Pre-trip notes: Leaving wed morning for thanksgiving with family in Nashville, coming back on Sunday morning, then I leave solo for Vegas Sunday night.
No matter how much I planned ahead for this trip, something always has to go wrong. The day before we left for Nashville, our LG refrigerator broke (4 years old). Called a same day service repairman, and he said he could fix it - for $1,000. Long story short, it's two weeks later, and we still don't have a refrigerator and they have worked over 20 hours on it - still trying, but I ordered another refrigerator today (NOT AN LG this time!)
I have five dogs and three cats. One was born with only three legs, and also has Adison's disease, so she needs medicine every morning, and she wasn't taken care of properly last trip by my dog sitter - so we decided to take her with us to Nashville. Another dog is a 1 year old standard party poodle and she had acquired a taste of our very expensive leather sectional - tore off a side, and holes in four cushions - so she is now spending a lot of time in her kennel. For the Nashville leg of my trip, I decided to put her in a pet hotel (The Pawza). She just graduated from training school, but still needs a lot of supervision!

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SUNDAY - DAY ONE OF VEGAS TRIP:
Flew back in to Houston at noon, hour drive home with husband, emptied suitcases, washed clothes then re packed for 7 days in Vegas. Picked up doggy from pet hotel at 2 (she was real mad at me, first time away for her...). Hour drive back to airport, then off to Vegas!

Staying at the Mirage because the "purpose" of my trip was for a 6 day CPA conference, which was also at the Mirage. Turns out there was also an Amazon web convention there too - thousands of them. Lots of geeks in this hotel (I can say that cause I guess I'm one of them...:{)
I don't stay there often, but i do have a pretty good host there. He put me up in a nice suite for 7 days, $750 resort credit, and $1,000 freeplay Plus gave me an extra room for my friend that was coming in with my husband on Friday. Only took a couple of pics of the room, nothing real special - but had a his and hers bathrooms (bathtub in one, and shower in other). It was the first time I'd been in a room with the TV coming out of a chest at the foot of the bed though! Still prefer Aria sky suites, Cosmo suites, or Bellagio suites over this one.

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One thing that was severely lacking at the Mirage was the room service. It came in a sack!

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First night of gambling, nothing to write home about - think i blew through about $1,000. I won $1400 total on a penny buffalo machine, but promptly gave it all back to $1 Cleopatra.

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Monday - managed to sit through 8 hours of lectures - may have actually learned a thing or two! Monday night - won $1500 total on quarter Cleo and $1200 on quarter Super Times pay, then $1,000 on 5 cent Cleo (no W2s).

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Then I moved over to $1 triple play TDB, wheel bonus machines. My first spin - I got 4 aces and wheel bonus for a total of $1095 - still no W2 (winning!). Exactly 11 minutes on the same machine, I drew 4s with a kicker and won $2k - my first W2 of the night. Moved to the machine on the other side, and thirty minutes later got my first Royal of the trip!

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Managed to make it to class the next morning, but left very early and took a much needed nap! Went to Cosmo Tuesday night and couldn't find anything that wanted to pay me or even keep my interest - very disappointed- not my night there.... went to bed at a decent hour - down a few thousand...

By the way, I'm such a degenerate gambler, even though I had classes every day from 8 to 4:30, I slipped out during every break and lunch for some quickies with Buffalo and Cleo! It was the only way to keep my sanity and stay awake!

Played at Mirage without much luck until about 1:41 am, then I hit a $2k jackpot (2s with a kicker) on the same machine I had won the Royal on two days before! Went to bed happy!

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By this time, I had $5k locked up in the safe, and had $1k to take with me to Aria on Thursday night. I like triple power and power keno there, plus of course, all the Cleo machines. Couldn't get much working, and quickly blew through my $1k, so I had to go to the cage and draw a $1k marker instead of going all the way back to my safe at the Mirage. The first machine I sat at with my renewed $1k bankroll was 25 cent Cleo, and quickly won a jackpot of $1,370!

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I don't think the ink was yet dry on my marker, so I didn't pay it back immediately. Blew through several hundred dollars and had to assure my husband who kept calling me that I still had some of that bankroll for him when he got in to town in a couple of days (you will see the irony of this later).
Lost about $1500, so I no longer could pay back my marker. About that time I had over 15 drinks in me, and no dinner, so I said "fu*k it", go big or go home. Went to power keno and played for a couple of hours until I was $2000 up. Payed off my marker and went back to Mirage even for the night! All this time my husband was texting, worried about how much I had in the safe, and warning me to take it easy!

Friday morning, my husband and his friend flew in. I was already fed up with the CPA classes, so by that time I was just checking in at 8 and checking out at 4:30. Had all the manuals downloaded, so I could go over the material later (yeah right). Once they got checked in, we pretty much emptied the mini bar and accosted the refill lady in the hall and got lots of extras of our favorites! So I give my husband $1k to play on, which is what I was trying to limit myself to per day. Within two hours he had blown through that and $4,000 of his marker. Dead broke and following me around with his hand out!!! He never left the high limit area, and was having so much fun with friends and not paying attention to what he was doing! Gets him every time - just wish he would practice what he preaches.....
The guys were too busy talking and losing money, so three of us girls decided to eat at Stacks. Sorry, I never remember to take pictures of my food, so no food porn. It was very good though!
Right after that, I went back to my favorite video poker machine that I had already won a Royal Flush and another $2k jackpot - and got another Royal! Couldn't believe it!

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Saturday morning, I got a call from another Vegas board member (or Vegas Fanatics, can't remember!) NiteShade. So I met up with her after finishing breakfast. She was real nice and we enjoyed playing a lot of penny machines at Mirage for a while. Then my crew decided to go to NYNY, and she decided to go with us! She's a penny player and I'm a dollar player, so after a while one of us wasn't happy! I know everyone in the high limit bar and also knew a lot of the high limit regulars playing there - so I wanted to hang out there, while Niteshade wanted to play pennies - neither one of us were doing good, so we took a cab back to our mutual hotels. A couple hours later, my husband and I went back to NYNY (our friends were still there). We were both bleeding money, and had to take out $4k markers there. I did win one jackpot of $1800 on my favorite "double top dollar" machine, but that was it. Forgot to take a picture!

Back at the Mirage, my husband went to bed, while my friends and their wives played BlackJack. Did pretty well until the tables cooled off drastically. They went to play Pai Gow, which is way too boring for me! So I played around until I was near broke, then slowly crawled my way back up to $1500 for the day (so still a loss for the day).

Sunday, last day - we decided to go to Dupar's for breakfast - one of my friend's first time, so we had to take him there! It was fabulous as usual. Back to the hotel, and we messed around on pennies until the limo was there to take us back to airport.
Overall, a great trip, but as always - too short for me, and too long for my bankroll! Thanks for reading!

 

Great report, thanks for sharing! You hit some really big ones this trip. That Cleo should have paid you $20k!

 

Great trip write up Bresnan. Do you remember the name of the suite? Thanks

 

I have had some good luck on those wheel VP machines at Mirage as well. In fact it's the only place that I've hit a royal, although I did it on the wheel bonus, so I'm not sure if that counts or not?

I've also stayed in the "suite" you're in. I told my host after that trip, that I'd rather stay in a Tower King if I'm not getting a real suite. That room is just strange. You just basically a normal room, except you have a gigantic, pointless foyer, and two bathrooms. I'd rather have the Tower King and not waste any extra comps. Conversely their real suites are nice, but that room is just dumb IMO.

 

That one is just called a "Mirage Suite". The good suites will all reference a # of bedrooms, except the Hospitality suite which is nice. I've stayed in every type of room except the Lanai Villas. Mirage Suite is little more than a glorified basic room.

 

Yeah! But it sure wasn't from lack of trying!!

 

Yeah, I've had much nicer, and also much worse! I didn't expect much more since I was staying 7 days and was solo for 5 days. It was pretty outdated and the layout was awful, but since I was winning, I didn't stay in the room much at all!

 

Thanks for sharing--great report.

 

Your poodle looks so proud of herself.