Viva Las Vegas, Post 4: A Vegas Sunday

On Sunday morning we headed off to the union meeting, the details of which we'd been given by the family Megan and Justin had stayed with in Vegas the previous month. It was at Alan and Julia's house, and afterwards we were invited to stay for lunch, along with 6 others. Despite this being the first time we'd met any of them, we had a wonderful visit and in fact have been invited to stay at Alan and Julia's when we return to Vegas (which we hope to next year)!



After lunch, Alan and Julia (in the foreground in the above pic) took us for a drive - the only time we left the Las Vegas city limits while we were there. We had hoped to visit Red Rock Canyon and the Hoover Dam during our stay, but this turned out to be a bit too ambitious and we didn't make it to either place... there was more than enough to see on the Strip alone; plus we'd ended up seeing three shows in two days! But since A&J knew we wanted to see the Hoover Dam, they set out to take us there - in quite a rush as we didn't have long before the afternoon gospel meeting.



As it turned out, we only got as far as Lake Mead, and from there the traffic was already backed up waiting to get through security at the dam (apparently quite strict since 9/11)! So this is Lake Mead, a manmade lake in the middle of the Nevada desert...







Then we rushed back to the city just in time for the gospel meeting. Afterwards, we were introduced to Errol and Glenna - Errol is Australian and grew up around the Kingaroy area, but Glenna is American and they have lived in the States for many years. Although we hadn't met them before, they know a LOT of people we know, and we also know their daughter Heidi, who now lives in Queensland! So they invited us back for dinner and we had yummy burgers and a fantastic visit with them. Looking through their visitors' book was amazing - in it were Ben's parents, his aunt and uncle, Glen M, Lincoln H, a couple from NZ whom we met in Austria, and many more people we know!!!



After leaving Errol and Glenna's place quite late, we headed back to the Strip as we still had not seen the Bellagio Fountains in action, an absolute Vegas must-do. It was incredible!! Every 15 minutes from 8pm to midnight (and every half hour during the afternoon), the large pond in front of the Bellagio is transformed into the scene of a stunning water show, with "dancing" fountains choreographed to various songs. The song was a classical one for the performance we watched properly, but we also overheard Faith Hill's This Kiss while in the area. Here are some photos of this magical sight...







But even better, here are some videos...

Video 1
Video 2 (the better one)

Amazing, isn't it?! We took the videos for you, so please let us know what you thought! :D

After the song finished, we went across the road to have a look inside Paris Las Vegas. From the outside it looks amazing, but we weren't quite as impressed by the casino floor inside; it looked a bit weird with one of the Eiffel Tower's legs disappearing at ceiling height! We didn't go up the Tower as it was rather late by this time (and it also costs - just like the real one I guess!).







Then we went into the Bellagio to explore their indoor Conservatory and Botanical Gardens (really, these casinos are something else!!). It was gorgeous - an old-fashioned (decorative) ferris wheel all lit up, little water features, lovely flowers, and a collection of colourful exotic birds (who were all asleep since it was after midnight). It was not a large garden (about the size of a house or two), but it was extremely well done - and apparently they change it regularly.



In the entrance nearby, there was an amazing display of coloured glass plates on the ceiling...



And maybe some of the above explains why the Bellagio was one of our favourite two casinos on the Strip (the Venetian was the other one; refer to previous post)! :)

On our way back downtown to our hotel, we stopped at the Little Chapel of the Flowers, one of Vegas's famous wedding chapels. We saw a lot of them, but this was the only one we got a photo of. (We also saw ads around Vegas for "Half-price Lawyers - Divorce $600"...)



The next morning we flew home. And that was our fantastic four nights in Vegas! :D

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Viva Las Vegas, Post 3: Taken Hostage

In order to obtain the cheap Cirque du Soleil "KA" tickets we had paid for at the Excalibur the night before, on Saturday morning we had to go to the new Grandview Resort in Vegas and be shown around with a group of other tourists whilst being fed breakfast. That morning Ben went back to the airport to collect our hire car for the next two days, so we declined the offer of a shuttle bus pick-up and elected to drive ourselves to the resort for our 10:30am appointment.

We understood the aim of the promotion was to encourage us to stay there the next time we were in Vegas, or perhaps recommend it to friends. That's what Natasha led us to believe, anyway. This is what actually transpired - and, just for fun, I'll tell it from the perspective of our dear host, the Grandview Resort...

1. (Friday afternoon) Lure young couple (subsequently referred to as "hostages") into agreeing to a breakfast tour of the Grandview Resort by selling them cheap tickets to KA (which they will only be given after the tour). Promise them that they can get tickets for the later performance of KA (9:30pm instead of 7pm) - crucial to their acceptance of the deal as they had already pre-booked tickets to The Lion King at 4pm the same day.

2. When asked whether there will be other people there, assure them that hundreds of people are being taken through the hotel each day (this is an exceptionally good example of the avoidance technique disguised as a technically true answer). When asked how long it will take, tell them 2 hours and that this is an overstatement as that way they will be pleased when it most likely takes less time than that.

3. (Saturday morning) Welcome the hostages to the Grandview Resort and sit them in a waiting area with about 20 other people. While they wait, get them to fill out forms providing information such as their personal information and income range.



4. As they fill out the forms, have various well-dressed sales reps go up and introduce themselves to the surrounding couples, each sales rep then leading their assigned couple out of sight. Allow the realisation to gradually dawn on the hostages that they will not be on a group tour, but will actually have their own individual sales rep all to themselves.

5. Introduce to the hostages to their sales rep, a middle aged lady of a very friendly and chatty nature, who was once a teacher and doesn't seem like a scary high-pressure salesperson at all (and indeed wasn't, thankfully).

6. Take the hostages around the corner and let them help themselves to the breakfast/brunch buffet of sandwiches, donuts, pastries, juice and coffee. Take them and their loaded plates into a small room nearby, in which the various groups of three (couple plus sales rep) are seated at little round tables facing a projector screen. Make small talk and give them name tags.

7. Begin the presentation by having the classy blonde woman hosting it get all the hostages to introduce themselves and say where they are from. (Australians are quite a novelty as everyone else is American.) Get them to share their favourite vacation memories.

8. Continue the presentation by having the classy blonde woman show a Powerpoint slide show whilst giving a speech about how it would make very good sense to invest "the money you already spend on vacations" into "something you would actually own".

9. Allow the realisation to dawn on the hostages (probably only the Australian ones; surely the Americans were less gullible due to greater familiarity with this sales technique and the product) that this is NOT a nice low-key tour of a hotel they'd like the hostages to stay at sometime in the future if they so desire. It is actually an attempt to sell the hostages a timeshare. (Look it up now if you're not sure what it is.) Yes, they are trying to SELL (in the most literal sense) the resort to the hostages.

10. Assure the hostages that this company does not believe in hard sell techniques. Assure them that the company is only aiming to present the logical truth: that the thousands of dollars the hostages have already mentally committed to spending on vacations over the next decades could instead be spent on having a portion of the ownership rights of a timeshare apartment. They can thus have an investment that keeps on giving and can even be gifted to descendants in a will, instead of just throwing money down the drain on holiday accommodation year after year.

11. Conclude the presentation by having the classy blonde woman tell a heart-warming story of how her mother, suffering from cancer, was practically brought back to life by a wonderful family holiday. She is still alive today because of it. Impress upon the hostages in a trembling voice that it is these moments, these precious times with family, that are what life is all about. Leave the hostages with the clear impression that these times are impossible to have unless they own a timeshare.

12. Have the individual sales rep take their hostages on a tour of the hotel. Point out aerial photos showing the incredible growth of Las Vegas over the last few decades. Show them the pool and gym. Take them through a timeshare apartment that is - wouldn't they agree? - incredibly stylish and appealing. (It really was very nice.)



13. Take them to another buffet before sitting down to discuss business. Ask about the vacations they are planning to take next year, and use this information to calculate their lifetime vacation expenditure. If the hostages' style of travel is at odds with the timeshare target market's norm, blatantly skew the information to get the highest vacation expenditure possible. For example, estimate a visit to the Galapagos Islands at $3000 for a week and, added to other vaguely potential trips with more reasonable costs, multiply this by the amount of years they could have ahead of them to take vacations (50?) to get an unbelievably warped lifetime vacation expenditure figure to scare the hostages with.

14. For the first time, mention the price of a timeshare. (We can't remember the exact amount, but it was over USD $40000 for a 2 week timeshare, with a special "just for today" of about $37000 with a bonus 4 weeks thrown in. Paid in installments with interest, the total came to a great deal more. Added to this would be the annual maintenance fee of over $700, plus a fee of more than $200 every time we wanted to swap the Vegas timeshare for a vacation in a different location.)

15. After giving the hostages some time alone to discuss this (during which they debated the politest way to say that this style of vacation, and the expense committment that accompanies it, is completely incompatible with their current lifestyle), have the sales rep return to the table and attempt, in a fairly mild and conversational manner, to encourage them to change their mind.

16. Once this seems unlikely, bring a middle-aged male sales rep over to the table who uses slightly more pressure to endeavour to make a sale. After a discussion regarding the amount the monthly payments plus interest add up to, and use of a calculator by a hostage to prove his point, have the male sales rep drop the price to $17000 for one side of the timeshare apartment (it's like a duplex). After further discussion, during which the hostages try to make their disinterest clear so they can get their KA tickets and leave, have the male sales rep drop the price to about $12000 for one side of the timeshare and 2 weeks per year.

17. After what seems like a very long time to the hostages, allow the sales reps to concede that there is nothing that can be done to make them realise what an incredible, life-enhancing opportunity they are walking away from, and show them to stage 1 of the leaving process.

18. Have them met by a European-accented lady who fills out a customer satisfaction survey to record what the hostages thought of the first and second sales reps. Ask the hostages what was the final price they were offered. Upon hearing $12000, offer them the same deal for $4995. (Yes, seriously. Doing this will definitely make them respect your company for being prepared to sell it to them for 10 times that amount.) Sadly escort them to stage 2 of the leaving process when they still insist on declining this amazing deal.

19. Let them wait ages to see the gifting agent to get their KA tickets at stage 2 of the leaving process. They are no longer potential-profit-on-legs, so who cares?

20. Take them into the gifting agent's office to finally get their hard-earned KA tickets. Then break the news to them that the 9:30pm show is already sold out. Sorry, but they'll have to go to the 7pm show. (Refer to point 1 to see why this was not the preferred scenario.)

21. Give them their tickets and... Let... Them... Leave!!!!

22. As they drive off, be sure they are calculating that they just spent 4 hours of their precious vacation on this delightful interlude. Yes, 4 hours instead of 2 hours, an individualised sales ambush instead of a relaxing group tour, a timeshare hard sell instead of a hotel promotion brunch, and their afternoon drive to Red Rock Canyon cancelled due to lack of time.

23. And despite all of that, dear Grandview Resort, know this: we were glad of the opportunity to see a timeshare hard sell in action. It was the funniest experience of our trip. We appreciate the time, food, and human resources you invested in giving us this excellent storytelling fodder without extracting a single cent from us. Thank you for the memory.

The rest of the day went by in a blur of mad rushing about and magnificent theatre experiences. The Lion King, which we saw at Mandalay Bay, was excellent. Friends have been recommending this to us for a couple of years now, and it was definitely very well done. However, we both preferred KA, which we saw at the MGM Grand (and which we missed the first few minutes of, due to the aforementioned mad rushing about to get from TLK to KA in the half hour between them).



I don't know how to describe KA. Think of a show with a massive moving stage (it could go from horizontal to vertical to anywhere in between), almost no dialogue, costumed performers doing unbelievably cool stunts (including aerial and rope work), a brief interlude of the best hand shadow puppetry we've ever seen, fire and fireworks, and some kind of storyline that was much better explained when we read the programme in the shop afterwards. :) It's more about stunts, mood and visual impact than about the storyline - and it certainly blew us away. Click here to see a preview video on the KA website. It's impossible to describe in words, but mind-blowingly awesome and totally recommended!

That night we had dinner at a cafe overlooking the canal inside the Venetian. The Venetian was one of our favourite two hotels/casinos on the Strip (the other was the Bellagio). Its shopping arcade has a fake sky, Italian architecture, and a canal with gondolas...







Ahh, Venice - I mean, Vegas! The thing about Vegas is that you go there knowing that the whole place is manufactured, commercialised, touristy, and oozing money. You don't go there expecting an "off the beaten track" travel experience. It is what it is, and it does a very good job of it. Hence, despite being very different to our usual type of holiday, we absolutely loved it!

To be continued...

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Viva Las Vegas, Post 2: Neon Boneyard + The Strip

On Friday, our first order of business was to do the Neon Boneyard tour. I had found out about it on Tripadvisor and booked us in for the 10am tour. All we had to do was find our way there by public transport. With the help of about 5 people - check-in clerk, bellman, ticket seller, bus driver, and a fellow bus passenger - we made it with time to spare.



The Neon Museum is a not-for-profit organisation that rescues, restores, and aims to resurrect retired old Vegas signs and installations. One such example is the Aladdin's lamp in the photo at the end of my last post; it's displayed on Fremont St along with some other famous old relics restored by the Neon Museum.

The battered, bruised and weatherbeaten old signs that have not yet been restored are kept in a couple of junkyards across from the Neon Museum office. It is these junkyards that are referred to as the Neon Boneyard, and this is what we were going to tour to give us an appreciation of Vegas history before we set off to the Strip to see what it looks like today.



The tour cost $15 per person and lasted about an hour. Due to the extreme temperature (over 40 degrees, although thankfully no humidity) there is only one tour a day in summer, and it is important to pre-book. This is not one of the more well-known Vegas activities - in fact none of the people who helped us with directions had ever heard of the Neon Boneyard - but it was money well spent. As a history lesson, it was interesting. As a photo opportunity, it was incredible!

The building in the third last photo is the old La Concha Motel, which is currently undergoing restoration to become the museum's visitor centre. The Boneyard is also used as a filming location. We weren't allowed to touch any of the signs, but our tour guide pointed out one sign that Brad Pitt had been allowed to touch for a photo shoot - this information was imparted along with a warning that we should not be tempted into touching it just because he had!

After the tour, we went back to our hotel and relaxed in our air-conditioned room for the hottest few hours of the day, and then set off to the Strip. We rode the double-decker "Deuce" (the name of the bus service between downtown and the Strip) to the Excalibur, where we picked up the cheap tickets for the Tournament of Kings Dinner Show we'd bought at the last-minute ticket booth in our hotel earlier that day.

After collecting our tickets, and with time to spare before the show started at 5pm, we were accosted in the Excalibur foyer by a friendly young man called Vinnie, who won us over with his knowledge of Tim Tams and then escorted us to a desk where a young woman called Natasha (whom we later found out was his girlfriend) would see if she could find us some cheap deals "especially for couples". ("Are you married?" they both asked us. "Yes", we replied. Then they enquired: "to each other?" Well... it is Vegas after all!!)

We had been interested in finding some cheap Cirque du Soleil tickets after hearing how much Megan and Justin enjoyed the one they saw in Vegas, so it didn't take much for Natasha to convince us to buy tickets to KA for the following night. The only catch was that on Saturday morning we would need to spend "about 2 hours" being shown around a "nice new hotel" that the Excalibur's parent company had just built and was wanting to promote. This sounded reasonable, especially since they were going to feed us breakfast while we were there. Remember this... it ends up becoming a very memorable part of our holiday that deserves its own individual post!!

The Tournament of Kings is a long-standing dinner show held in an indoor arena inside the Excalibur. It's a medieval tourmanent with each competitor being the king of a particular "country" - i.e. a section of the audience. We were in France. The show included jousting (on real horses), hand-to-hand-combat, various acrobatic and gymnastic stunts, and lots more. We were served a simple, medieval-style three course meal. It was an enjoyable evening and another Vegas experience we'd recommend!

Click here for a video of the king of France copping a beating (the high-pitched shrieking lady was sitting right next to me...)
Click here for a video of an awesome gymnast
Click here for a video of another awesome gymnast

It was still light when we left the Excalibur. This is what the outside of it looks like...



We spent the next few hours exploring that end of the Strip. We saw New York New York (the screams of people on its rollercoaster were audible from quite a distance)...

And the MGM Grand, inside which there was an awesome Rainforest Cafe, complete with foliage, fake animals, and rainforest sounds (not to mention that the MGM also has a real lion enclosure inside it, visible from its casino floor)...

Here's a view of the south end of the Strip from a pedestrian overpass...



We also found the M&M Shop, which is a multistorey affair with every kind of M&M-branded object imaginable (including a car, guitar, and neckties)...



Even the McDonald's in Vegas has neon golden arches.



Eventually we tore ourselves away from the bedazzling Strip and rode the Deuce back to Fremont St where our nice cool bed awaited. We needed to rest up for the breakfast date the nice folks at the Excalibur had organised for us the following morning...

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Viva Las Vegas, Post 1: Fremont Street

On Thursday 30th July, we worked a half day and then set off in our new (secondhand) car for Bellingham, Washington, from where we would fly to Las Vegas, Nevada. We'd found a cheap Expedia flight+hotel deal, and were looking forward to finding out whether Vegas was really as over the top as we were expecting (and hoping!)...

After the usual long wait at the border, during which we bought some water and ice creams from an enterprising man who was wheeling a cart along the rows of cars (the temperature in Greater Vancouver was in the mid-30s that week!), we were Stateside again for the first time since Easter.



From there it was less than half an hour to the little town of Bellingham, and we were early enough to have a late lunch at an environmentally-friendly burger cafe before heading to the airport. Bellingham Airport is a little single-runway affair frequented by penny-pinching Vancouverites like ourselves, who figure the 70km drive is worth the couple of hundred dollars saved by taking a domestic rather than international flight to a US destination. :)

During the first half of our 2.5-hour flight, we flew over some very impressive mountains in Washington that still had a lot of snow on them. Our new (secondhand) camera got quite a workout.



As we flew over Nevada, the view from the window was very different. We looked out across seemingly endless desert, populated only by sharp, rust-coloured, treeless mountain ridges, and few if any signs of civilisation. We recall seeing a road or two, but no buildings.



We descended into Vegas at dusk, around 8pm. It was ringed by the aforementioned mountain variety, but the city itself is in a completely flat valley. It was easy to pick out "The Strip": a slightly boomerang-shaped swathe of glittering high-rises standing in the middle of an otherwise flat city. I also remember noticing a lot of bright blue swimming pools as we passed over the suburbs. As soon as we landed, the reason for them was obvious: it was over 40 degrees the whole time we were there.



Our first sighting of pokie machines came just a few steps into the airport...



We booked a shuttle bus to take us to our hotel, and piled in with a bunch of other young travellers. As our hotel was in the downtown "old Vegas" area rather than on the Strip where most people stay, we were the last ones on board and had quite the tour of the Strip as the others were gradually dropped off. By this time it was dark, and the lights, glitz and crowds of Vegas were all making an appearance. We soon discovered that nighttime is when Vegas really comes alive!

Our hotel was the Four Queens on Fremont Street. We knew it was "old Vegas", and I was expecting a bit of a quieter and dingier, possibly seedier, neighbourhood - particularly as a workmate was so concerned that she had given me the name of another hotel to move to if ours didn't work out!

Little did we know.

The "Fremont Street Experience", which our hotel was literally on top of, is one of Vegas's most happening nighttime attractions.

Immediately outside our bedroom window was the world's largest display screen!

I'm not kidding. It's four city blocks - 1500 feet (460m) - long... a curved canopy above a dedicated pedestrian zone, up to 90 feet (27m) high, and visited by an average of 25000 people daily. It has over 12 million LEDs and a 555000-watt sound system with 220 speakers. A variety of sound and light shows, on average about 6 minutes long, take place every night between dusk and midnight. Two of the shows we can remember hearing are "A Tribute to Queen" and "Bad to the Bone". And yes, this was outside our bedroom window. It was AWESOME!!!

This was the view out of our window to the right...



We quickly explored our room on the fourth floor - our window was right behind one of the big "Q"s of the "Four Queens" neon lettering in the photos below - and headed down to experience Fremont Street.







This summer they had the "Summer of 69" theme on Fremont Street. During our stroll that evening, we saw a 60s'-style hippie band playing on top of a multicoloured van with two fluorescent-lycra-clad ladies doing acrobatics on hanging hoops... another rock band on a stage down the street... a few girls wearing bikinis and tall brightly-coloured feather head-dresses standing in casino entrances... a street artist sculpting a lady's face out of a lump of clay... and some famous old Vegas signs and installations (such as Aladdin's lamp, below) that a charity has restored and displayed on Fremont Street (LOTS more about this charity and their signs in the next post!).

It was loud, bright, spectacular, and overwhelming to the senses!











We ate dinner just before midnight in one of the restaurants in our hotel. During dinner we were entertained by a neighbouring table of four drunk American men on a business trip, who insisted on draping us in some plastic bead necklaces that were being given away to passers-by on Fremont St. They reckoned everyone they'd asked "where are you from?" that day was from Australia.

Then it was off to bed, ready for a big day exploring Vegas on Friday! To be continued...

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