The Lucky Donut

This Dealertainer at Imperial Palace is apparently meant to be Elvis.

Tell me, am I insane for thinking – right up until the minute he started singing – that it was actually Robbie Williams?  Apart from the obvious clue that nobody in America has heard of him.  It’s uncanny, don’t you think?

Elvis impersonators and dealers probably make up something like 99% of the Las Vegas workforce, so is it really that hard to find someone who can both be a convincing King and deal blackjack?

I only managed to a identify a few of the other dealertainers that were on that night.  I struggled with the obligatory country singer (although "some dude in a cowboy hat" is always an acceptable answer as far as I’m concerned) and failed to identify the Rihanna looky-likey, although to be fair chances are I’d never have recognised the real thing either.

I must be getting old.  Seriously, is Rihanna really in the same league as Elvis, Britney, Prince, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and… err Leona Lewis?

Nope, apparently she is meant to be Mariah Carey.  You decide:

It’s the first time I’ve seen these "text X to Y to get spammed with offers" campaigns from Las Vegas casinos.  I’m sure there must be more than just these two, but these are the ones I saw on billboards and duly sold my soul to:

Text "RIO" to 227466 :

Text "MGM" to 30364 :

MGM’s texts began by asking me to verify my age.  Because, surely, if Rusty Griswold wanders up to the bar with his iPhone looking for a free drink, they won’t need to check his ID if he’s already answered this question truthfully.

Then they sent me a room offer, which is a little bizarre when I saw the billboard only about 10 minutes out of town.  I guess there’s a chance I could have driven in from LA without a reservation, hoping for a last minute cheap deal and think this is the one, but it seems unlikely.

Then, they chased up the same room offer later that day.  Just in case I was still homeless.  Seems like a waste of marketing to me, but what do I know?  I just want the freebs.

It’s not really a competition, but Rio wins this one for me hands down.  I received 8 of the promised 10 offers in 3 days, with a new one being sent like clockwork three times daily.  I’m sure I only missed out on the last couple because I was already on the plane home by the time they sent it.  (MGM stopped much earlier, I had nothing at all on my last full day in town).

It’s not hard to see Boobilee for half price – it’s been a staple of the POV for many years, you can usually get it when you stay in one of their hotels, and it’s perpetually a discounted show at the tickets for tonight booths.  In fact I expect almost nobody pays full price.  I also don’t know what discounts there are for Voodoo Lounge, but I know I can get free entry any time with Total Rewards Diamond so I expect it’s not hard to at least get a discount.

However, it was the completely free Eiffel Tower admissions that turned this from being a bunch of coupons I wasn’t really bothered by into a great deal.  It helped that it was something I wanted to do anyway, but you can’t argue with the price to get one of the best views of the Strip.  I’ve seen this as a 2fer before but never as a completely free deal.

The only possible drawback is having to collect a voucher at the Rio’s players club, even to redeem an offer at a Strip property.  If the Harrah’s properties on the Strip are operating similar text campaigns they might be doing more Strip-centric promotions, or at least allow you collect the vouchers at a more convenient location.

As we were staying at the Rio, claiming this was a doddle.  They didn’t even want to see a player’s card, they just read the phone screen and handed over a ticket to take to Paris for completely free admission.  No name on the ticket, just an expiry date so you have to use it within 3 days.

It would ordinarily cost $10 each daytime, or $12 at night.  And you can’t sneak up craftily just before sunset – they close between 7.15pm and 7.30pm to make sure you pay extra if you want the view at night.

Yes, I have photos.  They’re coming soon…

When I say I have a new favourite slot machine, what I really mean is that I found a slot machine which I not only find tolerable, but also find quite enjoyable!

Apart from taking a shot on Megabucks every now and then (and, really, who can resist with the jackpot at a juicy $32 million?) I just don’t get excited by them.

I even found my experiement into hammering Wheel of Fortune on a 10x slot points day (which made it a reasonable chance of being a break-even game, plus getting me on the radar for room offers) extremely boring.

So, it’s pretty rare to find a game that (a) makes me want to sit down, (b) makes me want to put more money in when the first lot runs out and (c) has be make a special trip back to that casino to play it again.

This is exactly what happened with the “multi-strike” game I found at Terrible’s.

The multi-strike concept originated in video poker.  You play for four games at a time, but only progress for games 2, 3 and 4 if you win on the previous game.  However, you win double on the second game, four times on the third game and eight times on the top game.  As I suspect that doesn’t really explain it well enough, you can click here to play it online for free.

In fact, with some strategy adjustments (which, I’ll admit, I am a long way from knowing) multi-strike provides a slightly better payback than the same paytable on regular video poker.  It’s only another 0.2% or so, but every little helps.

However, as you’d expect, there’s no strategy at all to multi-strike slots.  But still, this is what reeled me in, curious as to how it would work on a slot game.

If you win on one level, you get to spin again with the winnings multiplied accordingly.  In fact, you don’t even need to press the button again – it will spin automatically for you until you get to the top or die.

When a “free ride” symbol lands on both reels 1 and 5, you advance to the next level even if there is no winning combination on the reels.  In addition, free ride gives you a bonus multiplier on the next level – for instance on level 2 instead of 2x you will receive between 3x and 8x.

In addition to the multi-strike feature, the game is otherwise a “greatest hits of slot machines”.  It’s all there, and you’ll see most of it in this epic clip which resulted in a massive $18 win.

Let’s start with the stupidly high number of pay lines – 25, in fact.  This is mandatory on video slots – you’re just not allowed to fully understand the game.  Sometimes you just won’t know how you’ve won but the credit meter will go up and it’ll be a nice surprise, and yet other times you’ll be left wondering why on earth you just won nothing for three symbols top-bottom-middle when you’re absolutely sure that combination paid out last time.

Then there’s the good old triple diamond wildcard.  It only appears on reels 2 and 4 in this game, but it can be used to complete any winning sequence – and triples the win.  Use both of them and the win is multiplied 9x (and then multipled again if you are on level 2 or above).

There’s also a free spins feature – another staple of video slots.  Why just give you a cash award when it can spend a few seconds flashing up small win after small win, hypnotising you into thinking that the machine is paying out much more often than it actually is?  There’s some really clever stuff going on behind all those pretty flashing lights.

Of course, no self-respecting slot machine is complete without a wheel.  Wheel of Fortune is like the most popular, longest running slot machine ever, or something.  Heck, when the Las Vegas Hilton ripped out their poker room last year, they replaced it with… Wheel of Fortune World.  It’s been around longer than I can remember (so I’m no old-timer, but ten years is a long time in Vegas years) and folks still seem to love it.

Although I don’t really know why it’s so popular as a dull 3-reel slot machine, I can appreciate the awesomeness of having a wheel spin right above your head, with the only possible result of where it lands being that you will definitely win some amount of money.  You just don’t know how much yet.

It’s so awesome, in fact, that here’s another clip.  This one in slightly better quality from my camera rather than my phone (look closely and you’ll see me reflecting in the machine at the end) – and a slightly bigger win too 🙂 

The multi-strike wheel determines the multiplier for your level 4 win, between 6x and 100x.  If you got there on a free ride (as we did in this clip) a bonus of up to 20x is added to the number on the wheel (not multiplied, unfortunately).  Here we have a top line win from the free spin feature for 345 credits ($3.45) which was multipled by 25x on the wheel and 10x on the free ride to give a total level 4 win of over $120!

Not bad for a 1c game, eh?  Even if you do have to play at least 100 coins to activate all the features…

Here’s the bad news though – you can play this game online and for free.  I expect I’ll be wasting plenty of time on this…

From this close up, it could be a scene from a horror movie.

However, it’s actually a shadow dancer in a place I’d never noticed before – in one of the upper windows at O’Shea’s.

I noticed this on Friday night and have no idea how long they’ve been doing it.  If it’s a permanent fixture it’s only certain nights of the week as she’s wasn’t there on Sunday.

Considering it’s just a silhouette dancing about in a window on probably the most brightly lit street in the world, it’s surprisingly eye-catching.

Looks like my laptop has been kicked off the Rio’s hotel internet.

I just keep getting an error that windows cannot renew the IP address.  I went through the hoops with LodgeNet’s Indian call centre, who told me to try all the things I’d already tried and then said they would escalate it and call me back – but they still haven’t.

It was fine when we first got here, so I checked my email and left it downloading the latest episode of 24.  I’d be surprised if this is what they’ve taken offense to as I downloaded Christmas Top of the Pops last time I stayed at the Rio, and several episodes of Big Brother last year from various Harrah’s hotels.  I don’t watch that much TV, but some shows just have to travel with me.

It’s definitely something specific to my machine though, as when we finally gave up and plugged Claire’s laptop directly into the wall it worked just fine.

Sadly, my fingers are much too fat for this tiny keyboard for me to be able to type at anything like full speed, plus I’d be juggling between computers to find photos, so expect some minor blogging delays.

The Palms is running their usual kind of swipe-and-win promotion this week.  Free gift cards, restaurant credit, random junk and point multipliers on offer – everyone wins something.

I’d play there regularly anyway, but the chance of some casino-branded junk or bonus slot club points is enough to make sure I turn up every single day in my awesome PT Cruiser.

I noticed the text on the points multiplier coupon I won on Sunday is now much more restrictive than it used to be:

For a while it’s been a bit of a grey area as to whether you would have your points multiplied if you played one of the 100%+ games on offer.  These machines have a label on them stating "not valid for any promotions".  In the past I’ve found that sometimes they’ve been excluded from point redemption offers and sometimes they just don’t seem to care.

With a multiplier, generally, as long as you didn’t play exclusively 100% machines, it seemed like you’d get all that day’s points multiplied.  So a quick session on 99.5% jacks or better (which actually becomes a 100% game with a 2x coupon, and a profitable game with anything better) usually did the trick.

Now the coupon specifically excludes all the good machines.  Some of the jacks or better machines have the non-promotional label but some do not, and after some experiementation I can confirm that, sadly, even the unmarked machines are excluded.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a casino refer to a particular version of deuces wild as NSUD ("not so ugly ducks").  This particular variant is a 99.7% payback game which requires a quite different strategy than FPDW ("full pay deuces wild") because a flush pays 3 coins compared to 2, and four-of-a-kind 4 coins compared to 5.

Although a 99.7% paytable can provide some good opportunities when add the value of slot club promotions to the expected return, FPDW has remained my wild card game of choice because it pays back a much healthier 100.7% (before any other incentives).

Some casinos label their best machines with a "certified X% payback" banner (and a tiny footnote that reads "with optimal play") but I’ve only ever seen or heard the terms "full pay" and "not so ugly" used by players or strategy guide authors – never by the casinos themselves.

So anyway, the point multipliers are pretty much dead to me.  But there’s always the free shit.

On Monday, my ticket told me I’d won a "Tree Clock".  My reaction was (as, presumably, yours is too): "WTF is a tree clock?".  Fortunately it didn’t take long to find out:  it’s a clock with a picture of a tree on it.  Obvious really, I suppose.

At least the picture is a palm tree, but this isn’t Palms branded gear.  The label on the back simply states "made in China" and calls it a "CIOCK", which is pretty close.

Not only do I have no idea what the connection is between this piece of tat and "April Showers of Cash", but also, especially given that this promotion only lasts 5 days, I really didn’t expect to get the same gift two days running.  But sure enough, on Tuesday I won another super tree clock.

"I got one of these yesterday, is there any chance I can swap it for a t-shirt?", I asked.  I’d have traded it for almost anything on offer, but the man with the prizes wouldn’t budge.  It wasn’t until later that I realised my brand new tree clock actually had a slightly different design to the first one: two trees!

I can only hope that my run of luck continues so that I can end up with a whole forest of clocks before the week is out.

This was the view from our room at the Four Queens at sunrise.  The towers in the foreground are part of the Lady Luck, which was just about the only thing in town not lit up at the time.  It was closed "for renovations" in early 2006, but very little has actually been done to it since then.

Just in case you needed proof of our VIP status at the Four Queens, here is the official documentation.

The inside of the "passport" outlines what you can eat for free (click to enlarge).

There’s absolutely no way we’ll eat close to the daily allowances – especially as yesterday’s late arrival cost us a free lunch – but it’s a pretty sweet deal nevertheless.

With all the stuff we’ve charged to the room so far, here’s what shows up on the bill.

We went slightly over the $15 allowance at the deli and only the difference appears.  There’s no trace of the other food at all – it just disappears!

I have to admit that I didn’t even realise that Four Queens had a deli, and having now experienced a fantastic pastrami sandwich I realise the best way to play this comp is to eat breakfast early, get a sandwich to go from the deli for lunch on the road and then get back to the hotel for dinner.  If only I’d realised that yesterday…

I can’t remember the last time it was dark when we arrived in Las Vegas, but the unortodox choice of route for this trip made sure that this time we got to see the lights from afar.  MAN-PHL-PHX-LAS might have got us plenty of Diamond Club miles but it made the total journey time door-to-door more than 24 hours.

It was dark when we came in to land at 8pm, just as dark when we finally left the airport at 9.30pm and felt like it must almost be time to start getting light again by the time we finally made it to the hotel at 11.15pm.

It really didn’t help that US Airways put one of our bags (just one, mind) on the wrong plane.  With two changes of planes, and one with only about an hour stopover, I was expecting a fairly high chance of losing something.  However, it turned out to be the same plane all the way through from Philadelphia to Phoenix and on to Vegas (we left the hand luggage on board, stretched for 15 minutes and got back in the same seats) so at least the bags weren’t going to get lost in transit at Phoenix.

We’d even caught a glimpse of one of our bags through the window as they were being loaded in Philly, proving without a doubt that my idea to stick dayglo tape all over a suitcase does indeed mean you can see your bags from almost literally miles away.

However, only one shiny disco bag actually made it onto the plane, the other (identical, and also sporting fluorescent go-faster stripes) was left behind, then sent along on a later flight, leaving us to suffer 90 minutes of looped adverts for half a dozen different shows – all the self-proclaimed best in town and apparently unmissable – while we waited for it.

Otherwise the flight was fairly pleasant and the food was also edible, with a salad that was still crispy and a pork main course that hadn’t turned to rubber.  I was actually quite impressed.

US Airways’ business class seats aren’t as good as the fully flat recliners we had last year with BMI, but they’re comfy enough.  Apparently the cabins are being upgraded to lie-flat seats later this month.

In other US Airways news, they also start flying from Birmingham to Philadelphia in May which will open up a new route from the UK to Las Vegas to help spend all those lovely miles I accrued with BMI before they decided to axe all their flights to the USA.

Another thing that didn’t help with the overall travel time is that we had to wait in line for car rental for an hour.  This is pretty standard with Dollar when it’s busy but I thought it would be much quieter than it was.  Seriously, who arrives in Las Vegas late on a Saturday evening?  Apart from me, obviously.

Dollar has a huge desk but there’s rarely more than 3 people serving, and they’d all lose their job if they didn’t try to sell you a dozen more insurance that you haven’t heard of and don’t really need.  This is obviously much more important than trying to keep the queue moving.

An English guy just in front of us had reserved two week’s rental online for $400, only to be told the total was over $1200 when he got to the desk.  They obviously see us coming, unfamiliar with the insurance requirements and jargon, and too tired to argue.  This is why I always have a fully inclusive prepaid booking now, so you know what you’re getting up front and can just shake your head at any questions rather than have to try to construct a sentence after nearly 20 hours on a plane.

When we finally arrived at Four Queens, check-in was, thankfully, instant.  The room is nothing special, but it’s right next to the elevator for speedy access to and from the casino, and it also has a Fremont Street Experience stage view.

I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a premium feature, the kind of thing you might slip them a $20 to try to get, but there was just happened to be something different going on tonight: Leanne Rimes live!

Not one the usual tribute acts that entertains Fremont Street passers by, but actual Leanne Rimes who had the whole street watching her.

We heard The One From Con Air as we parked up and she was doing The One From Coyote Ugly when we got up the the room.

I think she’d been to see Blue Man Group earlier that evening.  This is Rock Concert Movement #6 :

We listened to the end of her show (to be honest, we didn’t have much choice) and crashed out.  Gambling and stuff would have to wait until the morning.