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A word of warning to anybody who is looking for a Las Vegas package deal with Virgin Holidays – don’t get excited too soon when you drop on a bargain deal online. In fact, to be safe you should probably wait until you step onto the plane before you start counting down the days. T minus, err, zero.
I found out just what a gamble they can be by trying to book a holiday for my sister. She’d already booked the week off work and found a deal on Expedia for about £500 each, then called me to ask if it was a good deal or if could I do better.
Now that’s a challenge I can never refuse…
I thought I’d done exceptionally well when I found this deal with Virgin for two return flights and seven nights at the Luxor:
£546 would be a phenomenal price for just the flights, never mind with a week’s accomodation into the bargain too. At this price it was either an insane promotion or it was priced wrong. Either way, I was going to try to take advantage of it.
Laura found out that it was a mistake the same evening when she got a phone call telling her that the price on the web site was actually for just the accomodation and would she like to add on the flights now for another £500+ each. The answer was obviously "no".
I don’t completely believe their story. The breakdown above shows line items for air passenger duty (although only £20 each, when it costs £40 just to leave the country), a fuel surcharge and an economy seat discount. This all suggests that the flight is included in the total. It even let me log in to the Virgin Atlantic site and select seat reservations, where it also cruelly showed a countdown to a holiday that didn’t really exist:
But the chances of them honouring the published price are, as you might expect, zero. Option one was to cough up for an overpriced flight. Option two was to forget it ever happened.
Now, more than three weeks after cancelling, I’m still waiting for a refund. In fact it was only after I called the bank and they set up a three-way phone call to find out what was going on that we got any joy at all. What a shambles. Even then, they tried to deduct a £120 per person cancellation fee. I don’t think so…
OK, so I knew all along that something had probably gone wrong and that they might try to get out of this booking, but it did reveal a frightening feature of the Virgin Holidays online booking system.
Once you fill in all the information on their web site, including payment details, you still have to wait up to fourteen days for written confirmation of the booking. Until it arrives, you just don’t know for sure whether or not you have a holiday. They can still cancel it at any time.
Even if they charge your credit card, even if they book you a seat on the damn plane, they can still change their mind.
While I would expect that in most cases they’re probably not interested in simply cancelling your booking just because they can, what’s to say they wouldn’t pull the plug on your package deal if your plane suddenly became very popular and they could make more money selling it as flight only (which, as far as I can tell, is a confirmed booking the minute you press submit). A delay of up to two weeks for confirmation of a flight booked online is just not good enough.
In the end Laura rebooked with MyTravel for £294 each and snubbed the rock-bottom rate I found her for Imperial Palace in favour of the Excalibur for just a little more. Not a bad decision.
Overall, it was still about £200 cheaper than Expedia. Mission accomplished!
Here’s a little piece of Vegas to look forward to, coming soon to a McDonalds near you.
I don’t really know what makes this a Vegas burger, let alone a classic.
If it’s to be a Vegas burger, surely it has to be a "world’s most somethingest" burger.
Like the most expensive, the $777 Kobe Beef and Maine Lobster burger at Paris Las Vegas. Actually I’m not sure whether that holds the record for most expensive, they may have missed out on that honour to maintain the novelty price tag.
But the Carl’s Jr $6000 combo definitely is the world’s most expensive fast food meal deal, and it’s only available at the Palms.
So what about a spectacularly huge burger, like the 9lb Big Daddy Barrick Burger at the Plaza. It’s sadly no longer on the menu, but the web page that bragged that this beast could "feed a softball team" is archived for ever here. The deal used to be that if you could finish it in under 24 hours, it was free (well, you weren’t going to be leaving the casino, let’s face it). The world record is just over 48 minutes, and was set by a girl.
So thanks for the effort McDonalds, but I’m just not sure that simply using cheese that’s a bit more fancy than usual is quite enough.
T minus 95, 186 and 305!
Yes really. I have my next three Las Vegas trips booked up, and it feels great.
Christmas and New Year 2007/08 I’ve known about for quite a while. It won’t be long now. Being there for Christmas day like last year, although this time it won’t be a Station Casinos buffet for Christmas dinner. Sure, they had a turkey carving station, but otherwise it was exactly the same.
We’ve booked the Gold Coast for the entire stay, based on them only charging an excessive premium for one night, on New Year’s Eve itself. Every other hotel I checked bumped up their rate for at least two nights, some of them three. Total: $827 for 11 nights. I could care less about staying off-Strip, but as Gold Coast is right next to our likely new home Palms, it’s actually a great choice.
Then just last week I dropped on a flight from Las Vegas to Manchester using BMI Diamond Club miles. Seemed too good to be true: a direct flight in business class falling perfectly in the last week of Claire’s school holiday. Instabooked – seats in row 1 baby! All I needed was an outbound flight to go with it…
Thanks to the guys on flyertalk I’ve learned how to check what flights are available on other Star Alliance airlines using, obscurely, All Nippon Airways mileage club. I’ve never been to China, and don’t have any plans in the foreseeable future, but they let me join up anyway.
The best option was an economy flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles and with connecting flights at both ends. According to the forum dudes, who have some amazing advice to give if you can cope with the acronym overkill, it’s absolutely possible to fly MAN–LAX–LAS with DC using any *A airline. Oh no, I’m doing it now…
But the thought of three planes and a 20 hour journey wasn’t appealing. It would be free but you still have to pay the tax (remember it’s about ten times as expensive to leave the UK as is it to come back) so those miles are still saved up for next time. Instead it’ll be my first experience of MaxJet, who had a direct flight for £349+tax. That’s their lowest rate, but all their seats are business class.
Only one minor drawback. We’re flying out from Stansted and back into Manchester. That’ll be a logistical nightmare and I can’t even bear to think about it yet. We’ll cross that bridge – and think about where to stay – next year sometime. All in all though, it’s a business class return flight for two people for under £900. Can’t be bad.
Once those luxury jet-set floodgates opened though, there was no stopping me. MaxJet was showing the £349 rate for the same Sunday we’ve flown out the past three summers and it was just a case of waiting until the return could be booked before the inevitable happened. We’ve paid more than that for BMI premium economy in the summer, and almost as much for basic economy so this is an absolute bargain.
Booking for the return leg opened sometime yesterday, but according to the seating plan, someone else had already beaten us to it by the time I had made the booking at 8pm. I can understand that the outbound flight would have already started to fill up as it’s been available for a few weeks already. But it just shows what a popular destination Las Vegas has become in recent years that people are lining up waiting to book seats on a flight ten months away at the very first opportunity.
That’s us in 9A/9C. I booked an exit row just because I could, for the extra leg room. I’m sure it’s really not necessary with these super luxury seats though. Time will tell.
EDIT: When I looked again today (Thursday) – and I’m glad I did, as they’d already lost one of my seat reservations – there are now 11 other passengers who booked on this flight (which is still over 300 days away) within 48 hours of it going on sale. Blimey.
I know I’m on some peculiar mailing lists from the amount of junk email I get, but I’m pretty sure one message I got today wasn’t just random spam, but a list I subscribed to.
Quite possibly it’s connected to The Dealer’s News, a newsletter intended for professional casino dealers in Nevada. Though their obsessive comparisons of which casinos have the best tippers are clearly not intended for the casual reader, I still subscribed because I like to read it every month for the insider stories and bite-size factoids and opinions. Here’s a taster.
Anyway, the email I got today may be nothing to do with them (I actually don’t care if they’re sending me spam as you know I’ll enjoy reading any Vegas-related mail I get) but it’s definitely too specific to be a mass broadcast.
Attention Ladies:
I am holding interviews again for the incredibly fun "Party Pit" being built in Planet Hollywood.
We are looking train more ladies TO DEAL BLACKJACK and PAY you for it. You will work 3 nights a week or more. Day and evening classes are available.
…
I just know I could be a self-proclaimed fun dealer in a self-proclaimed incredibly fun party pit given half a chance, and it’s a tempting change of career. But does it really matter that I’ll never look good in a tight t-shirt and hotpants?
The write-up below is copied from an email newsletter I got today from Fitzgeralds, or The Fitz as they now like to call themselves since removing the giant leprechaun from the roof. In fact I got to see the remains of "Mr O’Lucky" at the Neon Boneyard, but he’s in a sorry state. The victim of an internal bonfire (please donate to the Neon Museum and help them buy sharper barbed wire) he’s been virtually destroyed from the inside out. There’s now just a wire mesh frame remaining, apart from one leg, the top of his head and a charred arm that’s still tipping what’s left of his hat. I wish I could post a photo, but I’m not allowed to publish them online. Ask me to show you sometime if you’re interested.
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, this is what it used to look like.
Anyway, I copied the text verbatim, right up to the point where I decided I really didn’t need to read any further. It’s about an upcoming event in Las Vegas that I’d not heard of before. Sure, it’s only just into its second year, but it sounds like a winner.
It won’t take you the famous 90 days to go ‘round the world in September. Instead, how about one weekend? On September 14-16, you’ll have the opportunity the celebrate many world-wide cultures at the 2nd Annual Las Vegas Culturefest, where the entire family can enjoy a fun-filled weekend of food, crafts, dance, arts and entertainment at the Fremont Street Experience. Special features include the Golf Cart Parade of Nations […]
Las Vegas just keeps on coming up with new and imaginative ways to get folks off the street and into the nearest casino. They’re just so damn good at it.
Not everyone loves Las Vegas, so in the interest of providing balanced – although in this case clearly wrong – opinion, here is another rant (here’s the first one) from BBC movie reviewer Mark Kermode.
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".. Las Vegas is not a place to go and have a good time, Las Vegas is a cesspit on the face of the Earth and it shouldn’t be there.."
Ocean’s Thirteen should remains in the box office charts for a few more weeks, so I’m sure we’ll have more of these to look forward to…
It’s just like how the Montecito in the TV show Las Vegas can’t stand still. That ficticious casino must have occupied just about every possible spot on the Strip by now. In the latest season, exterior shots put it on the far south end of the Strip opposite Luxor, whereas the view from James Caan’s office looks like it’s taken from inside Treasure Island, nearly three miles away.
The Bank Casino featured in Ocean’s Thirteen has Montecito syndrome. It appears to have slid about a mile along the road in between being built and opening.
I finally have the photographic evidence I was so obsessively trying to find, and with it an excuse to post a whole bunch of Vegas pictures. I actually got these screencaps from a German language bootleg – the added bonus was being able to hear the translation of Don Cheadle’s craptastic English accent.
In this scene, during the construction of the hotel, you can see the Mirage dead centre and the letters "PHAN" from a banner for Phantom – The Las Vegas Spectacular to the left of Al Pacino’s back. The location has to be somewhere between Venetian and Wynn, presumably it was filmed in the shell of Palazzo, or possibly Encore at Wynn Las Vegas.
They appear to be very proud of the CGI for the Strip’s latest monstrosity, and we get to see it from several angles as well as different lighting conditions – during the day, in the evening and after sunset. This close up shows what the architecturally impossible, twisty brown thing that’s meant to be a hotel actually looks like.
And here a wider shot shows its location on the Strip.
So we’re looking North along the Strip with the Stratosphere in the far distance. Monte Carlo is at the bottom left and the top of New York New York is just poking into the frame. The Bank sits right between Polo Towers (bottom right) and Aladdin/Planet Hollywood (white hotel with two jutty out bits). Follow the road and you’ll see the fake Eiffel Tower, and just across the street the dancing fountains at Bellagio are in action.
Look really hard and you’ll see the Stardust is still standing. To be fair, you have to know what you’re looking for, so I’ve added a subtle visual clue below. This is surely the last time you’ll see it in a movie.
The Bank’s outward location is somewhat confirmed by a southerly view from inside the hotel. Polo Towers is the building with the neon outline at bottom centre, and towards the upper right corner you can see the MGM Grand Marquee, a hotel tower which I think must be the Tropicana (where did the big green MGM go?), and Mandalay Bay.
Also from the ground, this still looks about right. Our POV is behind crowds standing outside the casino looking across, and down the street a bit, at the Bellagio.
However here’s the view that I’m just not sure about. Ignore the silhouette of Matt Damon’s legs, and you’ll see Paris, Caesars and Bellagio all visible. How does that work then? I just wouldn’t be doing my job as a Vegas nit correctly if I didn’t point out that in the second photo on the far left you can just see the same Bellagio marquee as in the ground-level shot above; but from a totally different angle. I guess it’s just a big hotel, or something.
 
Anyway, enough pedantry and gratuitous photos of Las Vegas, what did I think of the film?
I loved it. I’m pretty sure I was always going to, so I know I can’t really review it constructively. To be fair, it’s a very average heist movie, with an over-the-top cast of big names, too many to squeeze them all into a coherent storyline. So the end result is a bunch of megastars doing a bunch of stuff in and around Vegas.
On that basis: A+, movie delivers.
As I still haven’t found the screencaps I wanted for the stuff I was going to write about Ocean’s Thirteen (watch this space, I’m sure it’ll be worth it, no unnecessary hype here) in the meantime I will leave you in the more than capable hands of a somewhat ranty Mark Kermode, expressing his dislike not only for the movie, but also for the city I will one day call home. Cheekily borrowed from the podcast of his BBC Five Live show.
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I’m not transcribing the whole thing – just press the damn play button, it’s only a minute long – but here’s a taster.
"If truth be told, Las Vegas needs to be wiped from the face of the earth because it is an evil abomination and, you know, bad and a blight upon mankind. Obviously."
Hooray for starting a premature collection of dollars. Or "dullards", as Matt keeps telling me they’re called, even though he can’t tell me why…
The best exchange rate in town was at the Cheque Centre, which has recently taken over a butcher’s shop in Longton. The shop is so new you can still smell the carpet glue. They offered $1.92 to the £1 and 0% commission – two or three cents better than everywhere else.
In fact the rate on my Citibank dual currency account was only $1.94. Not much in it if you change up the cash before you leave, when you have to pay ATM fees over there.
"How would you like the money", he asked. "Large bills are fine", I replied. I remembered where I was and readjusted to British English. "Hundreds, if you’ve got them".
"We’ve got fifties", he offered with a smile. Oh dear. Our faces dropped in unison.
I tried to explain. "Well, we’re going to Vegas and fifties are unlucky. But twenties would be like this big..". I held my hands a good few inches apart, apparently indicating the five figure bankroll that one day I actually hope to have, and not the few hundred we’d gone to change up.
From his reaction I’m sure he hadn’t heard this nonsense before, and I’m glad. Because I have no idea where it came from, and just wouldn’t know how I’d explain it if pressed. We talked about this afterwards. Claire says it’s something I told her, but I’m sure it’s something I picked up from her. I’ve searched online to try to find some far fetched urban legend or just some unwritten rule, but nothing turned up. Google does index unwriten rules, right?
The best I’ve managed to find is an old Question of the Day from Las Vegas Advisor, which I can’t even link properly to because it’s a subscription-only page, so I’ve had to reproduce some parts of it here and hope that Anthony Curtis doesn’t mind. Actually, if I find out that a Vegas legend reads my blog I wont really care about the consequences! If you’re a subscriber, you can see the full thing here.
"The Las Vegas Hilton told us that they hold some $50s, but that many casinos don’t order them, because they’re considered unlucky. (They also said that casinos tended to avoid dealing with them in the past because of their resemblance to $100s and the risk of error, although we’d have thought that this would apply more to $10s.)
The Plaza acknowledged that a bit of superstition surrounds the $50, with some people considering them lucky and others the reverse, but they didn’t know the reason behind either belief.
Stratosphere claimed its Asian customers like getting $50s, while the Imperial Palace stated that its big players do not like them.
The Golden Gate said they don’t hold $50 bills, i.e., if they receive them they’re not given out, only banked. But they didn’t know why.
Bally’s, Binion’s, and Caesars had all heard of the unlucky connotations, but they all keep and give out $50s."
So essentially, nobody really knows. Still, better not take any chances eh?
People who bring their kids to Vegas deserve to be dangled from the top of the fake Eiffel Tower until they see the error of their ways. That’s if having to stay at Circus Circus isn’t deterrent enough. But now there is a Las Vegas that it actually is OK to take your kids to.
Legoland California last week opened its doors to Miniland Las Vegas. What model village on earth could be cooler than Las Vegas made out Lego, I ask you? I’m sure there must actually be a Lego Empire State Building or Sphinx, but now there’s also a whole miniature town of fake landmarks made out of tiny building blocks. Fantastic. I’m hoping we get chance to make the trip over there in the summer (it’s a four and a half hour drive to Carlsbad CA, about 30 miles north of San Diego). But until I can take my own photos, I’ll link to other people’s.
 The press release puts the brick count for the ten replica hotels at 2 million and time to build at 16,000 man hours, over three years. Three years is a long time in Las Vegas, and so not surprisingly it’s already a litle bit out of date.
The rides at the top of the Stratosphere date it as circa 2004. X-Scream (opened October 2003) is there but Insanity (opened March 2005) is not. The High Roller coaster, which was dismantled and removed in December 2005 – possibly using a big parachute, although really that’s just wishful thinking – is still there in Lego form.
The Treasure Island replica still features that cumbersome name in full, although it is built from bricks that resemble its new colour. Perhaps a post-production paint job? The new "TI" sign has been around since late 2003 but is missing in Legoland, although the Disney-esque skull and crossbones has been removed from the marquee.
A few feet over at Excalibur, the Merlin figure is missing from his window in the castle – he was pulled out in real life only last month – but I expect that yoinking a wizard is a fairly easy modification to make. I know it’s no longer cool to be a themed resort (as shown by the rumours about Luxor’s new name, which might not actually be nonsense) but just how are Excalibur going to get away from the fact that their pretty big hotel – the largest in the world when it opened – is shaped like a giant castle?
The sign at Paris appears to say "Paris Rock". Presumaly this is a reference to the Queen show "We Will Rock You" which used to play there. It closed in November 2005. If you look closely, you can also see a Blue Man Group advert on the Luxor marquee. They moved to the Venetian in October 2005. I’m sure there’s more, but I’m working from only a few photos that have been put online since it opened a couple of days ago. Not bad pedantry at all, I don’t think.
There’s a video here if you want to see more, including a working model of the Monorail. So far that one is still just about accurate.
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