Las Vegas

Last week, I went to Las Vegas with Jenn to attend a friend's wedding and also to have fun. It was Valentine's Day weekend + President's Day long weekend + some people have a few days off this week. The air travel capacity was beyond full. What made it worse was the east coast winter storm on the 13th. Many flights got canceled and people were bumped to the flights on the 14th. The result was delays, big time.

We slept 2 hours before getting up at 3am on Thursday and got to the airport. We opted to save a few bucks by going for the economy parking. Waiting for the airport shuttle proved to be unworthy of the few bucks we saved. It was very cold and we made a bad choice of waiting at the booth that gets picked up the last. We got to the check-in counters and was surprised by the crowd, because usually there is few people around no matter what time or day. Something was different that day, as we found out later it was becuase of bad weather in the previous 2 days.

We made it past the security check point in a timely manner and had time to go to the restroom before boarding. There were confusion about what flight it was because the information displayed at the gate showed 2 flights going to 2 destinations from this gate. The boarding announcement was vague, but we managed to walk in at an appropriate time. The flight didn't depart until 30 minutes after its scheduled departure time because they were trying to figure out who is supposed to get on this flight, and then after that they had to de-ice the plane.

Originally, we had 50 minutes of connecting time in Newark, but when we arrived, it was only 5 minutes before the next flight's departure time. We couldn't make it to the connecting flight to Las Vegas, so we went to the customer service center. They told us that the next available flight from Newark to Las Vegas would be 2pm on Saturday! That's pretty crazy alright. If that's the only way then we were screwed. The service representative was able to suggest an alternative route which is to go through Cleveland and that will get us to Las Vegas at 10pm for sure. It is less ideal than our original plan of getting there at noon but it is still ok. We were told that we could also try to do standby for an eariler flight in Cleveland or an eariler flight in Newark, but the chance of flying out from Newark was slim.

We flew to Cleveland and waited for the 2pm flight, watching everyone go through the gate and hoping they will call us to give us seats. Finally they called, and they had 1 opening. We were not going to split up so we decided to forgo the chance. By this time we were frustrated and tired, so Jenn called home and we decided to go to her home. Jenn's home is conveniently located in a suburb near Cleveland, so we had the plasure of taking a nap and eating home made Chinese food for dinner.

Finally, at 9pm we were on our way to Las Vegas. By the time we got to the hotel, it was already 11pm. Once again we had to wait in a long line to check-in to our room. We got a room on the 6th floor, so we navigated through the smoky casino floor to the elevator on the other side of the building, went up the elevator, through the long winding hallway to the door of our room, only to find out that our room keys didn't work! We were able to keep our cool and called the front desk, but they didn't pick up, so we had to go back through the long winding hallway, down 6 floors, through the smoky casino floor, wait in line again and get another set of keys. Then we went back through the smoky casino floor, elevator, long and winding hallway, and the 2 new keys still didn't work. At this point we called the security to let us in, as instructed by the front desk, and they promised us a room change the next day, plus $30 credit for any expense charged to the hotel. We finally got in our room at midnight, more than 12 hours later than we planned for, and that was after more than 24 hours of traveling.

The part that we didn't like the most was that Continental Airlines blamed the weather for their delays and didn't offer any compensation. We had reserved a restaurant for a romantic Valentine's Day dinner and that was gone, along with $25 penalty for canceling within 48 hours. 12 hours of our valuable vacation time was gone, along with many fun things we could have done if we got there at the time was planned for. I think they could have made a speedier departure had they managed the boarding procedure and seat assignment better on that first flight (CO3221). We even paid a couple hundred extra for this early flight!

The rest of the vacation went by pretty good, with shopping and shows and wedding. The only other thing worth complaining about was the alarm clock went off at 6:30am on Saturday in the room next to ours and apparently nobody was there, so we had to call the security again to shut it off. We promptly went back to sleep after it was shut up.

We went to see Le Reve at the Wynn. It was a good show. We got smoothie and foot massage at the Hawaiian market place, which is almost an exact copy of the same place in Waikiki in Hawaii. We saw lions at MGM Grand, but we didn't see the water fountain at Bellagio and the fire thing at Mirage is also not working. We also saw some animals at the Flamingo's natural habitat.

The return trip was amazingly smooth. It seemed like we didn't waste any time at all; we were able to catch the airport shuttle, the flight, and the airport tram, with minimal wait. I slept the whole way on the airplane, and it felt like a short time in the air.

Las Vegas was fun, and it was crowded. I think it's a good destination for a vacation for 4-5 days. It has all the high-end name brands to shop at, casinos to gamble, shows to watch, and nice restaurant to dine in. It's really a place to be if you have the money to have fun.

Finally, just for the record, we spent $10 gambling in the airport while waiting for our returning flight, it lasted for about 10 minutes.