Figured I would sit down and type this one out...to the best I can recall....
Left NC on uneventful USAir flight (which was suprisingly ON SCHEDULE). Note to those on USAir, I believe it was an Airbus 319 that I flew from CLT to LAS and I was happy in that I had a window seat on an emergency row with NO seat in front of me, or so I thought. If I was like 4'9", it would have been great, but I am 6'2" and where there is no seat in front of me, there is an emergency door which juts out. My knees were almost in my stomach...even the FA winced when they saw how uncomfortable I was....right before takeoff though, I pissed off a couple about 3 rows in front of me when I moved to the open window seat. The bitch wife was making huffing noises about how she thought they were going to have an open seat....I basically told her and her husband, tough shit, you try sitting back there for 5 hours...I AM NOT MOVING...they ended up being ok as I pretty much put on a DVD movie and kept to myself. My friend was back a few rows and didn't see the commotion.
Anyway, landed at LAS, bags came in about 30 minutes (I stopped for a smoke and my buddy grabbed some BK as we watched all the idiots running to BC like their bags were going to be there in 5 minutes in LAS....too bad, no mas fumar in LAS, that's really the LAST airport I ever thought would have No Smoking). Got the bags and went the Thrifty shuttle (pretty quick...I am Blue Chip and this time my friend was paying for the car and I had signed him up for BC prior)....get to the lot, and BC line is outside and as always, they're out of cars....waited about 10 minutes to get to the front of the line and guy tells us we had to go in since this was his first BC rental (I should have remembered that...)....oh well, back inside, another 10 minutes....finally get the car (POS Dodge Caliber if I recall....not too bad since the whole fee w/ taxes was like $150 for the 7 days).
First stop, South Coast (now South Point I believe). I had Pricelined the room for around $90 per night for Saturday and Sunday (use
www.biddingfortravel.com for PL help...very useful) and I wanted to check out the joint. Instead of serpentining all around the ariport, I told my buddy to just exit the airport, take a left on Trop and take LVBlvd down to South Coast ...man is it quite a way down from MBay). Self parked (very easy) at South Coast and checkin was pretty fast (<5 minutes). Get a room on the 18th floor and it was HUGE! Nice plasma (42 inch) and 2room bathroom....one of the nicest standard rooms I have been in when in Vegas. Kind of tired after flying all day, so we had a list of college football bets we got down on and then went to the buffet (I had a 2/1 coupon). It was a pretty good buffet, I would rate around a 7/10 with the standard buffet fare of carving station, peel'n'eat shrimp and decent deserts. Basically first night just went back to the room and watched football (I think we lost $20 each that night, so not too bad).
Next morning get up and go to breakfast buffet around 8 am and same story...decent. Get down on some NFL and decide to make a trek down to Primm and check out Whiskey Pete's/PVR/Buffalo Bill's. Pretty cruddy, but CROWDED casinos. We played some BJ and Pai gow and won about 30 each (note: for gambling, we were splitting everything, so we would buyin for 100 each on BJ and try to get to a net win of $60 total which was happening most of the time). We had 3 sessions and we hit the $60 each time, so we're up $70 each due to the previous night football. Leave Primm and head back to South Coast (traffic was bad coming and going) and went back and watched some more NFL. Played a little BJ and struggled to break even after 2 hours (never up the whole session). Note, we did eat at Primm Valley Buffet and I KNOW where they filmed the nasty buffet in Vegas Vacation....PRIMM VALLEY RESORT (the resort part is really stretching it for this place and the buffet here made Circus Circus' seem like Wolfgang Puck's)
Next day (monday) time to check out and play some golf at Stallion Mountain (original booked Desert Pines, but due to maintenance got switched for the same rate). Our tee time was at 2 pm so we decided to chill in the room for a while and go down about 10:10 for the breakfast buffet thinking it closed at 10:30 or 11:00...but NO! they shut her down at 10 am...unreal...went to the little cafe they had, got some pancakes and 2 glasses (big enough for a 2 year old) of $4 OJ...checkout was easy, did it through the TV.
I had read some bad stuff about SM due to the fact a lot of concierges push this course to get severely discounted rates for themselves and the guys come back complaining about the course. All in all, I thought it was very decent and professionally run....I didn't go in expecting Augusta or Bali Hai, but for $60pp, IT WAS a decent course with some really nice scenery. (Actually shot a 77 here, and I usually am around mid 80's, so not that difficult).
After this, it was time to high roll as I had booked the Boulder STation using a 2/1 coupon and decided to be Diamond Jim and upgrade to a "Players Room". I have stayed at BS many times with no problems, so I wanted to see how the other half lived while at BS.....NOT MUCH BETTER. They put us on the 14th floor (remember this) and it was the same last 2 numbers as our SC room which was odd (SC=1831 and BS=1431). Went down and placed a wager on the MNF game and went to my favorite cheap Italian eats, the good ole Pasta Palace. Service was fine, meal was great...I knew we would be here 2 nights so I put the meal (a big whopping $22 with tip) on my room (or at least I THOUGHT). My signature is pretty rough normally, so I signed my name in print so that the waiter would be able to read it.... after dinner we played BJ for about 30 minutes then some token 0.25 WOF. After this, I see the manager of the Pasta Palace and another crony walking around and they pointed to us to come over to them (in the middle of the casino). I asked what's up and the a$$hole pushed the check in my face and asked was I staying here at BS. I said, "Ah YEAH!" and he said, what room are you in...I said 1831...he said, "There's no way!!" I looked at my friend and said, what room are we in? and he replied, I thought 1831...I said..ME TOO. Well the AH then responded (like he caught us trying to stiff a $20 meal), "There are only 16 floors here at BS!, you can't be on the 16th floor!!" I apologized and said my bad, we just checked in and we're on the 14th floor....we just checked out of the 18th floor at South Coast. He then said, "what are you doing, hotel hopping?!". I was like, I like to see different hotels while in town, so yes, I do hop hotels (all this while him demanding to go back to the PPalace which I did like a good little soldier, I didn't want any trouble or see Las Vegas' finest in the Clark County lock up. When we got over there (like 20 yards away initially). He said (while still not believing I was staying here) he needed to call the front desk to confirm and I gave him my license and it was squared away (with about 5 PPalace employees watching like I was a freaking thief). The whole time, I was apologetic and kept admitting I made a simple mistake, but afterwards was quite pissed at the whole thing. I mean , why didn't the A$$hole just call the Front desk, give them my name and just change the Room number or have the front desk leave me a message in my room to fix the problem (as any decent hotel would, especially over $20)? Like I said, I wrote my name VERY clearly and he didn't have to go through the casino hunting me down. And if I did want to stiff them, I sure as hell wouldn't have hung around 30 more minutes going through a fairly small casino, I would have been in Pahrump by then. Needless to say, I emailed Station Casinos twice regarding this incident...guess what they gave me for it..... NOT EVEN A GD REPLY BACK....I will never frequent this shithole again....
Story to be continued as fingers are tired
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