FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: John Junk on June 11, 2007, 06:49:43 PM
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So I'm going to vegas this weekend for my buddy's bachelor party. Is there anything to do besides gamble and go to strip clubs? I'm guessing not. Not that I'm complaining, I'm just not a huge gambler. I went to Atlantic City one time and wanted to shoot myself. Any reccomendations on places that are interesting or fun or are better than other places to gamble? Any tips on what to do when I lose all my money in the first two hours and have 46 more hours to kill?
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I recommend the Sapphire Gentleman's Club. It makes the Bada-Bing look like...well, the Bada-Bing.
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I've been twice. Once to get married.
Don't get the shuttlebus from the airport if there are two or more of you, it'll be cheaper to go by cab and you won't have to visit every hotel on the strip before getting to the one you are staying at. I made that mistake twice.
The first time I went I was determined not to gamble but ended up putting a few dollars in the slots here and there as I wandered around, at the end of my stay I'd spent maybe 70 or 80 bucks that way. The second time I avoided the slots and sat at the tables playing 21. I met a few funny people, drank for free and broke even or rather I won enough to cover what Megan lost. It was a much more enjoyable experience.
The Peppermill is well worth a visit. The website doesn't have any pictures but it has a real old school vibe.
http://www.peppermilllasvegas.com/lounge/
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You could go see Prince?
http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/nevada/las-vegas/prince-las-vegas.php
I've never been to Vegas, but that seems like it would be fun...
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Thanks for the replies! Yeah, I would love to check out Prince, actually. I hear that's like a zillion dollars though. You really have to make it "Prince Day" or something. I think you have some good tips there, Jason. I gotta brush up and sort of re-learn a few card games before Friday. Luckily I don't really have the gambling gene, I more or less have the "instead of putting money into this card game I could just go to a bar and pay for the booze directly" gene. Some call it alcoholism. But I do like to see Paul Rudd and that chick from Mad TV tear it up on Celebrity Poker Challenge now and again.
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there's a second city theater in vegas. also, don't lose all your money gambling or on booze cuz there are AWESOME restaurants there. go to the delmonico at the venitian.
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I wanted to see Prince months ago at my local Hard Rock Indian Loves Indians Resort and Casino, but the cheapest tickets were $300. No dice. I think I'll put the money I did not spend on that concert toward a laptop or something.
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ou ou, i LOVE VEGAS!!!!!!
stop in at the luxor and take the isoscelator (i coined that term (really its an inclinator)) its like an elevator but it goes on an angle. you can't really tell that you're going on an angle, but you know and that makes it worth while.
Have a great time!
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John H,
I used to think San Francisco was America's greatest tourist city, followed by Boston. But it's Vegas, baby.
http://www.lasvegasfanclub.com/index.html
Quick recommendation: Vegas has some intense casino-themed rides and roller coasters, if you like that sort of thing. Speed: the Ride at the Sahara (a great, filthy, old-style casino at the unfashionable end of the strip) kicks you all the way up to top speed (70 mph) at the very beginning of the ride. Hold onto your fillings.
There's a 4G ride on top of the tower at the Stratosphere nearby. The Manhattan Express coaster at New York, New York is a pretty standard ride but fun.
You should also go downtown to check out old Vegas. You can still get a $4.99 prime rib special at the Golden Gate, which is not nearly as bad as it should be. Don't get the shrimp cocktail, though - the shrimp are tiny.
Spend some time just walking around the city - it looks like a Neon Monster, a Kitsch Monster, and an Incongruous Architecture Monster had a fight and everybody won.
My favorite casino is the Mandalay Bay, although just to walk around in. If you're rich, the Wynn is great. If not, you can have a moderately expensive lunch at the clubhouse and just look out at people cheating on the old Desert Inn golf course.
I hit 15 casinos in one day, but I had to take the monorail and move pretty fast. Have a great trip!
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I stayed in downtown (Old Vegas), which I liked more, but I like to gamble. I did enjoy just walking the strip, stopping in the odd casino, though. There are a few freebies you probably know about (the show at Treasure Island, the fountains at the Bellagio). One thing I kindof would've loved to get to, but didn't, is http://www.liberace.org.
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Please resist the urge to say the phrase "Vegas, baby!" or call anything or anyone "so money." If any of your friends (or even people you do not know very well or at all, but are tagging along with the bachelor in question) use this phrase, stab them in the gut with a corkscrew. They will thank you later.
I think this is sound advice.
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John H. - I think it's ok to whisper "Vegas, baby" to yourself as you get off the plane. But I'd agree not to say it in public.
Kenkwan is right about gambling downtown - everything is much cheaper. You're probably not going to sit next to Ben Affleck in Binion's, but your money will last you longer (and you won't have to sit next to Ben Affleck).
I happened to see the Bellagio lightshow from the "Eiffel Tower" at the Paris casino. Very impressive - if you can time your visit right, I'd recommend that. Do not go to Aladdin/Planet Hollywood. It sucks. Bally's and Harrah's are not very interesting either.
Treasure Island is a good mid-price place to stay. The interesting casinos to walk in (my opinion, of course) go like this, from one end to the other: Mandalay Bay - good, Luxor - interesting but cheesy, Excalibur - sucks, New York, New York - interesting, MGM Grand - huge and pretty cool, Tropicana/Harrah's/Imperial Palace/Bally's - boring, Bellegio and Venetian are very impressive feats of commercialism, Mirage is all about Seigfried and Roy. I already mentioned the Wynn, Sahara and Stratosphere.
Take the monorail if you want to go up and down the strip a lot. A day pass will get you all over the place. You'll need to take a cab downtown.
There's a pretty big shark exhibit waaaay out at the end of the Mandalay Bay shopping center - all the big casinos have shopping centers and restaurants now.
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I hated the strip around Circus Circus, Westward Ho, down to the Mirage. If you want to go to the Statosphere, just take a cab. The Strip between Circus Circus and the Starosphere is S K A R Y!
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All I know is a friend of mine won a Mustang playing the slots in Las Vegas.
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Check out the IMAX theatre at the Branden Theatres at the Palms. They were playing the IMAX version of 300 when I was there last month.
And I second the advisory to avoid the part of the strip north of Circus Circus. I don't find it particularly scary (although many people say not to wander in that area at night)), it's just that there's nothing much to see or do there.
But I really like Slots-A-Fun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slots-A-Fun_Casino) for some reason...it's right next to the Circus Circus hellhole, and right across the street from the Peppermill.
You could also shoot full-automatic machine guns at the Gun Store on E. Tropicana. I'd advise you NOT to go there if your flight out of Vegas is the next day, however. Unless you enjoy the exhaustive TSA anal-probe that you will invariably recieve if you show up to the security checkpoint with gunpowder residue embedded in your underwear.
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The slot machines downtown (esp. at the California and the Fremont) seem to be rigged in favor of 80 year old retirees from Hawaii, for some strange reason. It annoys the fuck out of me, because I deserve that money more than they do.
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Oh man, how could I have forgotten about The Double Down Saloon (http://www.doubledownsaloon.com/)????
Like The Voice of Harold would say...A must.
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You could also shoot full-automatic machine guns at the Gun Store on E. Tropicana. I'd advise you NOT to go there if your flight out of Vegas is the next day, however. Unless you enjoy the exhaustive TSA anal-probe that you will invariably recieve if you show up to the security checkpoint with gunpowder residue embedded in your underwear.
Hmmm... might have to pass on that whole scene. I used to work at an IMAX theater in Baltimore so I'm not the biggest fan of the megascreen, but if they play 300 on it, well that's a different story. I just had to watch The Mysteries of Egypt with Omar Sharif 8 times a day. Circus Circus sounds like a supposedly fun place where people die a lot. Like Action Park!
I'm psyched people. I want to win a Mustang! I want to go to the Peppermill! I want to go on a rolly coaster! I'm gonna print this whole thread out and bother my buddies with it. "Screw this strip club, what about the isoscelator dude?!?" Awesome.
--Also, wikipedia has given me insight as to why someone might really like Slots-A-Fun:
"The casino is well known for its food specials, such as a half-pound hot dog for 99 cents, and beer for $1.25 a bottle."
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Stay away from the cheap hot dogs! No good will come of it.
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I have to say the Double Down was a disappointment to me. They did have The Headcoats on the jukebox which would have been a plus if it had worked. Also Circus Circus was tripe except for the revolving bar which i understand is no longer there.
I really think it's worth staying up the nice end of the strip with maybe one trip down to Fremont to watch the lights and witness where the dregs of humanity go on vacation.
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Circus Circus sounds like a supposedly fun place where people die a lot. Like Action Park!
Except in the case of Circus Circus, people willingly kill themselves.
It really is as bad as everyone says it is. I only stayed there because it's mega-cheap, and within walking distance of the convention center. I guess if you don't partake in any of the amenities there (they have what has to be the worst, most inedible buffet spread in the universe), and stay in the newer tower rooms, then it's not so bad.
As far as the appeal of Slots-A-Fun...well, that's pretty much it, I guess. Hot dogs and cheap beer are two of my guilty pleasures. But also, it just seemed to me that people were having a lot more fun there than in a regular casino...i don't quite understand why, but I liked it. Kinda like that secret, unpretentious hole-in-the-wall bar in your town that you go just to hang out and relax.
Speaking of cheap beer...that's the single best reason to gamble Downtown instead of the strip. At least in the aforementioned California, the comps are very frequent, even if you're playing the nickel slots. You can easily get hammered for free (minus the customary $1/per drink tip) within an hour, unlike the larger casinos on the strip, where it will literally take 30 minutes to get a free beer if you're not playing one of the tables.
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I stayed there when I was 21. It's nasty, but it is cheap.
I've also stayed at:
Luxor - tower is better than pyramid (the rooms are cut off by the angle). The buffet is ok but the cafe is some of the worst food I have ever eaten.
Caesar's Palace - Expensive (I stayed there for work). It's quite nice.
Flamingo - Good value, especially if you get their specials.
TI (used to be Treasure Island) - A real surprise. Really nice rooms for the money, and pretty well located if you want to go up and down the strip. They have a good Mexican restaurant called Isla.
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So I never told you guys about how my trip went. I guess now is as good a time as ever. Actually, now is way worse than if I told you right after it happened, and within a month of anyone paying any attention, but I'll do it anyway, just for posterity.
I remember getting out of the plane and immediately feeling really weird. The airport in Vegas is like an airport-themed Casino. There were people at a bar with tubes stuck up their noses and I thought "Wow, maybe there's an emphezema convention in town or something", but then upon closer inspection it was an oxygen bar where people inhale different flavored oxygen. It's like a Spaceballs gag made real. Already I was thinking "This is even weirder than Weirdowood!"
I met my buddies at the sports bar at Bally's. It was like 5 in the afternoon by then, so it was time to start taking shots of tequila. All these guys are people I went to high school with in Parsippany, NJ. They're all "straights" or "squares" or what have you, but we're all pushing at the door of 30 now, so people have at least mellowed out (and bulked up, I guess...). I used to always get in fights with these guys because they would make fun of me for writing ideas down at bars, or having a unique point of view, stuff like that, but now we're all old and don't care what each other think. Anyway, I got drunk in short order so I don't really remember where we had dinner, except that it involved a cab ride and walking through a gigantic casino. It was a really nice Italian restaurant and, rare amongst anything in Vegas, you couldn't smoke in the restaurant! Dinner was 80 bucks each, so there went like half my gambling money, but I don't even really like gambling or know how to do it, so it didn't really matter. I remember having some boozey argument with my friend's little sister's fiancee about Red Hot Chili Peppers that went on for like 40 minutes. My argument was basically this: They are terrible and their last 10 years of singles have been rehashes or recombinations of "Under The Bridge" "Give It Away" and "Soul To Squeeze". His argument was "I like their new stuff". Somehow I think he won! I blame it on tequila.
Then we went to New York New York. It was Friday night so the place was packed. Half of our party sat down to play blackjack, but there wasn't enough room at the table for all of us, so the rest of us just drifted around the casino, playing video poker, slot machines, etc. I eventually decided to check out this cover band that was playing above a bar. They were basically doing classic rock standards. Magic Carpet Ride, a Who medley, AC/DC,--you know, the standards. They even broke out a "hot woman" to do "White Rabbit". People were very fucking excited. I realized that the crowd in this bar was made up mostly of people who probably never see a band in a venue smaller than The Staples Center or whatever, and are not used to the live band being within a half mile of them. When they played "TNT" some dude was singing along and doing that "I'm pointing at you 'cause you rock!" thing to the singer, and the singer pointed back, which made this dude very excited! So excited he actually turned around and told his date about it. This same guy came up to me a little later and yelled "Vegas Baby!" and gave me a high five. As much of an ass as he was, there's a place in my heart for that guy.
Okay, now comes the Adult Section of the trip... we of course had to go to a strip club, as it was a bachelor party. I can't remember the name of this place anymore, but it was definitely not "Treasures" or "The Treasure Chest" or whatever which is where some of the dudes wanted to go. Whatever the place was called, it wasn't so good. We got there very late (1 am I think) and the modus operandi of this place was that there wasn't a whole lot of actual stripping taking place. Most of the time there was no one onstage, but if you looked around the room, there were like 76 people getting lap dances. And apparently this was a place where you can touch the women, to a certain degree. To which I say, look, I'm here to indulge in voyeurism, not groping! Any strip club worth its salt will have your face beaten in for touching a girl. Not this place... Anyway, if you want to not get bored to Hell at this place, you apparently needed to invest 25 bucks in a lap dance, which is something I always said I wouldn't do, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, unless you post it all on the internet later like an idiot... but another aspect of the modus operandi is that if you get a 25 dollar lap dance all the woman does half the time is promote the $100 V.I.P. room lap dance which lasts 3 songs instead of one song. Wait, whuuuuuut? That's ridiculous. Oh, until I have two more beers, and then it's a fine idea. Apparently if you get the 100 dollar lap dance, the stripper then asks if you want another 100 dollar lap dance and says "It'll be worth it". Which is categorically untrue. Then they ask for a tip in addition to the 100 bucks.
We took the strip club's shuttle van back to the hotel. It had a big video screen in it. The driver was like "You guys wanna watch a porno?"
Unanimous: "NO."
When we pulled up to the hotel four or five African American babes in cocktail dresses were arguing with hotel security.
Driver: "Those are hookers getting kicked out of the hotel. If you guys are interested."
Us: "Uh, okay. Thanks."
One member of our party seemed to actually take this seriously into consideration, reasoning thusly: "I never banged a black chick."
My argument was this: "Technically, I'm sure you could sleep with a black woman if you really wanted to, found the right one, etc. If this is something you want, you can achieve it for free, and in a safe and reasonable manner, but right now, you have a girlfriend and I always advise against sleeping with prostitutes, regardless of their race, creed, or color." Or something like that. He heard me but he didn't really hear me. But luckily he didn't sleep with any prostitutes.
It was like 4 or 5am by now and because we wandered over to Paris, an there was a fake morning-light dome above us, it seemed like a good idea to get some more beers and continue to be awake, despite our bodies wanting to collapse. Eventually it became 7am and I tried to eat breakfast with the dudes and nearly passed out in my French Toast. I went to sleep finally. The groom-to-be stayed up until 1pm the next day, then slept until around 7pm and was a miserable basket case the rest of the night. In fact, the entire second day was a hungover haze of boredom and sleeze. except for the 2 hours I spent at the Bally's pool, which was like literally being in a Bud Lite commercial. Someone apparently called me Borat (I'm assuming because of the dark chest hair and paleness?) but I didn't hear them. My friend did and made quasi-friends with them. I didn't know what was going on while he was chatting with them, then he said "You should have come over! This girl was trying to talk to you. She called you 'Borat'!" To which I did a Scharpling-patented "What? How dare you!" And my friend was like "Oh, they didn't mean it to be mean." I was confused as to how else they would mean it. Borat is not a sex symbol.
Oh, we also went to The Hard Rock which blows and is supposed to be "hip" and it is my conviction that "hip" places in Vegas are the scariest and lamest because people trying to be hip in Vegas are missing the whole point of Vegas if you ask me. Someone tried to get in a fight with us for no reason whatsoever on our approach to the hotel, and I saw someone try to pick up a group of women by yelling "Hey! Hey YOU!" at them, and it almost worked! At some point, a cab driver we had told us how he saw Carrot Top in the parking lot of The Luxor and he said "That guy is FUCKED UP. He's got a fucked up face!" Unfortunately, I never went inside the Luxor, but to me it was the coolest-looking place there. Someday... I did go to Madagascar or whatever the place next door to it is called. It's got some South American theme or something. There were a lot of totally blinged-out West Coast guido types walking around and it was funny to see them stride by all these retired ladies where their slot-machine cards like they were the shit.
Biggest Disappointment: No more coins coming out of slot machines. Just tickets and a digital coin sound. Lame!
Fashion: I got really, really burnt out on cleavage and women generally looking like sluts. 4 out of 5 women in the city felt the need to look their personal trampiest. It was too much for me. And I live in L.A. By the end of the trip I was like "Man, I wanna see some chicks in turtlenecks. Where are the Amish ladies at??"
There was also a tonnage of dudes wearing button-down vertical striped shirts with no undershirts--and khakis. It's the VegasBaby! uniform.
Okay, I think I said everything I can say. I didn't see many of the sites, but maybe next time. It was a bazillion degrees out. There was too much cigarette smoke, I remember that. Oh yeah, and I ate at Ellis Island, which is sleazy but fun. I wanted to sing karaoke there, but my compatriots weren't into it.
I had a lot of fun and i'm glad no one got hurt or got a disease or got beaten by a bouncer or anything. I'm also glad that no one sleazed out and got strippers to come to the Hotel Room and do ungodly things to each other. Hours before my flight out, I had to call my bank because they froze my account. It's good to know that if you take 140 bucks out of your checking account from a strip-club ATM in Las Vegas, your bank gets suspicious. But I had to assure them, "That was me allright!" I got burnt out on the city in only 48 hours, but I want to go back again for some reason. And the only gambling I did was video poker!
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I think 2-4 days is probably the perfect amount of time in Vegas, unless you have pre-planned outside of Vegas activities planned. When I went, I planned my trip around the Vegoose festival, thinking that if I could split my time between the festival, and gambling. The closest I got however, was when I taught every jam kid at my Blackjack table how to play, and helped each one win some amount of money.
It was four am, and I was ready to go to sleep, but through a couple drinks and prodding from my new pals, was coaxed into staying until nine am. Figuring I should eat something before I went to bed, I hit up the breakfast buffet at Fitzgerald's (not recommended). I apperently left way too much as a tip, because the waitress chased my out of the casino, and handed me sixty bucks!
I can't wait to go back!
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I've only been once it was for quarterback camp. So unless you want to learn how to throw the perfect spiral? I'm sorry.