Day 9–Viva Las Priceline

	Miles	MPG	Avg. Speed
Today
Trip

Food (today/budget)	Hotel (today/budget)	Trip Savings
$118 / $119	$86 / $150	AAA – $26 PriceLine – $325 Real $$ – $102

Hoover Dam Parking	$7
Ka	$195

The Vegas hotel question has bothered me, because I want to stay someplace really, really nice, but I don’t want to spend any money. My budget for Vegas is $150 a night for the hotel, which would get a nice hotel during the week, but we’re arriving on a Saturday, which has higher rates. Pushing arrival to Sunday would muck up the schedule.

For Vegas, I want to stay in the Priceline Zone 9:

This is mostly for bidding purposes, but also because it’s a nicely central part of the Strip. For bidding, it’s one of only three zones that have 5-star hotels:

Strip North, Strip Vicinity North, and Strip Vicinity South are the only ones that have 5-star properties. Summerlin has no 5-stars, but it has resorts and Priceline will sometimes book you into a resort in place of a 5-star. I don’t want that.

Until recently, that zone also had only one 5-star on Priceline: Bellagio. That’s where I’d like to stay, and what I based my budget on ($149 / night, Sunday – Thursday). But there’s a new player there, the Vdara.

Vdara is a non-casino hotel behind Bellagio and run by MGM-Grand. It’s listed as a 5-star, but their rates are odd. On their website, the room rates are outrageous ($400 or more a night), but they come up as $169 on Priceline.

So I chose that zone and bid $70 a night. I also had a Priceline “reward” of $30, which they apply over three nights – so the total was $80, but only $70 of it would be paid by me. That bid was rejected.

So I started adding the zones that have no 5-star properties one by one and raising my bid $2 or $3 each time. At $86 ($96 with the Priceline reward), I got Vdara for the three nights.

Which means:


$80 / Econolodge	$86 / Vdara

Market forces at work.

Once again I was up at six. Last night I went out for a little while and got a burger and listened to some of the live music around Williams. Aryn was worn out from the hike and already asleep when I got back. She was up by 7:00 again, though, so we were on the road by 8:00 after danish and orange juice as the hotel’s free breakfast (Aryn had leftover pie).

On the way, we stopped at the Hoover Dam and a couple scenic overlooks – one overlooking the desert and one Lake Mead.

At the Dam, we parked and went to the visitor center to get Aryn’s National Parks Passport stamped (it’s not a park, but they have a stamp). After $7 for parking, they then want $8 per person to enter the visitor center, so we skipped that. I wouldn’t mind taking a tour and seeing the power rooms, but it was pretty hot (100+ degrees) and crowded.

At the Lake Mead overlook, we found a group of guys with a Ferrari, a Maserati, and a Lamborghini. All Nevada plates, so I’m assuming they flew into Vegas and rented them.

Aryn spotted this in front of an antique store, so we had to stop. $700 for a giant, hollow Panda. Ha!

We got to Vegas and onto Las Vegas Boulevard North of Stratosphere and I drove to Luxor before turning around to go to the hotel near Bellagio – so we got to see the whole thing, from strip clubs and marriage chapels to the “family” mega-hotels, all from the air conditioned car. 109-degrees outside, which is damn hot even if it is dry.

The entry to Vdara is like a freeway interchange. It goes up from the road, then loops to the left for Aria and then back around for the Vdara entrance. Very confusing. Only valet parking, no self parking, but it’s complimentary – that’s practically unheard of, so it must be because they don’t have the space to put a self-park lot.

I don’t think Aryn had a clue about the type of hotel we were going to stay in, so it came as a surprise.

So we give the car to the valet, the doorman unloads the luggage onto a cart and gives me the claim ticket. When he told us to just call down after we’d checked in and the bellman would bring it up, that might have been a clue to Aryn that this wasn’t an Econolodge.

I open the door to the room and we walk into the dining/kitchen area, complete with a microwave and two-burner cooktop (as well as a computerized mini-bar that charges you as soon as you take something out).

Then into the sitting room.

The sleeping area, complete with individual reading lamps, and finally the bathroom.

Aryn: “They have a phone by the freakin’ toilet!”

This is the same bathroom that Aryn later locked herself into – sadly I didn’t get the video camera running until the very last try when she managed to get out.

We’re on the 38th floor, overlooking the back of the Strip hotels. Rio and Palms to the left, Bellagio’s pools directly below us, and a slightly obstructed view of Paris and the Bellagio fountains to the right.

$86. Vegas, baby!

So after Aryn ~~figured out how to unlock a door~~ and I got changed, we headed out to see some of the hotels. Vdara has a walkway to Bellagio, so we headed there through Bellagio’s shops and the world’s largest chocolate fountain.

The Bellagio conservatory.

And the Bellagio lobby.

And finally out onto the Strip.

First we went over to Paris and walked through the casino and shops, then through the shopping area that connects Paris to Bally’s. Once through Bally’s, I asked Aryn if she wanted to cross the street to see Ceaser’s or head down to Venetian. She said both, so I decided to do Venetian first.

On the corner across from Bally’s where we crossed is a Tix4Tonight outlet. I stopped and took a quick look at their monitor – the plan was to see Ka and one other show on Sunday and Monday nights, leaving tonight free. We’d seen a bus ad for Phantom at the Venetian, so I asked if they’d have any for tonight and the guy said yes, so we got in line.

Then we started talking to one of the other employees working the line – they have people moving up and down the line pitching other shows and discounts. I asked about Ka tickets for tomorrow and found out that Ka is dark Sunday and Monday.

So that changed the plans and we had to get Ka tickets for tonight. The Tix4Tonight girl also gave us some good seating advice, recommending tier 3 seats, the lowest price, for this show, because so much happens in the air above the stage. We got tickets for the 9:30 show and headed back to Paris – since we were going to a show and hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, it was time to eat.

We got in a very short line for the Paris buffet about 5:00 and bought our Buffet of Buffets tickets – 24-hours of gluttony at the buffets in six different hotels.

I have had bad buffets before. I have had bad buffets in Vegas – specifically Ceaser’s, which proves that unlimited cafeteria food is still cafeteria food, and sent me to the ER once. Paris does not have a bad buffet – it may, in fact, have the best buffet I’ve ever seen.

That would be, counter-clockwise from the knifetip: grilled lamb, grilled pork loin with apples, roast beef, the best sweet potatoes I’ve ever tasted, caramelized pearl onions, green beans and roasted asparagus, sweet roasted root vegetables, and a dinner roll that saw very little action and was mostly left on the plate.

Not on the plate: the coq-au-vin, the duck a l’orange, the mussels and crab legs and shrimps … oh, my.

The sweet potatoes were quartered with the skin on and roasted – the insides were perfectly done and the skin had soaked up the syrup to become chewy and caramel-like.

For desert, Aryn got a berry crepe with Nutella and I got a brandy-soaked apple crepe with caramel.

The apples were diced and cooked perfectly so that they were firm, but had still absorbed the brandy syrup. Then I went back and got half a wine-poached pear with vanilla sauce and some cherries jubilee.

Then we sadly walked around and said goodbye to the other deserts we didn’t have the room for: the crème brulee, the crème caramel, the brownies, cookies, cakes, bread puddings and cobblers. We will miss you, little crème brulee cups.

It might be worth the drive just for the Paris buffet …

We waddled back to the room for Aryn to get a jacket in case the Ka theatre was cold and then caught a cab to the MGM Grand. It’s $3.30 to drop the meter here now. We got our seats assigned – dead center of the fourth row in the upper tier – and wandered around the MGM until show time.

Aryn made a new friend who likes her shoes and jacket.

For the show itself … I have no words. Somewhere in the world, there’s a guy who said: “I want to build a stage that moves up and down on a hydraulic lift. And I want it to spin around in circles. Then I want it to tilt so that it’s vertical to the audience. Oh, and it should spin when it’s vertical too … and tilt … yeah, spin and tilt.”

Then that guy got somebody to give him the money to build it and found people crazy enough to do things on a floating stage over a twenty foot drop that don’t, frankly, seem possible.

That guy’s a freakin’ genius.

Between Ka and the Paris buffet, it’s worth the drive right there.

After the show we walked back along the strip to see something of Vegas at night.