Day 5
Monday May 16, 2005

Hotel:
Today is moving day and after checking out of Main Street Station I headed up to the strip and Circus-Circus. I know this place gets a bad rap but it’s not really that bad and they treat me well. This trip is no exception. I’m checking in on a mailer that offered up to 5 nights (I’m booked for 3), RFB, and $300 cash just for showing up. I checked in at the VIP office and in just a minute I was on my way to room 1445 in the main tower. This was a standard room with a king bed, work desk, TV cabinet/dresser and nightstands. There is a view of the north end of the strip and the downtown area. After checking the room it was on to the One Club booth to get my $300 voucher and then on to the cage to get the actual cash.

After getting my cash and having lunch I left Circus-Circus and headed over to the Rio. I also have a reservation here and I’ll actually be staying here instead of at Circus-Circus. While I have no problems with the rooms at Circus-Circus they just don’t compare to the Rio. This is my first stay at a Harrah*s property since I was upgraded to diamond earlier this year. I was looking forward to going into the special diamond check in area. Why? Just because I could! When I got to the desk I asked for a room with a Jacuzzi. The agent punched some buttons and made a call and said she had 1 she could give me. I’m in the Ipanema Tower, suite 2054. This is a real suite, not one of their regular rooms that they call suites. This room is impressive to say the least, especially since all I wanted was a Jacuzzi! It’s easily bigger than my house.

It has a double door entry with a marble foyer. To the right is a ½ bathroom and straight-ahead is the living room. The living room has 2 couches, a coffee table, 2 armchairs, another small table, and an entertainment center with a 27-inch TV and a stereo system. To the right of the living room is the dining room with a 10-foot long table and 4 chairs. There is also a wet bar area with a coffee maker, sink, and refrigerator. There is a hallway leading from the living room. At the end of the hallway a left turn takes you into the bedroom. It has a canopy bed (without the canopy) with about 25 throw pillows on it. There is also a coffee table, love seat, chair, and 2 nightstands. A right turn takes you into the huge bathroom. To the right is a walk in closet area with a dresser, safe, and closet. In the closet there are 2 bathrobes and slippers. The vanity is about 8 feet long with double sinks and water wall style faucets. There is also a make up counter with a stool, Jacuzzi bathtub, toilet room and standing shower.

This is also a corner room with plenty of windows. The living room has a view of the West Side of town. The bedroom has a West Side view as well as a north view of the strip from Bellagio clear to downtown. I’ve also got a pretty close view of the Palazzo Suites down below where the real high rollers get to stay. Pretty interesting that each of those has it’s own Jacuzzi out on the balcony. Maybe next time I’ll get upgraded to one of those! (Yeah, right)

Dining:
For lunch I was daring and tried the Circus Buffet. My only reason for doing this is there are many people that say this buffet isn’t edible. I’ve always disputed this since they renovated and upgraded the buffet a number of years ago. That was quite a while ago so I wanted to give it a shot. So here it goes. It’s not THAT bad. Actually if you like basic foods and aren’t looking for anything fancy this buffet is perfect, especially if you factor in the price. They had things like fried and roasted chicken, fish, beef stew, turkey with stuffing, vegetables, pasta dishes, Chinese dishes, and Italian foods. There is also a pretty lengthy salad bar, soups and a nice selection of desserts. OK, I’ll admit it’s not high end and if you’re going to try to compare it to the high-end buffets of Aladdin, Paris and Bellagio, of course it’s not going to rate well. It’s not even as good as most of the local’s casino buffets like Stations or Coasts. It’s basic food with limited choices and everything I had was decent. Have I had better? Sure I have. Have I had worse? Definitely have had worse. There were 2 things I didn’t care for about the buffet though. The first is you’re kind of forced to walk through the entire line and wait for people that don’t know what they want because they have a winding line you need to go through to get to the food. The other thing I didn’t like was having to get my own drinks. OK, so there you have it. My view is it is edible and not bad at all if you go in knowing what to expect.

For dinner I didn’t actually have a real meal. Instead I went up to the Diamond Lounge here at the Rio. They serve appetizers and snacks and supply drinks. Tonight they had chicken fingers, spring rolls, sandwiches, and fruit. They also had a nice selection of desserts.

Gaming:
After getting my money at Circus-Circus I took a walk over to Slots-a-Fun to take my 2 free spins on their special machines. It’s been years since I ever hit anything on these and even then it was only 50 cents. I handed my ticket to a 1-armed man behind the counter. I thought it was pretty ironic that they had a 1-armed man working the promotion with 1-armed bandits. (DON’T e-mail and tell me I’m insensitive towards the handicapped, it’s just a joke). I took my 2 free spins and as usual didn’t hit anything. Then the guy says hey, take 2 more spins. On my 3rd spin I hit 1 cherry for a win of 50 cents!

After dinner at the Rio I stopped by the sports book to watch the Yankees and Mariners. This isn’t something I normally do when I’m in town but I enjoy it and it preserves than bankroll. The Yankees won in a come from behind victory.

After the game I headed out to the Cannery to get an early start on their 5X points promotion. I got there before midnight so I hit the craps table first. This was a mess. Just about every shooter was setting their point, rolling 2 numbers and then sevening out. That’s NOT good for a come player. I was all in 3 times before I had a nice roll and brought myself back a little bit. Instead of being down $300 I cashed out down only $85.

Next stop was the triple play machines with 8/5 bonus. Right off the start I hit quad jacks which was the card of the day paying an extra 100 coins. From here it was messy though. I wasn’t getting the dealt winners needed to keep alive and quads were far and few. I was feeding in bills one after another without hitting anything. One killer was hitting quad 4’s with a kicker since I was only playing bonus. After being down a few hundred I took a shot with some short pay DDB. This was worse than the regular bonus was when it came to dealt winners. At one point I went 12 hands in a row with no pay out. I finally managed to hit quad aces with a kicker though for a $500 hit. I cashed out right after that and called it a night with a win on VP of about $400. Between the nice hit here at the end of the night and the $300 I got from Circus-Circus, this turned out to be a nice day.

Total win/loss for the day $600
Total comps for the day $610