Welcome to the 6th annual Christmas/Birthday Trip Report. It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this trip for 6 years but it’s true. I have quite a bit planned for this trip compared to trips of the past. Of course we all know how plans go in Las Vegas! With that in mind let’s get this report started!

Day 1 Saturday December 13, 2003

Trip to Airport:
I picked up a rental car at the local airport yesterday from Avis. I reserved a full size for about $45. They gave me a 2003 Buick Century with 23,000 miles on it. It was still in good shape and pretty clean unlike the cars I usually get. A quick stop to gas up the car by the Meadowlands before returning it went well and so did the return.

Flight:
Check in at the airport went well. There were just 2 customers ahead of me and in just a few minutes I was on my way to security. There was no waiting here either. I’m taking America West Flight 868 out of Newark like I have done for the last few trips. The flight is non-stop to Las Vegas. It’s scheduled to depart at 8am and arrive in Las Vegas at 10:30am. The cost of this ticket was $295 including all taxes. This is actually the most I have paid for a flight in quite a while. The flight was less then ½ full and gave most people a full row of seats to spread out in. This made the flight pretty comfortable. Today’s movie didn’t seem appealing so I decided to skip that and try to sleep. For some reason every time I fell asleep we would hit an air pocket and the plane would bounce and wake me up. I did eventually get a good nap in and woke up to the captain telling us we were making our gradual descent into Las Vegas! Finally I thought after being stuck in this tube for nearly 5 ½ hours!

Rental Car:
I booked a full sized car with Dollar using Fast Lane and discount code DESLV. My price was $16.99 per day before the 10% discount the code gave me. It appears Dollar just got a bunch of new cars, most of them Fords. Most of the cars in the full size row were the Ford Taurus. I spotted on with no plates on it and a temporary in the window. This means 1 thing. This car is brand new. Brand new it was with only 206 miles on it! It still had that new car smell! So far things are going great!

Hotel:
My first stop was a quick one at the Hard Rock to grab some of the newly issued Christmas chips. They were released yesterday and my hopes were they didn’t sell out like most chips do on release day at the Hard Rock. I got lucky and they still had some left. From here it was on my way to the New Frontier to check in.

When I got to the New Frontier I was able to check in right away. I’m registering here for the next 3 nights but won’t actually be staying here. I’m only booking the room so I can go to the birthday party and get my free gift and double points during my stay. I was given Atrium Suite 878 with a pool/north strip view. Normally I’d stay here but I also got a great room offer from the Cannery in North Las Vegas where I’ll actually be sleeping for the next few nights.

After lunch I checked into the Cannery for the next 2 nights. Based on my last visit I got a postcard offering 3 complimentary nights so I thought I’d give this place a try since I like the casino. Even tough I have the room for 3 nights I’ll only be staying here for 2 of them before moving to the next hotel. I’m in room 339 here. This is a small hotel with only 3 levels. The room has no view other than some local businesses. The room is very nice and a little better than I expected although it’s nothing special. It’s quite room with 2 beds and a nightstand in between, dresser, TV, and a small dining table. The bathroom is decent in size with a long counter top but no extras like a hair dryer. The closet is just an open section near the door and offers an ironing board and iron.

Dining:
After checking into the New Frontier I stopped off at Fiesta Rancho on my way to Cannery for lunch at the Baja Beach Café. I had a bowl of chicken noodle soup that had huge chunk of chicken in it and a grilled cheese with fries. The food was good but the service was really lacking.

For dinner I went up to Fiesta Henderson and went to the Baja Beach Café there as well. After saying hello to my host real quick it was over to the counter at the café. I had the meatloaf dinner and an iced tea. Service here really sucked tonight too and it wasn’t really that busy.

Gaming:
After getting a new slot card at the Cannery my first move was VP. I chose 8/5-bonus poker today. They do have plenty of FPDW here but they are excluded from most promotions like multi point day (tomorrow) so I decided since tomorrow I’d have to play bonus I would today as well. On about the 10th hand I was dealt quad jacks. This allowed me to use a coupon from the POV for a 50-coin bonus. They actually paid me $13 for this coupon to make it a 52-coin bonus! My next quad came shortly after and it was deuces for 200 coins. Ugh! Those are the deuces I wanted to save for FPDW that eluded me in October for the entire trip. The next quad was 7’s and that happened to be the card of the day and paid a 100 coin bonus. After this the quads dried up and I cashed out ahead $50 for the session.

Next move was to the slot club to get the December coupon book, turn in a survey for 500 points (worth a whopping 83 cents), and to get my free jacket because I earned 750 points today. They are running a promo that if you earn 750 points on Wednesday or Saturday you get a free jacket. It’s a nice jacket and very similar to the one I got in October except this one is tan instead of blue.

After getting settled into the room I went up to Fiesta Henderson for a while. It’s a long 25-mile drive from here at the Cannery. After dinner I played FPDW back by the sports book because the slant tops were taken. This machine was pretty good to start with and I hit 3 wild royals in the first 100 hands. Unfortunately not much else was hitting other than these wild royals so the roller coaster ride was pretty bumpy. After about an hour I cashed out with a whopping $5 win. The plan was to use a $5 match play with this little win but all of the BJ tables were full so I just left.

Other:
After I left the Fiesta it was about midnight and on my way back to the Cannery I made a quick stop at Wal-Mart to get the usual snacks and sodas. I thought it was pretty neat that this place was packed at midnight. We have a few 24-hour grocery stores back home in NY and at this hour they are usually dead so this was a little different! After Wal-Mart it was back to the Cannery and time for bed.