Nov 2013 Fremont Crashing

Saturday

Just the boys this trip. Grid and his kid brother.

Flight out of Chicago was on time. We land in Las Vegas at 10:00AM. First leg of the trip we double book night one with Flamingo and the Plaza downtown. The Plaza was a last minute addition to the itinerary. The kid emails a host once he finds out they match player’s club cards. He holds a Diamond card with CET. The host says sure he’ll get a King card, their 2nd highest card and he’ll give him $100 in free play plus a room. I email the host and ask what he can do for me...

He matches my Mlife Platinum card with their Ace card, tosses me a hundo as well. And puts us up in their highest 3 room suite. So we take it. They have a program going on now where Ace members that get a royal flush on any machine get the same amount in free play. So if I hit on quarters its a $1,000 cash for the win and $1,000 in free play as the bonus. This makes playing VP at Plaza statistically a winning deal.

Check into Flamingo after trying to do so for 2 hours and the room is pretty nice. Just the Fab Deluxe but much nicer than I expected.

Its good. Not in my top 10 in Vegas. But when you are expecting shit and just get a fart you are happy. Run down into the casino and play a little bit. The new Michael Jackson slots are fun. Much better than the old ones. But we lose. Try some other slots and lose. End up at the sports book and the kid places a 3 team parlay (which is a loser, thanx Saints) and I drop some money on the Chiefs to beat the bills by 4 or more.

Only in town for 2 hours and we are already down about $200 each. We told the Plaza host we wont be there until 5:00 pm, so we go to see the shiny new Quad. Not many slots, but they have temporary walls up everywhere so I can only assume more is to come. This place is 100 times nicer than the smelly old basement it replaced. Word on the street is that they will change the name already. I think the Quad is just about as stupid as they come for a casino name. Second behind the "D".

We find some Phantom of the Opera slots. Me being a huge Phantom fan, I saw it in Vegas a couple times before they closed it, had to hop on one of these. Betting $2.00 a spin it’s a pretty fair game. Getting the bonus seems hard though. I finally do so and get the 1st decent hit of the trip.

Now I’m just down a hundo and we decide to grab the SDX to Fremont Street. I know everyone bashes the buss, but for $8.00 for a 24 hour pass it’s a great deal. The SDX got us from the strip to Downtown in about 20 minutes. Head over to the Plaza and our new host was waiting for us. Seems like a nice guy but I don’t think we played up to the level of comp he gave us. I can only assume so since I emailed him a thank you when we got back and asked him to review my play. But he has since ignored me.

Grab the 2 new cards and head up to the room. We went into the 1st room and saw one bed and couldn't get in the next room. Down to the desk to bitch they gave us the other key. Walk into the next room and find a living room. Headed into the last room and another bed. All told it sleeps 8 and had 3 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, a living room and mini wet bar. Very boring to look at. But a ton of space and great views of the light show.

Size wise, it was awesome. But very bland. A whole lot of gray and not much else. The bathrooms, all 3 of them, not much to look at. But the toilet had water and the shower soap. So its all we needed. The host catches us walking around and tells us to charge whatever we want to the room and he’ll take care of it. The kid does well on CSI and we both convert our free play into real money.

Gamble on for a couple hours and decide to check out the newest in Downtown entertainment. The DT Grand. Its nice, tiny little casino, but they have some games I play here. Took about 10 minutes to get our players club cards. We only did so since they had mystery free play. Turns out it didn’t take Perry Mason to figure out the “Mystery” here. We both got $3.00 and pissed and moaning to each other about it.

Needless to say that went in one spin. I did manage to hit this for almost $250.00 while we were there. If I was playing max it would have been a hand pay, but I don’t have the balls or bankroll for $10+ a spin on a nickel game.

Refreshed, we push on down Fremont and slowly lose everywhere. The odds do seem better than the strip. I’ll give them that much. And I do appreciate that max bet is usually half what it is on the boulevard. I rip off these 3 one after another at the Las Vegas Club and we head back to home base.

So I’m back up and he is still down. We eat at Hash House A Go Go in Plaza; I never understood why people go nuts over this place. The over sized waffles and pancakes to me are bland. And the rest is no better than Denny’s. Still it’s comped and I’m happy with anything that’s free food. This is also why I eat gum off the streets. Knowing we wouldn't play enough to justify their steak house, this was a decent meal.

Play on until we get too sleepy around midnight, 2:00AM Chicago time, and call it a day. The plaza gives back your losses up to $100.00. $50.00 the next day and another $50 the day after that. So we both have another $50.00 in free play come morning. They also had a free mini slot tourney going on. We played it the max for free, 5 times each. We didnt win but it helped kill some time.

Sunday

Wake up early and start playing up the card again since we didn’t get much play in last night. I hate low playing a host but I end up giving them over $4,000 worth of play. Good enough to get some goodies at the players club booth. A couple of shot glasses and a T-Shirt later we check out of the room. The kid wasn't winning like me so he only played through 2 grand. But still, that's $6K in one room and it seemed like they had no one playing in the Plaza when we were in there. A few older folk dropping .35 a spin on some penny games.

Again, we had fun. We are the lowbrow type by nature. But without all the themeing everything ran together. I guess Main Street sort of had a theme to it. If you consider weird Victoria a theme. And I still dont see why everyone says the Golden Nugget is a strip joint downtown. Its clean, small with really nothing to see. If this place was on the strip I wouldnt go in there. I think even the lowly Tropicana is better. And yet so many people have their heads of the GN's ass I just don't see it.

Back to the strip! Hop on the SDX with our passes and back to fantasy land. I liked Fremont. And I might stay there again. But after 8 hours of being on the street I pretty much did everything. Plus I love the pomp and pageantry of the strip. I wouldn’t say I’m a Downtown fan just yet. But I’m no longer a hater.

Drop the backpack off in the room and head over to Planet Hollywood for their brunch buffet. I’ve had their dinner buffet before and I wasn’t impressed. It was OK and I gave them a pass since we popped in there 30 minutes before they were closing before. But I had 2 comped Buffet of Buffet 24 hour passes so I didn’t complain.

The kid was given $150.00 in reward credits from our home casino so this would also be free eats. But we were shocked once we ordered our 2 buffets. $60.00? For this chunk of shit? The eggs were powdered. The bacon was fake. Everything was luke warm at best. What a rip off! To make matters worse we head into the casino and drop $100.00 each. What a way to start the morning!

Gamble over at Paris and do OK. I’d say it’s a push. We play the new giant Star Wars at Bally's and I pick Luke Skywalker so I win some there. On the bridge between Bally’s and what was Bill’s we see not one not two but four people set up playing Monte. Follow the bean, guess the card etc. I should have played, it seemed like a guaranteed win since the same set of people keep winning every time we pass them by!

By the time we get down to Harrahs we have pissed away most of our bankroll’s for the day. The kid does OK playing Plants VS Zombies.

I do OK at Caesars earlier but we are both still in the hole. So I man up and start playing some 5 line $1.00 per line game of Monopoly. Boy did that kick my ass. I blew through $150.00 on that stupid game in a blink betting $5.00 a spin. When I finally did get the bonus I won $15.00. On a $5.00 bet! Now I’m just pissed. We have free passes to the auto museum at the Quad. So we hike our way to that only to find out it closes at 6:00PM. Back to Paris where we were both doing OK and I hit on a cow game and Golden Arrow. So right there I get back the $200 that Harrahs took from me.

But not nearly enough to stop the bleeding. We end the day at Planet Hollywood again just so we can grab some Earl of Sandwich with his reward credits. Again I pick Luke on Star Wars (I must have used the force).Both of us lost all the days money today. I even gave back some of day one’s winnings. Next up a switch to Mirage!

Monday

Wake up way too early, and not wanting to risk the Mirage room not being ready. We head over to Bellagio.

I play and I lose. He plays and he wins. We sit down on Ironman, which I heard nothing but bad things about, and we both do well. We ended up playing Ironman at a few casinos in town and lost every time. But one of the bank of 3 that Bellagio had was always a winner for us. Each time we sat down we would get a bonus game for $100+ on a $1.00 bet. It was like clockwork. Below is a montage of wins off the same damn machine over the next 2 days. We should have just played this nonstop!

After killing enough time we check out of the Flamingo and head over to Mirage. My comp here was just a standard room. But $100.00 in resort credits and $125 in free play. No pictures of that room, it kind of sucked. It was clean and just fine for sleeping. But nothing to show. I grind a little here or there. Playing nickels or video poker. When I finally hit dollar pinball for $140.00

I started my free play with $2.00 and by the end I had a TITO worth almost $200.00. So I got back my Bellagio losses and we are back to full bankrolls each for the day. We head over to Monte Carlo for lunch. Free from playing MyVegas. And even at $17.99 it would be a decent value. The food seemed fresher than Planet Ho and much tastier even at half the price. Bellies full we play for our first Stache for Cash card.

The new promo they are running. Get 250 points ($750.00 played through on a normal slot of $2,500.00 on a specially slot) and you get a pull tab. I won $5.00. Keep playing and getting next to nothing for slot club points due to MLife dicking us with all their specialty slots. But that’s pretty much all she wrote for hits tonight.

By the time we went to eat at the Deli in Mirage (free on comp) and saw Cirque’s Love (comp MyVegas) we had just enough time to see the Bears beat the Packers. Had I been a homer and dropped my money on the Bears to win I’d have $200.00 on me right now. Instead all I won was $30.00 on the Bills losing. The rest of the night we got play but petered out. Still no huge wins… And to add insult to injury Love broke. How they break a show is beyond me. But half way through I guess the stage got stuck and everyone sat there looking at nothing for 15 minutes. 

Tuesday

Good Morning Vegas! The kid is almost wiped out of cash by this point. But I still have about half my bankroll left for the trip. So I can give the day one final push to get me my money back. Head over to Harrahs and hop on the monorail. I know its $5.00 for a trip, but I think its fun and it got us all the way down to MGM in a flash. We did get to see them farting around on the High Roller.

Jesus balls this thing is fucking huge! Reading about it is one thing, but seeing her up close like this is insane! Get off at MGM and lose $100.00 in a blink. The kid doesn’t do too well either. Cross over to the tram at Excalibur and start off at Mandalay Bay. He wins a little I lose a little. Over to Luxor and I start to heat up. Get another pull tab but again $5.00 so we stop chasing them. My winning streak here was short lived. And I’m back to down. Excalibur takes too much off us playing their shitty Ironman.

And we finally get into New York New York. We do OK. Lots of play. Plus I just love being in the joint. Everything in front of the resort is completely trashed due to the central park thing they are building. But it does look like they are saving most of the façade which is nice. Monte Carlo treats me well. I end up with $100.00 of their money. But its too little too late. By 8:00PM we both go bust. Had a blast. Took our chances and got to gamble 18 hours a day for 4 days.

I’d rather be losing in Vegas than working in Chicago!

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