Day 1
Thursday December 17, 2009
Well after little to no sleep last night the day is finally here. Dee left for the airport in Canada hours ago and I’m heading to Newark Airport now at about 5am. Yesterday I picked up a rental car from Avis at the local airport (the fares were once again out of control here thus the need to go to Newark). I reserved a full sized car using a discount code through my job for $54. I’m Avis First Preferred here and when I arrived my car was ready and I was off to space B3 in about 1 minute. They assigned me a Hyundai Sonata with 6700 miles on it in great condition. It even had an XM Satellite Radio with the Best of Sirius package included. I’m not a fan of the Hyundai but for a 1 day rental it’ll be fine.

The ride to Newark was uneventful as it usually is at 5am. As always I gassed up at the Exxon station just before the Meadowlands and made the rest of the trek to Newark.

Returning the car seemed like it was going to be smooth but turned into a nightmare. After telling the agent the mileage and showing a gas receipt she hands me an invoice for $312. I was told her there must be a mistake. She said no, it looks fine. I told her the rate wasn’t $312 but was $54 plus tax. She punched around on her computer and said they changed my discount code from work to Entertainment. Then she demanded to see proof that I worked there. I had my work ID with me but for security reasons it doesn’t say my employer. She even asked the guy working with her, who happens to be another guy I’ve had issues in the past with here in Newark. She handed me a bill that was $20 higher than it was supposed to be and told me I was going to have to handle it. I was NOT happy at this point and told her their corporate offices would be hearing from me. I’m quite sick and tired of having issues with Avis in Newark. After this mess I was waiting for the monorail to get to the terminal to check in for my flight.

Today I’m flying Continental and the terminal is quite calm but people, including the Continental employees are clueless. I had check in online last night and pre-paid for my luggage so all I needed to do was drop off the bag. I still insist that the extra fees for checking luggage are highly responsible for the longer waits at the airports these days. I watched as one guy tried to swipe his credit card in every possible slot on the kiosk except the right one, and then when he was shown where to do it, still couldn’t seem to get it done. I’d rather they just raised their fares then played penny ante bullshit games like they do now. After a 5 minute wait it was my turn and I was checked in, in just 2 minutes.

Once I was checked in it was up to security. Here it was more of the usual stupidity from people. Just the typical crap with carry on luggage that’s way too big, or trying to smuggle liquids. My favorite today was the lady and her son that tried to go through security with their checked luggage. They were stopped before they ever got to the security line but I had to shake me head in disbelief.

I had just over 2 hours to kill now before the flight. I left extra early in case the airport was a zoo and it wasn’t so now I get to sit. Of course I know had I left an hour later, I would have been held up by more stupidity.

My flight was out of gate C74. I checked the monitors to see when & where Dee would be flying into. Even though she’s flying from Canada, her connecting flight is the same as my flight so we actually get to fly together. Her flight was scheduled to be on time so I just went to out gate and waited for her. When she arrived we had little time and just boarded. Seems her delay came from the fact the shuttle from terminal to terminal was close so she had to take the monorail and clear security again.

Boarding was also more of the typical bullshit from people. You know, people boarding before their row is called and/or blocking the aisle so they can jump right in line cutting in front of others when their row is called. I still don’t understand this. Everyone has a boarding pass and a seat, it’s not like the plane is going to fill up and they are going to be left behind. It didn’t really affect us though because we were one of the last ones to board.

This is flight 568. Scheduled to depart at 8:55am and arrive in Las Vegas at 11:53am. We pushed back on time but there’s a lot of air traffic in Newark in the early mornings so we waited to take off in line for about 45 minutes. The captain came on and told us the flight would be taking 5:15. This was almost a 45 minute reduction from the original schedule but that got eaten up by the wait on the tarmac.

Continental still serves food on their flights and today we got a bowl of honey nut Chex, a banana and a muffin. The movie was some holiday movie with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon and I decided that I wouldn’t watch it. I really hate this flight, especially in winter when it takes even longer to get to Las Vegas. I also napped a bit on the trip and helped pass the time. In fact I thing I slept for about ½ the flight

The flight was/wasn’t uneventful and after what seemed to be forever we were finally on our final approach to McCarran! We landed at 11:55am right on time.

We took our time getting off the plane and headed over to the monorail to the main terminal to collect our luggage. There was no wait because our bags were already on the belt when we got there so it was off to the rental car shuttle bus.

I originally had a reservation I booked in August with Alamo for a full sized car for $428. This was after a 10% discount & $20 coupon. A few weeks later, Dee found a rate with them for $323 after the discount & coupon. This was a savings of over $100. Earlier this week I was searching rates seeing if they dropped at all and no one could touch it. Then I decided to possibly split this rental up into 2 separate ones since the trip was so long. Avis came through with 2 rentals that were close to another $100 cheaper combined. Oddly, if I tried to book with Avis for just 1 rental for 19 days the price was insane. However, breaking it up into a 10 day and a 9 day, the rate dropped substantially. Not only that but I was able to use TWO coupons. Now the combined rate is $263 for 19 days, a savings of $165 plus taxes since the original rates. It pays to check often!

Today’s rental with Avis has a rate of $123 for 10 days. This is after an Entertainment Book discount and a $40 coupon good on a rental of 10 days or more. This is one of the best rates I’ve ever had at just $12.30 per day. Well that is if you don’t count the infamous CTI code at Dollar a number of years ago when rentals were close to free. When we got to the rental car center they had my name up on the scoreboard but I had to stop at the preferred booth to add my coupon to the rental. They originally had me in a Hyundai Sonata and I quickly nixed that. I asked what other cars they had as I would have preferred a GM or Chrysler car. She offered a variety of other cars that were either crap or high miles. She went in the back and offered me a Pontiac G6 with 250 miles on it. I took it that. When we got out to the lot and loaded the car up and checked it over I noticed that it didn’t have 250 but had 6800 on it. This wasn’t a problem and this car was in great shape. I just wanted to get the mileage corrected because I’ve had a similar situation in the past and returning the car was a real drag because the computer wouldn’t believe that I ran thousands of miles on the car in a week! We were finally on our way.

From the car facility it was off to the M Resort. We’ll be here for the next 2 nights. I don’t usually like to do 2 night stays but we liked the M Resort when we visited in the summer and they sent me a nice offer of 2 complimentary nights in their best available room or suite (of course there’s never a suite available), $15 free play and $50 in resort credit. When we arrived check in was super fast, and in just a few minutes we were on our way to room 8109. This room has a king bed, night stands, a small table with 2 arm chairs, wall unit/dresser with mini bar work desk and 42” flat screen TV. The bathroom was large with soaking tub with a window that you can see into the room from (it also offers a shade for privacy), a double vanity, standing shower stall with bench and a separate toilet room. There’s also a closet area with ironing board. We even have a TV built right into the mirror over the sinks! The room has a view of the giant Christmas tree and the strip. In the evening the view is amazing. For free this room is worth every penny especially when you consider the small amount of play I have here in the past.

Once we checked the room over it was time to head out to pick up some essentials for the week. First stop was Jack in the Box right outside of M. We were starving since we hadn’t eaten much so we grabbed a snack of 2 tacos and an eggnog shake. While not the highest of quality, it sure did the trick. Next we hit the 99¢ Only Store and Wal-Mart and loaded up on stuff, and then it was back to M.

We valet parked and had the bellman bring our bags up. We told him we were already checked in and he’d have or things up to the room in 10-15 minutes. 45 minutes later the things weren’t here yet so I called down. They apologized and they were right up in like 2 minutes.

Once we got our bags it was off to the casino. They are running a promo where if you earn 400 points you get a free dinner buffet during the week. This is a great buffet and a great comp play. We took a quick shot on some short pay triple play games with bonus poker (7/5). Normally I wouldn’t play this game but super short term I don’t feel pay tables are that big of a deal, although they do matter. I ended up losing $2.50 thanks to a dealt quad in 5’s but Dee lost $34. This is not the way promos are supposed to work but the way I see it we were going to play anyway. So for what would normally be about $2 in comps we both get dinner buffets (got to keep the points).

Right now I would rate this as the best buffet in town. They have multiple stations from Asian, Mexican, Italian, Seafood, carving, salads, 5 or 6 different soups, desserts and more. They also offer beer and wine. The regular price for this buffet for 2 of us would have been over $45.

After we ate we played a little more video poker. I found a bank of triple play machines that had 9/5 jacks or better with progressives for each line. The top line was pretty high at over $1600. I did OK here but Dee lost a few more dollars. In fact I won back the $2.50 I lost earlier.

They were also running a promo today for a free mystery gift for earning 200 points. I figured it was crap but we’d get it anyway since we earned it. However, the line at the slot club booth was really long and I decided I wasn’t going to wait in line for 20 minutes to collect junk. Instead we took a walk outside and looked at the giant Christmas tree.

Even though it was early being 8:00pm we decided to just crash for the day since we were both up at like midnight and only slept for 2 hours on the flight we were zonked. The plan was since we were going to bed so early; we’d be up really early.

Total win/loss for the day $0
Total comps for the day $145