Bellagio Slot Tournament January 22nd to the 25th, 2010

Day time view from our room:




It was a dark and stormy night, actually all week had been bad storms and we were hoping it would clear a bit before our Southwest jet left late Friday night. While it was still raining and windy enough to delay our flight out of San Jose 30 minutes it was better then my girlfriend's flight out of San Francisco that was delayed for 90 minutes or so.

Since we had the delay we grabbed a snack of chicken strips and fries at the Brit lounge at the airport. 

Flight was non-eventful into Las Vegas and we quickly picked up our luggage. Got long hauled to Bellagio to the tune of $25.00 because cab driver insisted the normal route had a accident and the road was closed. Later we found out that the road was not closed.

Check in at around 11pm was quick, got our line passes and room 28004 near the elevators with a great fountain view, thanks to Beverly our host.

Night time view:

http://bestc.am/Ln0Uo

Lucky Thanksgiving 2009 at Palazzo & THEHotel at Mandalay Bay

Randy and I flew out of San Jose on Southwest at 9:00pm on Monday the 23rd of November. Flight was smooth and arrived in Vegas around 10:15pm. 

When we caught our cab to the Palazzo I said no tunnel since we have gotten tunneled twice this year and once was to Mandalay Bay! Cabbie turns around and says what tunnel is that? I replied are you new and he said no, so I replied,  then you know what tunnel. I gave him the directions I wanted him to take and of course he used them mumbling about waiting 2 hours for a fare at the airport like that gives them the right to long haul us? Once at the Palazzo, avoiding the one lane traffic that was the strip this trip due to them catering to City Center's needs before it opens in December, we made our driver happy with a generous tip and he cheered up at the loss of his wild tunnel ride. 

Check in went smoothly and we had a strip view from our suite of Treasure Island. 

 

After going down to get our free play and point play that we earned on previous trip we made our way to Wolf Run only to find that our free play wouldn't download to the machine. After trying it on 3 other slots we went back to the player's club where they told us they had newer cards now and that's what we needed so they issued us new cards. Hmmm, new cards since October and why didn't they notice the old cards when we were at the desk 15 minutes ago? 

Back to Wolf Run where we hit our first win of the night of $180.00. http://bestc.am/HfnW 

Thinking that Wolf Run might be lucky again for us this trip, we went to the slot that has the 4 screens. We had some small wins on it and later in the trip hit a bonus where the screen thankfully goes full size at that point, but nothing substantial and we discovered we personally prefer single screen slots. 

 

Celebrating Husband's birthday at Palazzo and THEHotel

First Evening, October 15th: 

Our trip starts out during the evening of the 15th at San Jose Airport flying Southwest. I like the night flights out ofSan Jose airport on Southwest as so far they are never crowded. Flight was smooth, we had seats in the front and were quickly off the flight.

Once off the plane, I made a stop at the ladies room and then we were on the tram to baggage claim when I recalled I left my library book which had been too large to fit in my handbag in the ladies room. Asking Randy to go get our luggage I take the tram back, book is still there and I finally make it to baggage area to find him waiting with luggage. As those who followed me on Twitter during this trip know, this would be just the start of me misplacing items.

We take a cab to Palazzo and while the driver didn't take the tunnel he did manage to long haul us which we decided to ignore and not set the trip off on a bad note. Both Randy and I are starting to get a bit cranky due to missing dinner, but check in goes smoothly, and we are on the 38th floor with a few of Treasure Island and the section of the strip you can see from Palazzo.

We unpacked quickly and since we missed dinner we decide to eat at Palazzo's, Grand Lux restaurant since it's almost 11pm at this time and most restaurants are closed. We're seated in the bar area and Randy orders the egg sandwich, along with 2 spicy's Mary's and I get the Manhattan salad with shrimp and chicken and a glass of Riesling. We have a tradition each trip of usually going to Olives if not for dinner at least to have a drink at their bar for the spicy Mary type drink they have with the olives stuffed with hot peppers. R having the Grand Lux version of the drink for the first time said it was just as good as the one we had been enjoying at Olives and for half the price. R's egg sandwich was huge and served with hash browns, and my salad was also large and very fresh tasting with a light vinaigrette dressing.

After dinner it was off to the slots and our favorite wolf run machines, where we had a run of luck.

Photos of the meal in addition to slot wins taken with my Iphone are at:

http://twitter.com/imevoni

Note: You do have to click on the links on my page to reach the photos taken with my Iphone. The photos I will post within this TR were taken with our digital camera. 

After our meal we were ready to hit the slots and hopefully have our first win of the night. We quickly make our way to the player's club at Palazzo and have them put Randy's free play on his card. Walking away from the player's club desk we spot the new Star Wars machine and take a seat. Of course the free play doesn't work in this machine, but we're still excited about a new Star Wars slot. There are a couple themes with these machines but we decide we like the graphics on Duel On Mustafar the best so we start playing it and quickly hit the 5 symbols needed for entries into their bonus round. If you are playing max credits like we were which I think was $3, you win 4 entries. Unlike other slots with timers for bonuses (like Ebay) when the 60 second timer pops up for the new Star Wars slots it means bonus in exactly 60 seconds. If you don't have any entries, then you can play as quickly as you can to try to get some, or you might want to pause and wait for the next bonus round to come up. Bonuses seem to come up on a regular basis and I thought more frequently then the other community games like Monopoly and Ebay. When it enters the bonus round you are in a race with the other player's who have entries and the more entries of course the better chance of winning the race.

This first race there was only one other player with us at a bank of 8 machines and he only had 3 entries and we had 12 at the time the bonus hit, so we won the race and went on to the next part of the bonus round and the other player just got the minimal amount you get for the race. The next part of the bonus round is selecting targeting graphics on the screen to hopefully hit the fighters and go on to the next round. Unfortunately while we played this at a couple casinos during our trip, we never got past the 3rd bonus so I believe our highest win on any of the bonus games for max credits was about $79.00.

TIP: If no one else is playing the new Star Wars community slots with you, or if someone is but doesn't have any entries you automatically win the race. When we understood how that worked, we played Star Wars late at night when no one else was on it.  

After Star Wars we search out our favorite Wolf Run Slant top and voila the free play works in it. We're playing $2 a push and out of the free play when we hit for $271.25. There's a photo on twitter of that win. 

We decide to cash out of Wolf Run and take a walk over to the Venetian to play WOZ as the ones at Palazzo are full. Of course the WOZ at Venetian are full too, but just when we are going to walk away someone leaves and one of us quickly sits down and pops in our ticket from the Wolf Run win. We're holding our own, though no bonus rounds when we hear the beautiful sound of Glinda arriving. Glinda turns 4 columns wild, our first time for 4! We hold our breath hoping for wilds and praying the progressive and bonus symbols don't get in the way, but one of them does and the others aren't high paying symbols so it pays $255.00 on a max bet. Not to be greedy or anything but we've hit 3 wilds before on trips and gotten lucky with a few where the pay offs have been usually over $500, up to about $1000, so with the 4 wilds we were a bit disappointed on that win, but still a lovely sight to view.