I absolutely love Vegas, we used to go every year. My wife isn't so big on it, and we haven't been since WSOP 2016. But after raising very young kids for the last few years she is ready to party, and spontaneously decided we should go: "can't stay for long lets unload all the saved up miles for 1st class seats (we've never sat 1st class) drop the kids off on the 2nd stay up as long as we can on the 2nd and 3rd, and catch a red eye out on the 4th."

Don't have to twist my arm.

Plan is to stay at Cosmo fountain view terrance (first time at Cosmo), catch MJ One and Absinthe and forgo any fine dining so we don't waste much time, after all we can fine dine anywhere. Hoping to keep it to less than 3k gambling, no poker, all black jack and craps. Need to find a good party spot for early/mid 30s that isn't a club, if anyone has a rec I'm all ears!

Trip report to come

Looking forward to this! My brother flew in yesterday and I am currently on one as well!

Looking forward to TR. Love unplanned trips.

Caught MJ One over the weekend, let me know what you think of it. There were parts that were awesome and then some parts that were ehhh.

I hope y’all have a great trip! At 40 my wife and I have found that we don’t recover from the late nights as well as we used to. A trip that short would allow us one late night and a day to recover enough for the plane ride back.lol

Good luck in the pits!

Have a blast. My husband and I go a few times a year and are heading to Vegas Friday for five days. We will snowboard at Lee Canyon Saturday and Sunday and play poker the rest of the time. We are a bit older, though (50 and 52), but we drink a lot and always stay up too late

Cosmo is a fantastic hotel and Absinthe is amazing (as long as nothing offends you or your wife!). Enjoy first class, too. We always start off with champagne if they have it -- no matter what time the flight leaves!

Looking forward to the TR. I hope I can make myself write one.

I salute your desire to stay up all night partying. The first time my wife and I got away from the kids, we just slept 14 hours a night.

Looking forward to the TR!

I saw the MJ and Beatles shows on the same trip a few years ago and Beatles Love was far and away better I thought.

If you like absinthe I’d Recommend Opium at the Cosmo. I went to a 10pm earlier this month. It was def a trip. Not as good as absinthe but a relatively short show that’s a good time and has a 10pm performance

What's with the show names? The next new one going to be Oxycontin?

Got to the airport this morning anticipating crazy long TSA times, as has been typical flying out of the local airport as of late. Was surprised to see it was only 1 lane long, but of course after sitting for 20 minutes we are all redirected to go through the dog sniffing lane. It’s true what they say, if you keep low expectations you’re rarely disappointed

Sat down for a quick breakfast and had a crazy strong Bloody Mary.
[IMG]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LcF-OBh8X_4ZN0mj6tkAIP8zUYJsPXTw/view?
usp=drivesdk[/IMG]

Now it’s go time!

Had to figure out how to post images... let's try that bloody mary again

Would love to know how and why the shoes thing started with TR's...

Day 1:

We land around 3PM LV time. Mccarran is a funny place as a Vegas tourist... as soon as I step off that plane and see the slots, there's this feeling of pure excitement that comes over me, even on my 10th trip to Vegas.

The way home is always different. The feels are generally somewhere on the spectrum between "Do I have to go back home?" and "GET ME THE **** OUT OF HERE"... I've been on both sides of it. Hoping for the good ones.

We don't have a checked bag so we head immediately to the taxi line. It is cold as **** and I immediately regret not brining a jacket. I generally like cold weather and I live in FL, so a jacket is almost never required. I originally had booked the Bellagio, but had remembered hearing a lot of good things about Cosmo, so after some research I switched reservations. There was a point where I was trying to rank up my mlife comps, but we couldn't keep it up since we couldn't go as often. I'm glad we switched; our cabby drops us off at the Cosmo and we're instantly wow'ed. I immediately wonder why we had never been to this casino. What was I thinking before?

The check in line was huge, but they had every counter open. Unfortunately the line moved pretty slow, and as usual I didn't pay attention and wound up behind a couple that was easily in their 80s and took forever to finish checking in. We get up there and the gentlemen at checkout starts some standard friendly conversation and proceeds to offer upgrade options. There was no way we were gonna be in the room often enough to make an upgrade worth it, but this was the perfect moment for the $20 trick. I told him "how about I just give you $40 and maybe we can get the terrace wraparound?" (we had the terrace studio fountain view). $40 was good enough to get us into the terrace one bedroom with fountain view. Worth it IMO.

Day 1 continued...

Day 1 continued...

At this point I'm ready to hit the tables, but I'm also starving and boy does my wife get hangry if she doesn't get food. We abandon our original plans to avoid fine dining and decide to check out STK, the steak house in cosmo.

Whenever I go to a steak house I prepare myself for disappointment, I grill/smoke a lot of meat and have gotten pretty picky about my beef. Don't get me wrong, the steak is almost always great, just way over priced. Since we're in Vegas, I expect it to be waaaaay overpriced. But **** it, when in rome...

I order the aged ribeye and my wife orders the filet, we get fries and creamed spinach for sides. Steaks were good, she ruined hers as usual by getting it medium, mine was good but of course, way over priced. $225 for dinner with no drinks :O. I'd eat there again if someone really wanted to go there, but there's no way I'd go back without a great reason. But my tank is full and I'm ready to hit the tables.

On the way down my wife stops to take a picture by the chandelier and gets a few onlookers, one of the reasons she likes vegas is she can dress super fancy and show a little skin and it's A-OK.

At this point it's probably around 5PM IIRC. We have tickets to Absinthe at 7, so we only have an hour to gamble for the first go. I opt for blackjack since there's a real possibility of me blowing off the show if the craps table gets hot. We sit down at the $25 table by ourselves. I have a couple vodka+tonics and they seem to be really weak. I'm throwing them down and really not feeling anything (I'm a big guy and have a good tolerance but come on, these things weren't doing anything). Blackjack is going ok, we're up about $200 and some kid sits down mid shoe and starts doing all the worst things, hitting 13 vs 6, you know the drill. He leaves after 3 hands (winning of course) and it goes downhill from there. We play for a while longer, probably down about $400 with the two of us playing, and me betting anywhere from $25-$100. My wife is actually running better than I am and I'm starting to get annoyed that she won't up her bet a bit. Before the dealer can deal the next hand, I swap her $25 out for a $100 and she laughingly freaks out and starts to get nervous. Just like some **** in the movies, she gets 2-2 against a 6, another 2 for the 3 way split, and doubles one of them. Dealer busts! We play for a little bit longer and end up +$400.

We walk to up Ceasers to grab our tickets from the box office and since it's pretty cold outside and I'm not really dressed for it, we hang out inside of Ceasers. That proved to be a bad decision since the only table I could find was $50 BJ and I ran like a one legged fat man while my wife did whatever on social media. -$800 in that quick massacre, -$400 for the trip.

So, I've seen a good amount of the shows in Vegas (all the Cirques except Ka and MJ One which we see tomorrow), and I've heard Absinthe is amazing so I have high expectations. The tent is pretty small which is a nice change from the massive venues the Cirques are held in. We're right in the middle on an end row, and the guy next to me is attempting to man-spread and occupy all the space around him. Not happening. We play our little game and we end up with the space we're supposed to be in. Good. Then, with the show about to start and 2 empty seats in our row, 2 HUGE guys show up and we're all basically sharing chairs once they sit down. Not fun.

The show however, is amazing. The acts for the most part are pretty standard (the gorilla one was pretty original) but you have a much better view. The real highlight is the comedy between the host/sidekick. It's absolutely a must see unless you're easily offended or don't like sexual content, it's about as crude as it gets. And don't sit in the front row unless you're ready to get messed with.

After the show we head back to Cosmo and hit the craps tables. It was a $25 minimum which is higher than I wanted to play, my style of craps gets expensive. I like to take max odds on pass, a couple come bets with max odds and maybe buy the 10/4, since my wife just takes 6/8/pass. Ideally I have 2k+ for a $15 table. But, we're here, and I'm not leaving Cosmo again so we go with it. It starts off break even then I go on a pretty solid roll, I hit 3 points with a ton of numbers in between, and there were a few other great rolls before the table fizzled out and we called it a night around midnight up $550 and +$150 for the trip.

We wanted to stay up later but we realized it's just not gonna happen and with the table dying, better to get decent sleep and get a solid day in tomorrow.

Day 2: Migraines, mexichinese and craps with xzibit!

To be continued..

Almost forgot: the panoramic view from our room

Here you go best of luck 🍀

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...omise-1299834/


Live TR: 2/16 - 2/18. With Pictures. I Promise. (Riverman)

2/12/13

The reason obligatory pics of shoes are required for LVL TR's.
“I have spent the last several weeks reflecting upon the utter rubbish that has been my trip reports on this forum. They have been absolutely awful, generally picless and devoid of details. That all changes this weekend.”

That panoramic should go in a frame!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Your missus has a great set of pins

Day 2

Traveling with my wife can be complicated sometimes. She gets migraines very frequently and can rarely sleep in different beds.

Right on queue, around 12 AM her headache starts, and is a full blown migraine by 1. Luckily she carries some migraine meds with her everywhere, but she only had 2 and we needed to get through a whole day in Vegas and a whole day of travel. She tried to get by with half, but it didn’t do anything, so around 10 AM she took the other half. No sleep for her either.

Around 11 I darken the room completely so she can let the pill kick in and go downstairs for biscuits/coffee from starbucks. The line is surprisingly short and fast moving. I bring the stuff up to the room and try to find something on TV, she says “What are you doing? Go play” I tell her I didn’t want to leave her by herself, to which she replies “Don’t be stupid, we’re in Vegas for a day and a half. I’ll be down when the pill kicks in.”

There are times to be stubborn, and times to concede. This was a time to concede if I’ve ever seen one.

I hit the ATM for another 1k (I pulled out 1k on day 1) since we had a whole day ahead of us, even though we were basically even.

I head straight to craps and the tables are deserted. Not a good sign, but sometimes I just like to roll uninterrupted. I buy in for 1.5k and within 10 minutes I’m down to 800. Not a single point/come bet hits. I even try dark siding for one point, and of course that’s the one time my point hits. I decide to go to blackjack. Historically that’s been the game where I make my money on the trips where I don’t lose my ass.

I sit down on the $25 table but am playing $50 a hand because I’m a little tilted. It starts out roughly even but then my initial stack of 800 is down to 500. I drop to $25.

I play for about 30 more minutes and we get a couple of hot shoes (minus a triple split aces that was a total bust), bringing me back to roughly $800 again. I start betting black chips and get back to $1300, and decide to go back to craps.

The table is still crappy so I decide I’m just gonna play pass line with 2x odds until something changes, I didn’t really feel like playing blackjack. Eventually it starts to pick up, there was a family on the right where the girls who looked freshly 21 didn’t know how to play and their dad was telling them what was happening. One of the girls went on a pretty nice roll and it kicked things off, I think she hit 4 or 5 points? I was hitting come bets as well so I started betting $5 for the dealers on the pass line whenever we hit a point. After she crapped out, the next 2 people had solid rolls. I keep tipping the dealers, so of course they’re being extra friendly/thankful. The dice come my way and I go on a 6 point roll, and the table is starting to load up the money. At this point I’m up around $1500 for the day and have probably tipped out $60 easily. Sometime after my roll a dude and his lady walk up to the table and he has on the biggest gold chain I’ve ever seen. I figure it’s probably some dude that played football or something that I just don’t recognize because helmets or whatever. After around 30 minutes the guy who runs the table (can’t remember the proper name) comes over to me and whispers “you know who that is right? That’s xzibit!” I’m not one to get starstruck but it’s pretty cool that he was down here with the common folk shooting dice. He was a cool dude and BS’ed with everyone, took pictures with whoever wanted one. He was betting $50+ on the hard ways and maxing out the pass line. Points were hitting, but not hardways, so I think he ended up leaving maybe up a little bit.
At this point my wife comes in and she grabs $300 greens off me. She plays pass line with 1x/2x odds and places 6 and 8 (she knows pass line odds is the best, it’s just the way she plays), so I start buying 4/10 and 5/9 if we’ve hit a point or 2. Everything is going our way at this point, points/come bets keep hitting, my 4 keeps hitting, she’s nailing 6/8. Drinks are still weak, my wife doesn’t drink so I can order 2 at a time and I’m barely even buzzed (doesn’t say much about how much I drink, unfortunately), but I don’t care, it’s nice to have my wits when I’m up a bunch.

We have tickets to MJ one at 7, so around 5 color up and I tip out another $25. Easily $125 in tips total, and we were up around $2k after being down $1k at the low point. Nice swing! We change clothes and decide to check out a quicker food option, so we hit up the chinese/mexican food place on the 2nd floor. The guac was great, I had some dumplings which were good, and the tuna ceviche was I wasn’t a big fan of. My wife loved her tacos.

After dinner we talk down to the Excalibur tram to Mandalay. Excalibur was my first vegas casino trip, with $80 to my name and a fake ID when I was 19. I think that $80 lasted me 30 minutes! I always wished they would do a heavy renovation there, I’m a sucker for the themed casinos and I think it’s pretty cool looking on the outside. I have a good internal chuckle about 19 year old me with my $80 and get on the tram.

At the Mandalay it’s impossible to not think about what happened there for a moment, but I push it out of my head. I notice the shark reef is closing, I’ve heard business has been bad and it’s definitely reflected in the room rates. The casino has a decent number of people in it though. For some reason I never liked how open it was, even though that should be considered a benefit. I grab one of those super tourist slushy drinks before the show and get a few shots added to it. I’m determined to have more than just a buzz at some point this trip.

MJ One was pretty awesome. If you like Cirque and Michael Jackson, it’s a must see. If you’re a huge fan of either, unless you just don’t like Jackson’s music at all.



We Uber back to Cosmo. Our Uber driver tries to convince me to take some free weed dispensary voucher things which I have no interest in. I used to smoke a lot, but I joined the military and after I got out I couldn’t get back into it. My drug of choice is Alcohol.

At this point my wifes pills are starting to wear off but she wants to play craps again. We jump in to the right of a couple guys who maybe have $100 between them both on the table. One of the guys is married to the others sister. We play for a bit and xzibit comes back to the table, same spot he was at earlier, the 2 guys freak out about it. One of them is on my immediate left, my roll is **** and he’s up. He has a $15 dollar pass line bet and $15 left. He hits 3 or 4 7/11s before hitting a 6 to set up the point, good start. This dude keeps nailing hard 8s, I don’t play hardways, but my wife has 8 and refuses to press the bet so I start pressing it for her. He’s hitting my come bets, but no points. The hardways and 8s keep hitting and xzibit and the dude across from me have $200+ on each hardway and close to 1k on the 8. The table is loaded with money, and he hasn’t hit a single point yet. There’s probably $800 on hard 6, and everyone is pressing their pass line… it never its, but everything else is paying out. We find out his name is Will and everyone's screaming at him, I haven’t played craps for long and this is the longest/craziest roll I’ve ever seen. Will only has $15 on the table and is making no money, I throw out a hard 6 and pass line bet for him. At this point the dealers have major bets going for them (I’ve been doing my standard $5 pass line dealer bet most of the night). Of course he eventually craps out and the guy across from me won huge pressing his 8 and gives Will $250 which was pretty cool. I probably made around 1k off it but in retrospect I should’ve made more. I didn’t press my bets enough and didn’t press my wife's 8 enough, but it’s all good. The table stays pretty good for a while minus one annoying guy, we all have fun messing with Will and his family, and eventually it fizzles. My wifes headache is too much to handle now so we head up for the night around 11.

I try to sneak a pic of X without being too obvious:



Some of the amounts I said we won or lost were probably off a bit since I didn’t take notes but we definitely ended the trip +$2400. I spend 30 minutes roughly eating a bag of doritos on the balcony and smoking a cigarette I bummed from someone (I’m super happy keeping it to 1 smoke for 2 days in Vegas). For a minute I stare at the RIO and think about the last time I was in vegas, which was a disaster. I went to play the WSOP main event by myself and my wallet got stolen right before day 2 started in the RIO halls, you can imagine how great vegas is with no money and no ID. I brush that off and take in the strip, then head to bed.




Overall it was a great trip. We have to be at the airport at 5:30 AM for our flight, but I don’t care. We had a ton of fun, won some money, and even my wife wants to come back soon! If only it wasn't such a far/expensive flight from Florida. I think we'll definitely be coming back to Cosmo, hopefully I played enough to get a free night or something

Great stuff, thanks for sharing.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...16/?highlight=

Great view!

Great report, thanks!

Awesome TR. I also love Cosmo and craps.