Prelude: So as I mentioned here:

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, as soon as I got home from my golf trip on Tuesday night, I only had to wait until Sunday to return to Vegas once again. This trip came about when I noticed two things: One, my daughter had the entire week of Thanksgiving off from school, and Two, myVEGAS had special two-night hotel rewards available for the traditionally slow portions of November and December. My wife and daughter had never stayed at NYNY, so it seemed like a good option, especially during non-pool season, because their pool area has always looked a little lacking to me.

We booked the two-night reward for Sunday and Monday nights and then grabbed a few other rewards to use during the trip: $25 in freeplay at NYNY for my wife, a free Jell-O shot for my wife, a BOGO meal at Wolfgang Puck’s Cucina in Crystals, and a Starbucks 2-for-1 reward on my account, which is actually just a $10 voucher for anything at whichever NYNY Starbucks you prefer. My wife and I each also nabbed some Stations properties rewards for free bowling games and a free drink at Santa Fe Station.

The plan for this trip was just to get away for a couple days, relax and play things by ear. We didn’t really have any big grand plan, except for the activities mentioned above.

Join us!

 

Day One: Sunday, November 20, 2016

We left home a little later than desired, made our traditional lunch stop at Barstow Station McDonald’s and arrived at NYNY probably around 3:30. We self parked and descended the escalator near the arcade down to the reception desk, only to find a gigantic line that snaked all the way around the corner and halfway down a hallway. For about five seconds, I was really disappointed and sorta pissed. But then as soon as we found the end of the line, cheerful employees walked up and handed each of us a NYNY branded bottle of water and apologized for the inconvenience. Immediately following them was a friendly bellhop asking us if he could relieve us of our bags, which we appreciated but said we were fine. I was impressed! Sure, the line was frustratingly long, but they were handling it beautifully.

And then, the capper! A well-dressed, peppy management-type guy emerged from the VIP check-in office and approached us directly.

“You checking in?”
“Yeah.”
“Follow me.”

He whisked us into the VIP area and despite his managerial out-of-touch rustiness checking in guests, got us all set in a matter of minutes! We were given room 2020 with a great view of the Trop/MGM/Excalibur corner, and the airport beyond! We were all pretty much blown away by the responsiveness of the NYNY staff to the overflowing check-in line. To their credit, they also had representatives with iPads talking to people in line, which I’m assuming somehow streamlined the check-in process once those people reached the desk. Bravo, NYNY!

The room was a standard queen room, but pretty nice, with the aforementioned view. We looked around, fetched some ice and poured some drinks, and then decided to go check out the brand new Lucky Dragon hotel casino that had opened one day prior.

The only hiccup from the great service we received at check-in is that the VIP manager guy didn’t set up our parking correctly, presumably because all of the guests he deals with have comped parking anyway. Our room key wouldn’t let us out of the lot, but a parking lot attendant was able to call someone who asked us to simply return to the front desk when we returned to get it figured out.

We arrived at Lucky Dragon to find the parking garage quite full. I didn’t know much about the property going in, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but its smallness immediately struck me when we walked in. The casino is maybe the size of Downtown Grand’s casino, or smaller. The giant dragon chandelier is pretty cool, hanging directly over the center of the circular casino. And the place was smoky as hell, especially for only being open one day so far! Ugh. I like the overall aesthetic of the place, though.

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We then walked across the porte cochere to the hotel side of the facility. There’s an indoor tea room adjacent to the lobby, and the pool area was visually striking if not all that functional. It looked as if the pool was no more than 2.5 feet deep at any point, and it’s quite a small pool anyhow. The wall across from the pool has a cool mural.

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Dragon view from the second floor:

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And from what we could tell, that was about all there is to see at Lucky Dragon. Given the location, the lack of activities other than gambling, and the smokiness, I doubt I’d ever been drawn to staying there. But I do like the look of the place quite a bit. Hopefully they succeed.

We took the Strip back to NYNY and were ready for dinner. I’ve always wanted to try Fulton Fish Frye (why the e?), so we set our sights on it for an inexpensive dinner. Better yet, they had some sort of “family meal” package that included a bit of pretty much everything on the menu – fried fish, chicken planks, fries, hush puppies, popcorn shrimp and cole slaw. We found a seat on those “streets of NY” that wind through the various eateries at NYNY and… well, I enjoyed our meal. I thought everything was pretty good, but both my wife and daughter were not impressed. The french fries were by far the best of it, really cooked perfectly and with a sprinkled with a tasty spice mixture.

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My daughter was thrilled to be staying at NYNY, and whenever we’d ask her why, she’d reply, “BECAUSE IT’S A HOTEL WITH A CHOCOLATE FACTORY IN IT!,” recalling her visits to the Hershey’s store from previous trips. So she was eager to return there for some after-dinner snacks. While trying to decide what to buy for dessert, we spied their ice cream counter touting “Hershey’s BEST EVER Chocolate Milkshake.” Well, that type of marketing hyperbole quickly won us over and we decided on a shake for dessert. It was something like $6.95, or you could get one twice as big and in an ugly souvenir cup for like $13. We settled for the small, and it was a thing of beauty:

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However, the taste fell far short of the BEST EVER promise. It had sort of an odd consistency, like maybe it wasn’t real ice cream, and it tasted very generically chocolate, not even that distinctive Hershey’s syrup flavor. Oh well. It wasn’t terrible, but I hoped for something better. It only rubbed salt in that wound when we took it outside past Shake Shack, which has delicious chocolate shakes, to go view The Park all decked out for Christmas.

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My daughter was shocked to hear that my wife and I have seen Zumanity, due to the racy ads all through NYNY. But that didn't stop her from doing this:

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After nearly freezing ourselves to the bone in The Park, we finished out the night buying our daughter a souvenir inside Stupidiotic, which is always sorta fun to browse around at their unique selection of trinkets, toys and gag gifts. At this point my wife was getting tired and said she wasn’t going to gamble, so I escorted them up to the room and then went back down to begin gambling. I lost $25 playing nickel DDB with nothing to show for it, and then retreated to bed myself.

 

Day Two: Monday, November 21, 2016

We’d pulled the blackout curtains tight the night before, so I was shocked to realize it was actually light out when I looked at my phone around 6:45 Monday morning. I figured it was still the middle of the night. I tried to go back to sleep, but I soon realized that wasn’t gonna happen, so I decided to go walk around while my wife and daughter slept some more.

It was an absolutely gorgeous Las Vegas morning!

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One thing I didn’t realize the night before was that there’s a public ice rink set up in Toshiba Plaza, adjacent to T-Mobile Arena. It looks pretty cool with the Monte Carlo backdrop:

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Here was our view from our room, by the way. Pink hue due to the NYNY skyline building we were in:

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Oddly, by about 30 minutes after I first emerged out onto the Strip, clouds had rolled in and a beautiful morning had turned into a grey, ugly morning. The weather forecast said it was probably going to stay that way for most of the day, so my wife and I ruled out one option we’d considered for today: a return to Valley of Fire. Instead, we decided to get ready and go bowling at Santa Fe Station.

We each redeemed our myVEGAS rewards, took turns going to fetch our drinks from the casino bar (vodka tonic for my wife, an excellent Bloody Mary for me) and checked in to do some bowling. We each had two free games, so we paid for two children’s games and our shoes and were assigned to my lucky number from roulette for our lane, 11. We rarely bowl (mostly in Vegas, it seems) but it was a lot of fun.

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We then got some food from the food court to take back to NYNY – a Caprioti’s Italian sub for my wife and I to split, and Fatburger for our daughter. That Capriotti’s sub is one of my favorites anywhere.

After we ate in our room, we headed down to the NYNY arcade for a while. It’s surprisingly huge! From the front, it looks sorta small but then each room seems to lead to more rooms and the roller coaster entrance is somewhere back there, too. My daughter had a blast and earned enough tickets to buy a bunch of small toys from the redemption desk.

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Still full from lunch, we called Cucina to push our 7:00 reservation back to 8:00, and my wife went down and did her first gambling of the trip. She redeemed her $25 freeplay and turned it and a $20 bill into a TITO for around $30, while playing for an hour or so. It was becoming pretty evident that our best luck of the trip was that incredible check-in experience.

We opted to walk down the Strip to Crystals for dinner, which was sorta fun. There were Christmas carolers singing out in front of NYNY, which was cool. Crystals, too, was all decked out for xmas, with a giant, presumably fake tree due to its all-too-perfect symmetry.

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We actually got seated at Cucina in a great booth overlooking this tree, and began perusing the menu.

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My wife opted for the Veal Scallopini, I went for the Sea Bass, and our daughter chose a pizza off the kids menu. We also ordered the burrata Caprese starter. All of the food was delicious, however the service was seriously lacking most of the night, in a restaurant that looked to be about one-third full. Our initial water took about 10 minutes to be poured after it was offered, our daughter’s meal was delivered at the same time as our appetizer, no one ever inquired about our satisfaction with our meals once they were served, and then at the end I had to request a dessert menu from our waiter instead of it being offered. Pretty disappointing. But the food was absolutely delicious. The lemon caper butter sauce on my sea bass and broccolini was out of this world, and I savored every bite. My wife’s veal scallopini was very rich and tasty. My daughter’s pizza was everything you’d expect from a Wolfgang Puck pie - great crust simultaneously light and chewy, cooked perfectly.

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It was chilly that week in Vegas, so after dinner we hustled back to NYNY along the Strip. Again my wife was tired and ready to retire for the evening, so I got a chance to go lose more money. Which I did! I hit this lone quad but lost another $40 or so on the night. I know my gambling is ultra low rolling, but this pattern I’m in is still very frustrating. When I read about Royal Flusher drilling “test holes” I can barely understand that idea right now, because I never hit ANYTHING right out of the gate. For six losing trips in a row, it feels like I’m way down before I finally get any return, especially the last few trips. Oh well.

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That was it for day two.

 

Day Three: Tuesday, November 22, 2016

We awoke Tuesday morning to beautiful blue skies, and the forecast today said it would remain that way all day. So even though it would extend our drive home later, we decided to head out to Valley of Fire for the day. We checked out of NYNY and made our first stop at the Port of Subs at the corner of Koval and Flamingo. I love Port of Subs, but there are none in my neighborhood, so I try to make a point to visiting them whenever I’m near one. We ordered a giant XL No. 1 (Italian) to go, which would be a perfect lunch for the three of us once we reached Valley of Fire.

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At the Valley of Fire exit, I ran inside the gas station to fetch some cold drinks, and then we headed into the park.

We’d visited Valley of Fire almost three years to the day earlier, but we didn’t quite get to explore everything as much as I desired that day, so I’d been eager to return. This time we drove past the first few spots where we’d stopped on that previous trip, and found some really cool new places. First we ate lunch at a spot called Seven Sisters, which was ideal because it had picnic tables and everything. Not a bad spot to enjoy a delicious Port of Subs sandwich:

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We then proceeded to a few other stops, including one that had some old rock cabins built in the early 1900s.

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We stopped in the visitor’s center to use the restroom, and while there, I learned of an arch inside the park called Elephant Rock. It’s at the far eastern side, but only a couple miles from the visitor’s center, and it was really cool.

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I’m totally captivated by this whole park, and I told my wife if we lived in Vegas I’d want to hike it all the time. If you’ve never driven out there while in Vegas, I highly recommend it, and definitely prefer it to Red Rock Canyon. We probably need one more day out there to finish up some spots we’ve yet to explore; maybe in another three years we’ll do that.

It was getting late in the afternoon and we had a long drive home ahead of us, but there was one more spot I wanted to stop to surprise my wife and daughter. I’d always heard about the Ethel M Chocolate Factory’s Christmas light display in their cactus garden, but we’d never been. It’s out in Henderson, and it’s definitely worthwhile. We were all shocked at how expansive this cactus garden is, and the number of lights it must take to decorate the whole thing. Here are some pics, although none of them came out that great with my phone camera:

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Not only is the cactus garden all lit up and beautiful, but the chocolate factory is open as well as the adjacent candy shop. We took the mini tour (not really a tour, just peering through glass at people working) and then did a little shopping to sample the goods. Everything was delicious, but came with pretty hefty prices. We selected eight small chocolates, which came to about $18.

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As we tried to figure out the best way to head home, Google Maps informed me there was an accident on the 15 that was causing a terrible delay on our journey home. We pulled over to do some research, including exploring options to stay another night, but it turned out it was past Baker and we figured it would be cleaned up by the time we got there some 90+ minutes later. Well, we were wrong. My phone kept alerting me that the jam-up was getting worse and worse, and sure enough, the 15 virtually came to a dead stop right at that Baker exit.

It took us exactly one hour to proceed about three miles from there, and then we finally got past the incident, which seemed to be some sort of trouble with a FedEx truck. We wanted to try Peggy Sue’s Diner in Barstow for dinner, but when we arrived the hostess informed us they were already closed. Oddly, it was difficult finding anything in Barstow open at about 9:30 on a Tuesday night. We eventually settled for Carl’s Jr. and then hit the road again, only to encounter another huge traffic fuck-up between Barstow and Victorville. Again we moved at a snail’s pace for about 30-45 minutes!

We finally arrived home around midnight after our most patience-testing drive home from Vegas we’ve ever encountered. All in all, though, a fun little getaway if not the most “Vegasy” of Vegas trips!

 

Looks like y'all had a great time! Great report, thanks for sharing.

 

Looks like a fun trip minus the traffic coming home...lol. Enjoyed reading and the pics. Thanks