Las Vegas on a Grand???

I'm going to Las Vegas for the first time ever in late July. I haven't traveled since before 9/11 and may have forgotten some of the travel nice to knows. I am hoping to actually pay for this trip, since I have been saving instead of putting on my cc and revolve it for the next 5 years. I was thinking of taking about $1000 in cash and travelers checks, I'll be there for about 7 nights and 8 days. Is this achieveable? I'll be staying at the LV Hilton with a convention rate.

Thanks! :o

ah vegas.. my favorite place to go... you'll be cutting it very close..($1000 will usually last me only a weekend, and i have to gamble in moderation too) A big chunk of the money will go to entertainment and food, you might have to eat on the cheap at least once a day...(try In and Out burger, get the double double, animal style, but splurge on the bellagio buffet at least once) Not sure how old you are, but the younger you are, the more expensive its gonna be... i.e. the drinks, cover for clubs, shows, etc will add up fast =P

Just wondering if you were able to pull it off, mmpaul2? How was the trip?

i think he ended up marrying a dancer, never to be heard from again..

Hey, thanks for asking.. :D Actually, I took about $1500 and came back with $300 :eek: ..so I didn't feel too bad :rolleyes:

The heat was just awful :( But other than that It was just great :)

Getting ready to go Vegas tomorrow. We are already a grand in (2 airline tickets, 4 nights) and I assume we will go through another grand between food, gambling, taxi and a wedding gift (but will prepare to spend more). I have never left that town upset (5th visit).

If you are on a budget or like to cut corners, you can go very cheap ($99 flights, $29/night rooms).

Weather reports indicate temperatures in the 110s!!!! I guess we will do our walking at night and drink plenty of water.

I think the food costs are the worst part. That is the only place I ate a 70 dollar breakfast in my life. Hopefully it will cool off some for your trip!!

How was your trip Dingo!? Did you hit it big and no longer have to work, just simply manage your windfall? :)

My wife & I went last month and had a great time. I can see why it is the fastest growing city in the US - what a city. My wife got an airfare/hotel deal which ran us just over a grand for 4 nights at Flamingo (not bad since we flew out there from the east coast). The Flamingo was a nice place, great pools/gardens, recently renovated and new rooms, and it was very convenient - right in the center of the strip, across the street is Belagio & Ceasars. We took a $1,000 each and after losing almost all of it in the first 3 days, we hit some big payouts on the last night and came back with about half of it... but the fun was well worth the money spent (and it wasn't like we were gambling with our mortgage payment).

For anyone else thinking of going to LV, I would recommend it - I really enjoyed it. We didn't get scalped on food prices that Jim mentioned. The hotel breakfast was higher priced than 'normal', but I used my comp card which knocked off about $10. Of course, room service was expensive but sometimes you just gotta say, "What the hell, I'm on vacation!" And we splurged one night at Trevi's (inside Ceasars) spending about $110 on dinner, but that included a bottle of wine, the food was absolutely delicious, and the ambiance had us thinking we were sitting somewhere in Italy (Ceasars is definately a must-see). On two other occasions we had steak dinners on the cheap - one night we were "downtown" at the original strip (Fremont area) and had a steak dinner for $9.99 at Fitzgerald's that was really good (down home style dinner), and another time while we were out cruising around off the strip we saw a sign at a place called Terribles advertising a steak dinner for $6.99, so we tried it and it too was delicious. It was pretty weird getting a check for dinner for two that was under $20! I missed out on the $9.99 steak & lobster dinners that I saw advertised.

And I'll say this about that Las Vegas heat... I will take their 110 degree dry desert heat over this greasy, slimy, sticky 90 degree/90 percent humidity on the east coast any day! Yea, it was hot, but there always seemed to be a breeze blowing and you don't even sweat (and I sweat at the mere thought of heat or exercise/movement). And if the heat gets unbearable, you just duck into another casino. One day I went out to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the Richard Petty Driving Experience, driving a race car around the 1.5 mile track at 135 MPH (what a BLAST!) and I was dreading the 110-120 heat, but it really wasn't too bad - and we were outside for about 2 hours in driver safety suits.

I will say that I was disappointed in the slot payouts. Other than seeing a woman win $4,000 on a machine near where my wife was playing, I never saw anyone hit it big. You see all these huge jackpots and progressive jackpots of $21,000, $260,000 or $1.1 M, etc, but I never saw them pay. I played BlackJack for the most part, but would occasionally get tempted with the slots and video poker machines (At the airport on the way home I won $60 playing video poker, so that was fun - it paid for lunch).

Anyway, hope you had a good trip Dingo - I sure did.
Rookie

We just got back yesterday and we had a great time. The heat was not a huge issue. We passed Howie Mandel walking down The Strip Monday night! Talk about surreal!

I agree, the slots were a lot worse than the last two times I went. I think we definitely helped pay the A/C bills for a few casinos!

The food prices on The Strip are much higher than I remembered. We had $75 in food comps and they did not help much. We used the express check-out leaving the Excalibur and saved a long wait in line, but I didn't realize until we left that we did not get to apply our $30 in comps!

Worst (or best) of all, I actually bought a timeshare in Vegas! I went into the sales pitch with no intention to buy, but I was surprised to discover that the price was about 1/3 of what I had been expecting, but with 3 times the timeshare (3 weeks a year versus one week) and the maintenance fee is 1/3 of our current timeshare (which we will promptly sell and apply towards this new one. Seeing that we will use it (we love to go on vacation), it is well worth it. $134 for 7 nights in a suite. You can't even get that rate in dives where you have to fight rats and roaches for the covers! Vegas hotel rooms do not even have coffee makers anymore (no thanks to Starbucks), so having a full kitchen will save even more money.

My wife actually sold me on it. She said, "How else will I allow you go to Vegas every year?" 'Nuff said.

I was amazed when I called the Excalibur about my unused comps. They said I had $175 in comps and applied them towards my room.

I was amazed when I called the Excalibur about my unused comps. They said I had $175 in comps and applied them towards my room.
Wow, Excalibur sure pays more in comps than we got through Flamingo (Harrahs)... much more. And, we had some of our best slot payouts while we were in the Excalibur casino... we may have to stay there next time.

I'm curious about the timeshare. We had some folks in the lobby & elevator areas handing out show tickets if you'd agree to go look at their new time share. I think it was some new Harrah's Golden Vacations Resort (can't remember the actual name). But I'm curious if that's who you bought your timeshare through. And did you say you got 3 weeks? Is that 3 consecutive weeks? And just curious as to what time of year?
Sounds kinda cool, and cheap.
Thanks for any feedback Dingo.
Rookie

Is there some sort of "timeshare for dummies" book out there? I'm totally confused -- comps, points, floating dates, etc. DH and I would like nothing more than to have an affordable place we can visit once a year, in a nice location, but when they start talking about "points", my eyes glaze over. And what good is a floating date? -- either you own your time, or you don't, right???? What can you possibly "own" if you don't own your own date? -- why should you have to duke it out for a date on something you own?

*Puck curls into a ball on the floor*

These two posts might explain a lot:

http://forums.kiplinger.com/showthread.php?p=30136#post30136

http://forums.kiplinger.com/showthread.php?p=30137#post30137

But here's the Cliff's notes:

1) You buy the timeshare (ownership of a room in a resort for a specific week of the year, costs $1,000-$60,000). It should come with a title that you can will to your heirs).

2) You pay an annual maintenance fee. This covers insurance, utilities, repairs, housekeeping, etc.

3) You pay a fee to a travel service. About $99/year, less if you buy multi-year packages. This allows you to banks weeks of your timeshare that you may not be able to use one year and go twice the next. It also allows you to exchange locations and weeks. Very nice.

4) You pay exchange fees. You only pay these if you want to change your time or location. Keeps your trips from getting too monotonous. Costs about $125-$200 per exchange.

Basically, you are paying a lump sum to stay at a resort for $300-$1000 per year, depending on how high your maintenance fees are and whether or not you exchange. These are resorts that typically go for $200-500/night, depending on the resort/week.

That's it in a nutshell.

Puck,

Rookie and I were talking about comp points (or points toward compensation) that most large casinos offer. They can be used towards food, your hotel bill, or even towards gambling. They are usually at a set rate earned per dollar gambled.


Dingo

Actually, timeshares do work on either a week system or a point system as well. I am not overly familiar with the point system firsthand.

I'm not sure about the floating dates you are refer to.

I'm curious about the timeshare. We had some folks in the lobby & elevator areas handing out show tickets if you'd agree to go look at their new time share. I think it was some new Harrah's Golden Vacations Resort (can't remember the actual name). But I'm curious if that's who you bought your timeshare through. And did you say you got 3 weeks? Is that 3 consecutive weeks? And just curious as to what time of year?
Sounds kinda cool, and cheap.
Thanks for any feedback Dingo.

Rookie

It is one week as the timeshare and two exchange weeks for life. Consecutive? It could be done, if a room were available in conjunction to my regularly-scheduled week (Memorial Day). I would have to pay an in-house exchange fee for the 2 exchange weeks ($134/week since they are Vacation Village resorts (a $25 discount each)).

So, I would pay my maintenance fee for my regular week ($295), $134 per exchange week, and my RCI annual fee (less than $80 for a multi-year package). So, About $642 for 21 nights at a 5-star resort 3 miles from the Strip. $30.61/night. More than the $25/night I said originally, but still very nice for a 2-bedroom suite with kitchenette, washer/dryer and amenities.

Thanks for the info Dingo.
Pretty interesting... makes me wonder if I should have taken those people up on their show tickets and timeshare tour.

Well, when you throw in the free breakfast and lunch for two, 2 tickets to "Mamma Mia," and $50 towards food on top of an almost guaranteed trip to Vegas every year, it was quite the deal.

The bad thing was, those people in the lobby stopped us about another 6 or 7 times over the next 4 days. It got old after awhile. "Are you at least 25? Will you be here tomorrow?" Sheesh!

Are salesperson was very nice and knowledgeable he even offered to drive us wherever we wanted to go after we bought the place. He hung out with us for about an hour or so after we closed to make sure we made it to Mandalay Bay to get our show tickets.

Seeing the rooms in the resort was a breath of fresh air. The last 3 times I have stayed in Vegas hotels, the room consisted of a bed, a television, and an alarm clock (although New York, New York had a room safe, which was convenient). Not even a coffee maker.

Just having the kitchen will easily save us $100s in a week, since Strip meal prices are no joke (our $75 in food comps did not pay for 3 meals for two people in any of the restaurants).

Vegas use to be possible for just $200 in the 90's. Now the prices disgust me. For that price I can go to the Caribbean.

I just got back from another Vegas trip Wednesday. For $20, the timeshare company gave us lunch, two $50 Visa gift cards and two tickets to "V, the Ultimate Variety Show." The room was packed, so I assume timeshares must be very profitable for them to be able to afford so many of these "giveaways." I saw those salespeople escorting folks around the resort every day of our stay.

Dingobiscuit - wow what a score. Congrats on that. Did they provide you airfare too or did you drive and they gave you free hotel? Either way, as much as I hate those timeshare presentations, that is worth it and I would definitely do it.

I don't understand how these timeshares continue to be hot sellers? I know they are but it seems like they should have gone out of popularity being that they don't usually make financial sense. But yes, like you said they must be selling because those presentations are packed.

I've never been lucky enough to get free airfare and the presentation was at my timeshare, so I didn't have to go anywhere.

We were able to skip checking by going to the VIP desk for timeshare owners and got a free bottle of wine the next day. Sometimes the little things can make a difference.

We have two timeshares and have 4 weeks each year. They are very cost-effective as long as you use them.

Well, the spousal unit and I have decided to splurge on ourselves again this summer and we're off to Vegas for a week... well, actually 6 days. Airfare from Virginia Beach cost us $400 each and we got a killer deal on 5 nights at the Flamingo for $250 (so we're down a grand from the git-go! ha!). This is the same place we stayed last year. We liked that it is right in the center of the strip, with Bally's, Caesars & Belagio right next door/across the street, a tropical park-like pool setting with a waterfall, and the rooms are fairly nice - we had a large room with a view of the strip last year, a safe in the room, and the standard iron, hair dryer, etc (but no coffee maker).

Hopefully we'll need a couple wheelbarrels to haul our winnings out of that town! But win or lose, either way it's a great get-a-way! :D

Well, the spousal unit and I have decided to splurge on ourselves again this summer and we're off to Vegas for a week... well, actually 6 days. Airfare from Virginia Beach cost us $400 each and we got a killer deal on 5 nights at the Flamingo for $250 (so we're down a grand from the git-go! ha!). This is the same place we stayed last year. We liked that it is right in the center of the strip, with Bally's, Caesars & Belagio right next door/across the street, a tropical park-like pool setting with a waterfall, and the rooms are fairly nice - we had a large room with a view of the strip last year, a safe in the room, and the standard iron, hair dryer, etc (but no coffee maker).

Hopefully we'll need a couple wheelbarrels to haul our winnings out of that town! But win or lose, either way it's a great get-a-way! :D

Yes, I always think about doing this one day and making to be the high rollers. But you know I am scared for the gamble because I think it will cost more than the cheap airfares and rooms.

But maybe you can control those things I hope.

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