arrived Friday night, decent line for cabs. (i love the cab line on a friday night. lots of people already dressed for the club is great).

gave the lady at the counter at Mandalay $40 (checking in to 2 room) and said "two close together would be great). Got upgraded to THE hotel. (niteside, props to you for the "no need to ask for an upgrade" info.)

good crowd at Mandalay friday night. ate at Strip Steak, which I highly recommend. Michael Mina does not dissapoint.

place was dead on Saturday. got a table in the book for college football watching 30 minutes before the first kickoff. ladies headed to the Forum Shops.

lunch at Burger Bar, then went over to check out the new Planet Hollywood. much nicer than I expected.

dinner at Yellowtail Sushi. excellent food. bellagio had an okay crowd saturday night.

watched the Texans at Mandalay. those are the best games to watch at a book. place goes nuts. couldn't watch the entire Cowboy game due to flight back.

summary: the reported "Vegas is struggling" is true for now. But they sure are building as if they don't expect it to last.

I'm sorry, but what is the "no need to ask for an upgrade"? I'm going next month and would love to know.

http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1058785&forum_id=54

There is the link from the Vegas thread about hotels. Read through it to find Niteside's posts.

temple: there is a website dedicated to telling you whether people get a room upgrade when tipping the person $20 at check in.

http://www.thetwentydollartrick.com/

i'm the kind of person that does not feel comfortable asking for an upgrade as I hand the person $20

niteside posted on another thread that you shoudl just hand them the money & not ask for anything. I took his advice & it worked.

Most reception people know the gig. Just hand them your driver's license and credit card with a $20 folded conspicuously between them. It's worked 5/6 times for me, and the one time it didn't she handed the $20 back with my credit card.

I was in Vegas for the weekend for a friends wedding. Had an excellent time but its not a place i would want to visit every year.

Although we aren't televised every week (might be a good thing), those of you headed to Vegas that want to watch the Ags play with other similar poor souls can join our watch parties. We meet at Indigo Joe's for every televised game. There are nearly 400 Ags in Vegas believe it or not, and we have a great local club.

aginLV:

do locals use the books at the big casinos?

It seemed like Mandalay was jam packed Sunday morning before kickoff and then cleared out rather quickly.

I don't like the big casinos, personally. You can get just fine odds off the strip -- the Hilton usually is decent, the Station casinos aren't bad.

Convenience for me trumps 1/2 point, I go to Red Rock Casino since its a mile from the house. They usually have great lines anyways. They also have a program for locals where you set up an account and you can place your bets online. You have to have local ID, and can only place bets if you are in the state.

Some of the smaller casinos offer better payouts on parlays, but I have moved away from those anyhow.

quote:

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But they sure are building as if they don't expect it to last.

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That complex going up there now just a ways up from the Mandalay Bay is unreal. It is like they are building an entire downtown business district all at once.

BMX...glad it worked...WOW, THE Hotel...you done good. I've been wanting to stay there. Is it worth it?

There are a few Casinos where the registration folks are discouraged from the practice...but very few. All have somebody watching them, just like the Dealers do. Most don't even really require a tip. but as I usually tell them, "hell, I tip everybody in Vegas...why not you."

But each Casino/Hotel has one over-riding factor...they want you to be happy and especially NOW with things such as they are, with the economy being down. If the better rooms are available, which they most surely are right now, they are more than happy to take a few bucks from you and make you a happy camper. You are still probably going to pay some amount more for the better room, but it's not a "deal breaker" generally in my experince.

THESE ARE NOT THE "WHALE" ROOMS...don't think that's what your getting, but be happy, these upgrades are generally a pretty sweet deal.

AGNLV...I love Red Rock...best looking bar tenders I ever saw, at every station. The BBQ place from Austin ain't bad either. Last time I was there I saw the whole team from that Vegas series about Green Valley Ranch...evidently a bunch moveed over there to get it going. Would love to stay there, but it's a bit far from all the show action of the Strip for me.

BTW...if anyone looking for something to put your money in...stocks of Vegas are depressed and now is a good time to by in. They almost never have a Dividend, but can rocket up so high so fast you can make a fortune just buying low and selling high. I would recomend WYNN and Sands...both are in major deals with Macow(sp)... Front group for Chinese GOV....they are building major properties in Asia and nobody gambles like they do...good way to get back some American money.

Probably stay away from MGM and Harrahs. MGM is just going into too much debt with that silly City Center deal and while I love to stay and gamble with them, their stock has never done much...Harrahs I've made some money off of, but since their purchase I don't know where they are going. Boyd Gaming is OK stock as well.

Best of all...IGT..International Gaming Teck....if you have a Casino anywhere in the world, at some point they will be doing business with these guys.
Everybody is down right now. I bought in just after 9-11 and saw my value grow, double, triple, 4X in less than a year. I of course sold out at the High...lol

Dang...wish I was going to Vegas, but I'm headed off the Gettysburg to fillup on my other passion, the Civil War. Thought I'd bone up on it as I wonder at the possiblites of another one.

Just some additional info on the gaming stocks. Wynn's Encore will open in December by all accounts. It can't be much of a worse time to open, but should recover fine.

Boyd Gaming recently suspended the Echelon Project ($5 billion dollar resort) at the old Sands location. They are about a bill into it, and have said they will revisit the project in 9 months to a year. I think its a good thing that they will open with a gap after City Center. Although in this market it wouldn't shock me at this point for them to walk away.

For as much stuff that's going on in Vegas right now, there is A LOT of money on the sidelines as well.

From reports I'm getting, gaming is down. My dad went to Vegas recently and he said it was dead and he went on a weekend. LDL in Lake Charles was sparse last weekend. Economy and huricanes.

AgInLV,

I read today that foreclosures are abundant in LV. Do you see this being the case?

The thing is...economies (well OURS) will always recover and...people will always gamble if they have money....even if they don't.

Possibly pretty craven of me to make money off it, but if you want in on the almost certain Vegas "re-birth" now is probably the time. Because...you will probably never make money off Vegas stocks in the way of Dividends...it's strickly a buy low-sell high deal.
In my mind,if you like to gamble at the table on on the Stock Market, Vegas is probably the surest bet going.

Foreclosures are quite abundant out here but you better go inside the houses to see them for yourself. The banks that own a lot of them don't put any money into making them look nice... when I was buying a house out here I went in a few places with food still in the fridge from 2 months ago, holes in the walls, etc. You'll easily spend as much money fixing the place up.

I wish I was closer to Vegas....I could go gamble and forget about this last week's market performance.

Lots and lots of foreclosures. Recent numbers indicate a significant reduction in inventory over the last 8-12 months. That's a good sign. It will be a while before housing starts to move back up but I think the bottom is fairly close. That's my completely uneducated opinion though. We bought a little over a year ago and I know we can't go anywhere for some time.

hey niteside, sent you a pm