Day 3
December 15, 1999
Up around 10am to get ready and finish packing for the first move of the trip over to the New Frontier. By the time I actually left the room it was going on towards 1pm. Check out time was noon. Oh well, they’ll get over it! Went to the valet to pick up my car and within 3 minutes it was there. This was near record time as far as getting my car back from a valet.
The New Frontier is for the most part right next to the Stardust and I was there in no time at all. Check-in was easy here, as there was nobody in line and just one guest at the window ahead of me. I was given a suite in their atrium tower on the 11th floor. The atrium tower is located in the back of the property and is a bit of a walk from the casino. In the atrium there are a few waterfalls but there is no roof. The center of the atrium is actually outside. They had these gas torches to keep the area warm when you walked to the elevators but they didn’t do very much. It also made for a burst of cold air in the morning when you left the room. The room was a bit beat up and had a terrible smell of stale cigarette smoke. I can usually handle cigarette smells since the casino is full of smoke but this just wouldn’t do. I went back down to the front desk and asked for a room with a similar view in non-smoking. In a few minutes I was on my way back to the tower headed for room 884. One thing I thought was strange was she never asked for the keys to the old room. I went to room 884 and found everything to be fine here. This room is a true suite since the living room is separated from the bedroom. The living room is a bit small but still large enough to move around in. It had a sink area with a coffee maker and refrigerator. A dining table, sofa, 2 chairs and an end table and a 19-inch console TV. A hallway connected the living room to the bedroom. This is where the bathroom was and a large walk-in closet that had an iron and ironing board. The bathroom was standard and nicer than the bathrooms in the standard rooms and the shower head was actually designed for taller people unlike the ones in the standard rooms that were designed for midgets. The bedroom had a king bed in it, 2 nightstands, a dresser and a 19-inch TV. There was also a sink in the corner of the room that also had a hair drier. I had a view of the pool area and the north end of the strip. As I tried to turn the TV on with the remote nothing would happen. The TV worked if I used the buttons on it but the remote seemed dead. I was just about to call down to the front desk when I remembered I still had the key for the old room. I went back up to that room and switched the remotes. After this things were fine and everything in the room seemed to work well. The New Frontier has got to have the largest selection of TV choices I have ever seen in a Las Vegas hotel. Not that I come here to watch TV but it’s nice to know I have a few choices if I do want to. I got unpacked and settled in and then had a quick lunch in the room. (Remember those giant chicken fingers from last nights dinner?).
After lunch I went straight down to the casino to play on their progressive full pay deuces wild machines. They are offering triple points from 12/12-12/24. If I remember correctly they cash back rate on video poker is .26% here so with triple points it was up to .78%. This is high cash back for a place with full pay machines. It was now time to try to cash in on a good promotion. They are also offering Beanie Babies for every 1,000 points earned up to 5. Started off with a $100 bill and got an hour and a half of play in but eventually lost. I decided to try my luck with another $100 and after about another hour hit four deuces. Wild Royals were plentiful too. I cashed out up $200.
It was now time to head downtown. There was a small meet supposed to take place that was organized on the Las Vegas Talk message board. Regular board member VG of VG Enterprises and Gary’s News and Views has a daughter that, with her high school class worked on and created a new holiday light show for the Fremont Street Experience. I arrived early so I walked around downtown with my video camera and ran into Frank the webmaster from Las Vegas On-line and his partner Gene. They were taking some pictures down by the new Race Rock restaurant. This is a themed restaurant like Planet Hollywood or The All-Star Café. Couldn’t find VG before the show, which finally started. It was a good show and I taped it with my video camera. Finally ran into Gary and his family. No one else made it to the meet. Gary had a Las Vegas Millennium hat ready for me when I arrived. These are nice hats. Anyone that likes hats can pick one up on his site. Walked around with Gary and his wife CC and their 2 younger kids for a while before they left. After they left I headed into Binion’s for a little single deck blackjack. I played for an hour and won $300. It was now 10pm and time for the $3 steak dinner to start. As always right at 10pm is the worst time to go. There was a line almost all of the way up the stairs into the casino. Not wanting to wait in line I decided to go over to the Fremont and sign up for a slot card. Decided I would play a $20 bill on video poker here. They don’t have much in the lines of good video poker here in the quarter level but I did manage to find a few 9/6 Jacks or Better machines. Played for about 30 minutes running about $350 through the machine and cashing out up a few dollars too. I’ll see what kind of offers this play generates, if any. Went back over to Binion’s to grab a $3 steak dinner. This has got to be the best deal in town if you ask me. Where else can you get a quality steak dinner for just $3? The dinner comes with a 10 oz. NY strip steak, a baked potato, and a small salad and dinner rolls. The one thing that seemed kind of weak with this dinner was the dinner rolls seemed to be microwaved to warm them before they are brought out. This is fine if you eat them right away but if they cooled they became hard as a rock. Of course from time to time there is a bit of strangeness in the downtown area. Of course it was sitting across from me that night. A man across from me who was having the steak dinner and acting a bit weird dumped what appeared to be an entire bottle of A-1 all over his dinner. Everything was covered with this stuff. He was even taking the dinner rolls and soaking this stuff up. Oh well. To each his own I guess. After eating I went back up to the hotel and called it a night a little bit earlier than I normally do.
Total win/loss for the day $550
Total comps for the day $59