Days 1 & 2 - 2018 Las Vegas Winterfest, AKA Hipfest 2018

So, here is the first installment of my trip report.  I'm going to post the first two days together, since they seemed to be one long day.

* You may wonder what, "Hipfest" is.  Well, that's a combination of the first letter of my name, and the last part of Kip's nickname.

Tuesday, January 9

Back on November 11, a friend of mine let a group we’re in know that she booked a flight out to Las Vegas for $148 R/T (well, she used 8,008 points).  It was flying out of Philadelphia, but that’s still a really good price, so I looked into it and booked the same flight on the 13^th.  Since I live near Washington, DC, we had to work out some logistics on how I would get up to PHL and other things.  We eventually worked out that we would stay in Atlantic City at the Golden Nugget, do a play day there, and then head to PHL Wednesday morning for our 10:15 AM flight.  I would pick her up from her home near Cape May and then drive us to PHL.

I was going to head there after I dropped my daughter off at her school bus stop in the morning, but we had a pipe issue during the big freeze, and the plumber was supposed to be there on Tuesday, sometime between 1:00 and 3:00 PM.  Well, I waited and waited and they never showed up.  I didn’t head out until around 4:30, which meant I was going to hit a lot of rush hour traffic.

We eventually made it to Golden Nugget around 11:00 PM.  We were planning on having dinner at the Chairman’s Lounge, but missed it since we arrived so late.  We had a standard room, which was fine, we weren’t going to be there that long.

We had to do some play, since we were staying there on a comp and we were also on a tier renewal promo, and it was a 4x point day.  Our play went horribly, so needless to say, this was a disappointing start to our vacation.  We were also up until the wee hours, so we only got a few hours of sleep before we had to get up and head to the airport.

Wednesday, January 10 

5:00 AM came early, as we were getting ready to head out.  We hit the road shortly after 7:00 AM and arrived at Colonial Parking around 8:50 AM.  We hit a fair amount of traffic as we arrived towards the I-295 intersection on Route 42.

It was a short shuttle ride from the facility to the airport, arriving there around 9:05 AM.  I have TSA Pre, so going through security was a breeze for me.  It wasn’t so bad for Kip, except that she forgot to empty her water bottle.  She had to exit the security area, empty the bottle, and then come back through security. Quite time consuming.  We were still able to make the gate in time for me to get a quick breakfast at the McDonald’s near the gate.

We were mid B boarding (me in the 20’s, her in the 40’s), so our plan was to take two aisle seats across from each other.  It worked, and I got lucky, as I had an empty middle seat between me and the guy in the window seat.  We talked a fair amount across the aisle, and I think I fell asleep a few times.  I have our touchdown at McCarran around 12:30 PM, so we were a bit earlier than our 12:55 PM scheduled arrival time.

Now, I’m typically not a light packer, especially for a week long trip, but Kip convinced me to go with just a carry-on bag.  It’s a bit tricky, since I also have my bi-pap that I have to carry on as well (as well as my backpack), but I managed.  Since we didn’t have to wait for baggage, we were able to head right to the bus stop to take the WAX downtown.

I also usually rent a car for my Las Vegas trips, but we were there during CES, and rental rates were ridiculously high, so Kip convinced me to take the bus. The bus fare was $2, and we made it there just a few minutes ahead of the bus around 1:05 PM (otherwise, we were going to have to wait until the 1:50 PM), so that was some luck.

Waiting for the WAX (photo courtesy of Kip)

Yay WAX!

After an uneventful ride, we arrived downtown and walked into the El Cortez around 1:50 PM.  Kip had her host make an exception for our reservation, so we were staying there for three nights, with 3x points for her on one day, and $25 (which she originally thought was $50). I had seen a few of her rooms at El Cortez, including one of their signature suites, but we got a regular room on the second floor.  The room seemed quite spacious, with two beds, the dresser, desk and chair, plus a sofa and coffee table.  The bathroom area was small (as to be expected in a downtown room), but the bathroom has a window that you can open up (which Kip likes).  Our view was quite unspectacular, with a view of the roof, and an office across the way.  Above the office, we could see the Spanish style tiles and a Mission type tower, which was kinda cool.  Here's a link to photos of the room:  Room photos of El Cortez

Who needs a view anyway?

So, with Kip having not eaten anything but snacks on the plane, she was hungry.  We had Pizza Lotto on our previous trips and we liked it, and we have also eaten at Naked City Pizza on Paradise and liked that, so we were thrilled to learn that Naked City Pizza had taken over the Pizza Lotto space.  We were disappointed when we got our pizza.  It was not like the pizza we had at their Paradise location, although we did eat it. The poor meal was just the beginning of our poor day, and really an extension of our poor play in the morning at Golden Nugget. . .

The unimpressive pizza

El Cortez does have good video poker, and Kip wanted to play some Downtown Deuces (Double Deuces Wild), which has a theoretical return of 100.92%.  Well, we didn’t realize that return, in fact, we took some hard losses, which were even harder to swallow after the beating we took earlier that morning.

Oooh, that could have been better. . .

And this one too!

We moved to bonus poker at Ike’s bar, but that didn’t fare much better.  I know that we didn’t hit many quads, we didn’t hit aces, and I know I didn’t hit any other bonus quads.  I had enough and just wanted to take some slot shots.  We played $1 Top Dollar, which we had a nice hit at Resorts in Atlantic City in December, but we had no such luck this time, but we did take a $20 win each.  We then each tried a $20, her on Return of Invaders from the Planet Moolah, and me on Goldfish 3. Now, we have historically had bad sessions on Invaders, but Kip had one good session, and that seems to make her think that she’ll have another one.  That may be true, but every time we’ve played together, it ends in failure, and this was no different.  I, on the other hand, hit several bonuses and was able to cash out an $80.62 ticket, so we were up another $20 each.  We tried some 10c Wheel Poker, but bailed after only losing $10.  I saw a Silver Strike slot, so I tried $10 while Kip added $10 in Free Play.  We had no luck there, and decided to call it a night.

We hadn’t eaten since our bad lunch at 3:00 PM, but it was too late to get a full meal now, so we headed to the room.  As I recall, it wasn’t even midnight, but we had been up most of the day anyway.  Tomorrow’s another day. . .

Golden Nugget Resort Fee:  $22.31

Golden Nugget housekeeping:  $3
Shuttle driver tip:  $3 (Kip)

Bus fare:  $2 ea

Breakfast:  $6.90 (Harv)

Lunch:  $2 tip (Harv)

Drink tips:  $16