife once won on Buffalos so she plays while I nurse that $300 TITO like its my 1st born. Finally I cave in and stick it into a Buffalo next to her and play 1 spin at $1.20 bet and hit the bonus round! So many of the huge black snorting bastards all over my screen with some wilds that turn into 2 times multipliers on the bonus round. Retrigger a few more times, I end up with almost 50 spins, most were junk but in the end I cashed out with another $250!

So in the span of 10 minutes I got all of my money back on 2 games. Played a little more here and there and leave with $500.00 of their money. Back to Bellagio! I now have my money back so I can play up my host for giving me the room. The wife hits on a China Shores for a full screen of Aces on an $0.90 bet and cashed out at $120 something (it was still counting up when she took this picture) I played up and down, lose $50, hit for $50 rinse repeat.

Finally I was down to my last hundo and that would send me to bed just down a hundo for the day, and still making that Morgan Silver Dollar a liar for saying it would be a winning day. Stuck in that $112 buck TITO on a $3.00 Quick Hits 5X10X machine and on the 1st spin hit for 10 times single bar and cash out at a profit for the day of $9.00.

Try 2 quick whacks on $1.00 Monte Carlo and call it a night with a profit of $3.00 .

Day 3

The Morgan says tails but what am I going to do, stay in the room because I made up some horseshit rules for my new good luck charm? I now have my full bankroll after the chaser in me won out last night and Mrs Grid is only down a hundo of her money for the trip. Since she was up after day 1 she is a little pissed that she lost it last night. But I made her play up my card since I wasn't getting nearly the action I wanted to on it.

Hell this wouldn’t be the first time I made her a loser In all fairness there is this game called 3 Kings. My kid brother plays it all the time. I've seen it ruin him before but if you get 3 lion heads it will trigger free games. Those free games keep climbing every time no one hits them. After awhile they start burning up and flames shoot out. So instead of 50 free games for the Green lions they are now, say 85 and on fire. Red should be 25 but are now 50 and blue should be 15 and are now in the 20's. I made her play probably $100 through that piece of shit trying to get the bonus free games but nope. She was so mad at me We do one last lap through Bellagio before we head over to Mirage for another 2 nights. I find this Double Diamond progressive game.

If you get all Double Diamonds you get a progressive that moves up higher into each screen. Max bet was $1.80 but I soon found out with all those chances to hit something it was paying me back nearly my bet each time. Bet $1.80 "win" $1.60 or so. And it was full point! I racked up a ton of play on a $20.00 (your mileage may vary) and actually won a progressive for $80 something on 7 double diamond double diamond.

One last shot at some points while we are here and I play my old stand by at Bellagio, one of the few games I've played for years here that are still left, not a big line hit but a pretty shot. Sadly most of my old Mechanical Reels were stripped from here even since my last visit 2 months ago. Gone are a ton of Top Dollars and Pinballs. Even the last Crystal 5's with the bonus wheel feature in Vegas is gone. All the new machines they put in were sitting empty.

All of the players in the casino were flocking to the old style games like I was though. Makes no sense. Over to Mirage and the room isn't ready yet. Its only noon. They take our phone number and say they will text when it’s ready (do they ever?) So we head across the street for some Mexican at this little place in Venetians food court. It’s gone!

It’s now some kind of Chicken place. No one is happy with this. Some bug thing at Palazzo So we get a few grilled cheese sandwiches and head over to Wynn. They have a special Steve Wynn themed Megabucks game here. Same $12Million jackpot but with the Steve all over it. All the symbols on the video slot are places in Wynn or Encore. But if you get the wheel symbol you get to spin. Just like wheel of fortune but you pick tiles.

You can get 2 wheels spins or 3 of them. 2 or 3 times the pay etc. I could see potential in these. Played 2 rounds and got the bonus fast each time. Not for much, about $40 the 1st time and $20 the second. But the wife was down another hundo and its after 2:00 so we leave and head back to Mirage. I'm sure I left 12 million on the table right there but its only money.

Never got a text but the room is ready. Very nice. A view of the highway, and the world’s smallest bathroom. But still nice. And comped is always passable. I actually had to hop into the tub for this one. From here we take a cab down to Mandalay Bay and we plan on hitting all the MGM joints down that side until we end up at home base that night. MB never has a lot of games I play. But they always comp me well.

I plan on taking them up on 2 nights in a suite at THE hotel with some free play in a few months so I give them some action. They have one of the last nickle Munsters video slots in Vegas. I played that thing for a ton of points yet again. The wife loses even more. Now she is depressed. She is usally a good gambler and can take her lumps with the best of them. But I can tell she is down in the dumps. She doesn't LOVE Vegas the way I LOVE Vegas.

I can take a loss and plow through it. She gets a little down when it happens to her. So we leave MB and head over to Luxor. Literately the 1st game she plays is one of her favorites. Big Times Pay. You get anything with the Big Times Pay symbol you get to spin a bonus wheel that will make it from 2 times to 10 times. Well she got two of these symbols, and hit a 6 times. We thought she just won $100 or so. But since she got 2 symbols it was 6 times 6 so 36 times the symbol hit and a fast $450!

Now I have a happy wife again and she is chomping at the bit to gamble more. So we head back into Mandalay and she leaves me alone with the Munsters and I don’t even know where she went. For all I know she found some Coke off a Croatian business man and did a line in the ladies room. But 30 minutes later she was back with me so I didn’t ask. We skip over the crappy castle and wind our way through NY NY (we lost a little) & through Monte Carlo (I lost a lot) to get on the monorail over to Bellagio and walk back to Mirage.

I'm down for the day, the wife is up big. But we get to Mirage and we both start losing. It’s a slow bleed. Damn you Morgan!

Day 4

Last full day in Las Vegas I wake up early, still on Chicago time and try hiding in the bathroom again. But its not a mini mansion one like at the Bellagio. So I smoke and text for a little while. Try taking a bath to kill time, but I can only wash my balls so much before I get bored. They only had 2 queens instead of the 1 King I reserved so we played orphanage.

We both had our own beds and played lights out with the new girl at night, and I retreated to my own bed to sleep. I thought there would be no upside to having a highway view. Boy was I wrong! I also got to hear trains coming and going all night! What a treat! Leaving my sleeping wife in her own bed I pull a Griswold and go down to gamble alone. Morgan showed heads so I knew I would be OK. I've been doing good on cash coaster here.

Stuck in my $100.00 and cashed out $140 after the bonus, played the one next to it and had a $90 bonus round.

I've been doing well on my Spin & Wins as I always do in Vegas, I've been barking up the tree on this one the entire trip. Normally they start at $10,000 and build up. Most are sitting at $12-$15K. When I won the progressive on one of these a few months ago it was at only $10,365.00. Well, Mirage has one sitting at $23,100.00!

I figured that pigeon is just waiting to be plucked! But nope. I did hit a fast Instant Pay for $50.00 though and it was back up to the room to wake the wife with $160.00 in profit for my excursion alone. I've been to Vegas nearly 30 times and I have never, not once, set foot in a pool. She wants to this time so we head down for an hour. I go in the water and the pool is a complete sausage fest. All the women are sunbathing.

So it’s just me and a bunch of fat older guys. I get some sun and take a picture of my lovely golden tan in the elevator after we changed in the room. Back to war! No matter what I did I couldn’t lose money. We head over to the Bellagio for once last go. We both start to heat up here again. I joking put in my TITO on a 3 Kings game and on the 1st spin wouldn’t you know it, 45 free games. But it sucked. Only paid out $80.00

Right behind it was some Rainbow Game that I have never seen or played before but it was calling me. 1st spin I get a lot of Leprechauns for $30.00, not bad for $1.25 max bet. Next spin I do it again for another $30 with Horseshoes. I think about cashing out but with back to back hits I give it one more spin and get a bunch of pots of gold, I guess its the bonus round. A few free spins later and that gets me another $100.

I try one last spin and get nothing, figured I'd milked him dry and moved on. The trick to penny games, is to stick and move. You get nothing you move. You hit big (and beat the poor odds) you move. If you sit on them too long bye bye money! Now I'm up, pretty well up. If I stopped now I'd almost have my entire bankroll again and get a push for the trip! But I'm chasing Platinum like a fool.

I know my offers are based on ADT but the thought of 2 free passes to the Bellagio Art Gallery that I will never use is just too good to pass up! So I press my bets and start to spiral out of control again. I get ballsey, too ballsey and I start upping my bets. I blow a fast hundo on Cash Coaster at Monte Carlo max betting it and not getting the bonus round. I probably lost $500.00 at the Monte Carlo alone for the trip. After years of bleeding them they finally got me!

Head over to Aria and I get hammered there on all the games I won on the other day. Finally we retreat to Mirage. Cash Coaster starts paying out again and I'm righting the ship but almost all my winnings are gone. I still have a hundo of my original bankroll for the day left and I'm clinging to it for dear life. Sure I still have another $500 I could fall back on but I'm going to Atlantic City next month for a boy’s trip and I want some cash to float over. Do one final point check at the MLife booth and they give me my total. 184,000 tier credits.

I'm not going to make it so I call it a trip. We head over to TI to see what Senior Frogs looks like. I thought Gillyes was an eyesore on their beautiful facade. But God Damn, if having a Giant Green Fiberglass Frog and painting the mountains Yellow & Red didn’t make the place look extra tacky I don’t know what will! I hope Steve Wynns office over looks Treasure Island so he can see what a mockery Ruffin made of the place he built. But they do have a bank of $1.00 Wheel of Fortune machines that I have always done well on, even getting the spin for $1,000.00 last year so I play on them. 4 machines in the bank. An older Asian woman was glued to hers, so I played next to her and spun pretty fast for a fat $25! Moved to the next one, lost that $25 getting another spin for...... $20!

Yeah, in her face, I bet she wishes she had been playing on my machines! Move to the last open one and hit for $125 on a spin and leave with $100.00 of their money. I piss that away trying to get my $20K+ Spin and Win at Mirage to cough up her bounty to no avail. I have $70.00 in point play to burn and I go to my old stand by, and point making machine the 5 line Triple 7's grinder. Turn that $70 in play into $65 cash and call it a day. Here is what she looks like, it never lets me down. You won’t get rich off it but it has to be near 95% payback. I've been banging away on her for awhile now. Wife ends the trip down about $150.00 I leave with almost 1/2 my bankroll. Morgan was right again.

Day 5

Flight leaves at 2:00PM we check out and I make the wife take me to Hash House A go go. I hear people rave about it. Lines were out the door. But Platinum and above with CET gets you right in. So we skip the lines and get a table. It was OK. We both got the Tractor Trailer or whatever it’s called special. I honestly thought the pancake would be bigger. The eggs were very good, the bacon was tiny. I ordered sausage and got bacon but I wasn’t going to bitch. Wife got the Vanilla Waffle. I didn’t think it tasted like much of anything. Certainly not Vanilla. I ate 1/2 of it for her. She is a lightweight. I ate my flapjack as well.

Again, not much flavor to it. I had to drown it in syrup. Ihop is much better I'm sad to say. Every one there was very nice, and it’s a cute space. But it’s not worth me walking through the dump that is IP to eat there again. Had a smoke and slow played a double diamond older mech real game max betting for 2 quarters.

Ended up hitting double bars and a double diamond and cashed out up $20.00. No cabs to be had in Imperial Palace so we crossed the street to a real Palace and playing $1.00 Wheel of Fortune and I took one last shot at being a millionaire. Wife got a spin fast on her $20 but it was only $30.00 so she cashed out. My $20 profit from IP got me nothing. No spins.

While I waited for her to cash out her TITO I stuck in another $20 just to see. It was a double Wild Cherry machine, and if a cherry shows up anywhere you get paid. I got 1 cherry for my 2 bucks back and a spin on that same pull for ............. $20.00. I got my IP win back and called it a day.

After starting out the trip report about how I don’t like hearing about flights, we get on the plane and start to taxi and there is a problem, we head back to the gate and sit on a plane with no AC (for a little while, they eventually hooked us up to the airports AC) for almost 2 hours. Finally we get to going and I end up in Chicago at 10:00 PM instead of 7 something. It’s now 5:00AM and I'm going to bed. But I'll be up early checking flights to Vegas again in a few hours! Thanx for reading!

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