Fear and Gouging in Las Vegas

So I just flew in from Las Vegas and boy are my arms tired... and my ass is sore because Vegas had it's foot in it the whole time I was there. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time as I always do. But usually when I leave I say, "Man, I can't wait to come back," but this time I was like, "Maybe I'll wait a while to go back." The last two times I was there in Vegas I noticed it was getting more and more expensive. But both of those times I was winning money and then spending it on fun things here and there. It seems like every single time I've been there (over a dozen times since I turned 21) I always had just enough money to have a good time. When I first turned 21 I wouldn't win anything but everything was so cheap I was able to drink what I wanted and see all the things I wanted to too. As I've gotten older Vegas has been getting more and more expensive; but this wasn't a problem because I would win a lot more and then spend a lot more but, hey, at least having a good time. This time I was getting piddly little shit wins and the prices were CRANKED!

So think of this, a good price for a beer was about $8 (for a bottle); if you really looked around you could find $4-5 beers, but these were usually outside the casino in the drug stores. I remember waiting in a line that had 6 or 7 people in it only to get to the end and find that it was $12 for a Corona; and there were plenty of people willingly paying that price. I was about to ask the lady how much it was for the beer without the handjob but I guess $12 only gets you the beer. Not too long ago you could expect to pay maybe $10-15 at a casual restaurant but now it's in the $19-24 range. And if you really want to get screwed, I remember when the Mandalay Bay first opened you could get an all-you-could-eat buffet for about $14 I think; I seem to remember that being the price and we thought that was a little steep. Now it's $28-30 almost no matter where you go for the buffets. I thought resort towns were bad but Vegas almost eclipsed them; and it's not like food and drinks are their only source of revenue, or even their main source of revenue, their main source of revenue is GAMBLING! I mean these guys aren't exactly the March of Dimes; why the hell do they need to charge that much? Vegas and I used to have an understanding; it would show me a good time and take all of my money. This time it was just stingy and I spent a lot of my time gathering coupons and going off the strip for cheap beers.

One of my ultimate favorite things to do is check out the new hotels that have been built since the last time I had been there. Every time this has happened I've always enjoyed the new additions... until this time. They have this thing called the CityCenter; for the most part it's like an indoor mall and some other hotels. I would have thought that was cool, but damn, it's all really upscale shops like Tiffany's, Cartier, and Louis Vuitton. Because obviously the biggest problem in Vegas is that there aren't enough places to spend your money at. Okay maybe there are upscale shops at the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Luxor, New York New York, MGM Grand, The Wynn, The Paris, The Venetian, Caesar's Palace, Planet Hollywood, and I guess they do have a mall called the Fashion Show Mall right across the street from CityCenter; but other than that no places to buy upscale clothing and accessories. One thing that CityCenter doesn't have... places to sit down and rest. And I really felt it this time I was there. Almost every place there had gotten rid of their shuttles, trams and other means of free travel so you can take taxis everywhere, walk, or take the monorail.

Cost-wise the Monorail is pretty good but it doesn't go to every hotel, in fact there are only a few hotels that even participated in this venture. The monorail is clunky, questionably safe, and almost always tucked back at the very end of whatever hotel you go to. If you have problems with something on the monorail, I don't know what you do, I almost never even see people operating it. I do remember one time it was raining and a guy in a reflective vest (I assume he worked on the monorail) saw us lining up to catch the train and he said, "Yeah don't even bother lining up, that train ain't going to stop when the track is wet." Sure enough the tram rocketed past us full of terrified passengers realizing that they weren't going to be able to get off. When we finally did get on the monorail it seemed like it was moving heaven and earth to get it to stop at the end of the line. But for value I guess it's the way to go, each ride is $5 which isn't worth it, but it's $15 for an all day pass which is pretty worth it if you want to explore Las Vegas (and safety isn't a motivating factor). But for us at Mandalay Bay we had to walk almost 2 miles to get to MGM Grand which had the monorail stop and then it's way at the back of the whole hotel so even more walking. For the hotels that have been built since the monorail was made, there are very few options to get there you just kind of roll the dice on which stop is closest. They do have a list of hotels that are closest to each stop but I think I could debate their recommendations on a few of them.

So they have taken away creature comforts, or in some cases, started charging money for things they didn't used to; and they increased the prices of nearly everything. I could possibly live with these things if the slots payed out and in the recent past I was able to do just that. I'd hit a $200-$300 win every other day and it gave us the money to go out and play for a few days. But not this time I got a $150 "life support" win once during my whole trip. I call it a life support win because it was like Vegas was stepping on my trachea and decided to give me a few breaths of air, just because it wanted me to make sure I was alive when it decided to torture me some more. So to some a $150 win is pretty good, but it doesn't get you crap in Vegas, hell it barely gets you craps. Most tables are $10 minimum for craps, you can find $5 tables in a few places but not in every casino. So maybe my luck just finally ran out; but I've always believed in the adage "Unlucky in love, lucky in cards." I'm probably the unluckiest in love there has ever been, so therefore, I must be the luckiest at gambling of anyone. So if I'm not winning nobody else must be either; or maybe I'm starting to get lucky in love... Nah, they just aren't letting people win.

The final gripe I had is that people working there are just kind of dicks more and more each time I'm out there. It used to be you could get all the help you need from the employees of any given hotel wandering around. But this time they seemed to have thrown in some attitude as some sort of bonus. Now I'm kind of used to just regular people being dicks to me; but casino people should probably be nice, maybe... I did probably pay their paychecks with my gambling losses this time. But almost never in my life have I felt so isolated in a place with that many people. I made a remark to one of the people I went to Las Vegas with about suntan lotion and this lady in the elevator started to strike up a conversation with me; and I was fucking pumped about it. If that hadn't happened I would be wondering if it was some kind of Sixth Sense thing where I was a ghost and just didn't know it. I think there was one waitress the whole time I was there that I felt even deserved above a 10% tip. In speaking of that there was this place I kept hearing about at the Excalibur called "Dick's" that apparently had good food. The catch is that the waiters and waitresses treat you like shit. Some people like that place I guess, but when everyone is being a shithead anyway it seems kind of extraneous that there would be places that give you an extra dose of bitchiness. And I do specifically mean bitchiness; the women were the worst in Vegas. Apart from the nice lady in the elevator, the one waitress, and a maid I had to avoid women altogether. I was kind of sick of getting the feminine-hostility-hoduken to the face every time I asked a lady who worked there to do her job. They guys weren't exactly sunshine and roses, but at least they knew it was their job. I am kind of wondering if they have some kind of focus group that said to the Las Vegas developers, "We don't want to win when we gamble, but we want expensive meals and clothing, we want to walk until we almost die of exhaustion, and then we want your staff to treat us like shit everywhere we go." That's the opposite of what I want!