Free drinks are bad, right?

Most people are aware that you get free drink in Vegas when you are gambling but very few that haven't been know any more than that; this practice of giving you free drinks is called comping.

Sounds like a great idea doesn't it? Well, yes... and, no.



Lets start with the "no"
The real basic here is that casinos love drunk people - the inebriated don't care so much about losing money and are far more likely to take risks. Get people drunk enough and they may even forget how this works and fold hands that would have been winners (trust me, I have seen it happen).

At the very least drunk people tend to keep gambling till there are no chips left; they don't stop as they "made back dinner" or "lost 10 times what that drink would have cost"

And there is the real point. If you were going to gamble with money you could afford to lose, then a free drink to go with that is a great idea. Gambling so that you can get a "free drink" is definitely not a good idea

What about the "yes"?
Sometimes gambling so that you can get a free drink is a good idea! I know, completely contradicted myself; there is a reason for it (although it is a gamble!!)

Quite a lot of the upmarket casinos (most of them on the strip now, it seems) charge ridiculous money for a domestic beer at the bar (talking $18 for 2 Budweiser bottles).

Now -  the majority of bars have video poker in them and you should be comped for playing these...*

*side note - Vegas changes a lot and each casino seems to have its own rules. 
My biggest piece of advice here is to ask if you are not sure and do this before you start gambling any money in the machine; put your $20 in, ask and, if they say no, take your money back out. 


They may well tell you you must "bet max" to get comped or another point around minimum bets which is standard and to be expected.


If you are fussy about what you drink you may also want to ask what they will comp as it may only be domestic beers; if you don't ask you don't get.


...and Video Poker is, allegedly, one of the better games in terms of house edge (see About.com where it talks about how to reduce the house edge - lots of other useful bits around gambling there too).

So play slowly, chat as you would have done, people watch as you would have done but do keep playing until you have at least ordered 2 drinks.
If you lose it all, its just what it would have cost you to buy it anyway (more or less depending on what you got comped) and there is every chance you will come out on top.

It makes sitting at the bar just that little bit more interesting and , besides, you are in Vegas!

Which Vegas hotel??

Hopefully you know in which area of Vegas you want to stay and what budget you have (if not have a look at  How to get there and Where to stay )
so we can now get down to the nitty gritty of the hotels themselves...


There are loads to choose from and all look better than the last with amazing amenities; especially with the newly opened City Centre, there should be a Strip hotel to suit everyone. I'll try and group them a bit for you;


Themed hotels
These are fewer and further between than a few years ago and these days the theme doesn't extend into the rooms generally speaking; the theme is more the structure of the building and some details around the main public floors.

• Excalibur.
• Circus Circus (really tired looking hotel now but remains the most child friendly on the Strip)
• Luxor
• Flamingo (one of the Original Vegas hotels. Centre strip, 3.5* nice hotel. You could  do alot worse on your first visit to Vegas)
• Venetian (this is a one of a kind being both themed and 5*!)
• Bills Gamblin Hall (cheap beer and nightly entertainment. Centre strip. One of my favourite hotels. Not as classy as others (lots of cowboy hats) but also only takes 10 mins to get to your room as it is tiny by Vegas standards)
• Imperial Palace
• New York New York (has a roller coaster and a very real looking Statue of Liberty)
• Caesars (excellent shopping mall)
• Paris
• TI (treasure Island)

5* luxury

• Bellagio (the original 5* Vegas - great for upmarket shopping)
• Venetian / Palazzo (more upmarket shopping including Ferrari!)
• Vdara (non smoking and non gaming Spa hotel)
• Aria
• Wynn / Encore
• Cosmopolitan
• Mandarin Oriental
• Four Seasons
• Skylofts @ MGM

4* and still luxurious

• Planet Hollywood (has an excellent shopping mall)
• Monte Carlo
• Mirage (home of dolphins and white tigers
• Mandalay Bay
• MGM

Other Strip hotels

• Riviera (old school North Strip)
• Stratosphere (has roller coasters and other rides & cool views of the Strip)
• Harrahs
• Polo towers (these are studios & condos rather than hotel rooms essentially)
• Tropicana
• Ballys (old school and set back from the Strip so there is a moving walkway to make sure you don't get tired!)
• Jockey club (these are studios & condos rather than hotel rooms essentially)

Off-Strip

There are way to many to name here, but I am going to list the reasonably close "big" names

• Palms
• Rio (where Penn & Teller currently have a show)
• Las Vegas Hilton (this is the hotel used in Diamonds are Forever Bond film)
• Hard Rock Hotel (has a good live music venue for gigs)
• Hooters
• Trump Tower (non  gaming 5*)

As you can see Las Vegas is becoming more and more about 4 / 5 star resorts and no longer so much about kitsch Elvis based themes!
I am not going to give a review on each hotel as I have not stayed in them all and so cannot give a full unbiased review but there are some things I can tell you about to hopefully help your decision

1. On the whole there is not a huge difference in terms of luxury between 3 & 4 star properties
2. Most hotel rooms in Vegas are sizeable and, depending where you would normally stay, much bigger than most UK hotels regardless of the star rating
3. Location, location, location; you should be able to narrow down your choices by picking from the hotels that are in the area you want to stay (check out the maps in Where to stay to help you out)
4. Think about your activities A) 5* generally means higher gambling minimums and higher class food and drink retailers. If you are looking for £1 michelobs and $5 roulette you'll be more likely to find it in Bills than Bellagio
5. Think about your activities B) if you plan to go clubbing then staying in the hotel of a club you want to visit can be very advantageous (update on this after my October trip as I have never had the time nor energy for the Vegas club scene before now!)
6. Not all hotel pools are created equally. If this is an important part of your trip do some research to chose the right one for you (do note that they normally close the pools between Sept & May and some of the hotels don't even have a pool)
7. You really wont (or shouldn't!!) be spending that much time in your room, but only you know how much the star rating means to you for the time you do spend in the hotel
8. Some hotels are now non smoking throughout or do not even have a casino! (e.g. Vdara)
9. Don't stay in the Travelodges! I have been told by Vegas locals that they really aren't nice areas to be in and besides I'm willing to bet money you can get a nicer room in a nicer location for the same or less cash in one of the hotels listed above
10. If you are staying in Down-town try to stick to the Fremont Street hotels. Outside of this the area can be a bit dodgy

A word about Resort Fees. These are cheeky extra charges that some hotels charge on top of your room and are generally payable locally (either at check in or check out)

Check the Hotels' websites to understand what the Resort fee includes - it may be free internet use or gym use for example -  and how much it is. My suggestion would be to try and use whatever it is you are paying for. Local calls may be handy to book a restaurant for example (although its not all that easy - who gets faxes these days?!)

Some hotels don't have a fee and some include it the upfront price; whichever it is, make sure you understand what you will have to pay as it can be quite a stiff at the end of your holiday.

Here is an example from a random Strip hotel taken today

$12.50 per night
Hotel resort fee inclusions:
Internet access in guest room
Phone calls (local)
Faxes (incoming)
Newspaper (daily)
Use of fitness centre

Where to stay ...?

To decide where to stay, you will need to consider some questions that only you can answer:
How much are you willing to walk? How much do you want to gamble? Are you happy to drive?
In order to understand why these questions are important you need to understand a little about the size and scale of Vegas; Las Vegas can be broken into 3 meaningful areas as fas as tourists are concerned.

 click on the map to see a larger image

1 - The Strip; this is Las Vegas Boulevard in terms of street names and is commonly considered to start at Mandalay Bay at the South and the Stratospehere in the north. These two hotels are 4 miles from each other; this is therefore the length of the Strip as I will refer to it here.
In terms of scale this is a many lane highway - not dissimilar to the size to the M6 though Birmingham.

(Map of the Strip taken from Vegas.com )

click on the map to see a larger image

2 - Down-town; this is the area around Fremont Street that houses
some of the oldest and, in some cases, cheapest Vegas hotels. Not considered as glitzy as the Strip you can find some accomodation bargains here.

(Map of Downtown, again taken from Vegas.com )



 3 - Off Strip; this is the area that surrounds the strip where hotels will be approx 0.5 -  1.5 miles from the Las Vegas Strip; these hotels will sometimes offer a shuttle bus to another hotel on the Strip.  The hotels are on the Strip Map above and are any that are not next to the thick red line that denotes the Strip.

When most people think of an hotel they think of a Travelodge or perhaps the Ritz in london. Forget these images; the hotels on the Stip are known as resorts because they are self contained enormous things. The majority have thousands of rooms, shopping centres, theatre sections and restaurant sections; it can take you 30 minutes to get from your room to the Strip. Hence the first question; how much do you want to walk? If it is your first time to Vegas ( I am assuming it is, otherwise you probably wouldnt be looking for help and information!) you will probably want to see as much of Las Vegas as possible so consider the following before you decide on an area. I made the picture below to give more idea on scale and to show the distances between each group of resorts; it isn't to scale or to represent anything other than the distances on the green arrows

How much money do you want to spend? Location is everything and mid strip hotels will generally be the most expensive with Down-town being next and off strip being cheapest (generally speaking). You are likely to want to spend most of your time somewhere around the Strip so how much time do you want to spend travelling? If you stay Off Strip you will need to walk / get a shuttle or cab to go anywhere; this will also apply to the extreme ends of the Strip itself. So its no good saving £100 on your hotel to then spend it all on cabs if you aren't willing to walk...
So hopefully you now have some idea of location or at least which area you want to be in.

My next post will talk about the hotels themselves and how they differ.

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How to get there..

So lets start with flights; these can be more than the rest of your holiday combined! There are a couple of ways to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to transatlantic flights



Direct vs Stop overs
This is a tricky one and the first question you need to ask yourself is How much is my time worth? If all you want  is to spend the least amount of ££££ possible then it doesn't matter how long you will spend in Dallas Fort Worth airport on the way there (and back!) as you could save your self hundreds of pounds - but I did it twice and will never do it again; here's why...

The way out there is fine, you are in holiday mode and its an adventure; if its a long stopover you could even venture out to see the city that you are laying over in. On the way back, however, it is a different kettle of fish; you are tired and all you want to do is go home; if you enjoy Vegas as much as I do then the post holiday blues kick in as soon as you are at Mccarran airport, so prolonging the time you spend getting home is not a positive one.

Also bear in mind that US airports aren't like Gatwick or Heathrow; even the big ones are more like Luton at best (1 Duty Free shop a bar and a coffee shop. Oh and an SBarro which are the scum of the earth imho...)
If I search flights on a site like Expedia (find it here - this is not a sponsored link, I have linked it as I like this site; more on that in another post) , here's the difference in prices I get (please note this is for illustration purposes only and what you find when you search may differ greatly);

Cheapest Direct flight £809 with Virgin
Total journey time out = 10hr 45
Total journey time back = 10hr

Cheapest 1 stop flight £591 American Airlines

Total journey time out = 15hr 30
Total journey time back = 14hr 50

So as you can see the layovers save you £200pp in this example but add 9 hours to your journey time. This is a decision only you can make in terms of time vs money



Isn't there another way?

Well, actually, there may well be; a friend of mine, that is in Vegas as I type, swears by getting the cheapest Direct flight to the closest town he can and then driving from there.

For example: LA is a 5 hour drive to Vegas - you could spend a night in LA if you wanted to and it does mean you have the car; depending on what you want from your time in Vegas this could be a good thing or a waste of time. I would suggest you make your mind up on that point once you have decided what you want to do there including how you will be seeing the Grand Canyon (that post will be coming very soon)

This would also apply from other cities / towns - use Google maps and a flight search site to try a few out.

Again just for illustration if we used the same dates as the example above then flying into LAX and renting a car the cheapest Direct with basic car is £718
The same into Phoenix, Arizona (PHX, just over 5hrs drive) is £620

And finally - buy your flight & hotel together from one of the many sites that do it (Last Minute, and Expedia to name just two). All of the above direct vs. in-direct flights still applies but you will probably find that the total price is only slightly more than (or even the same) as just the flight prices alone.

My next blog will be on the Las Vegas area and hotels and Where to stay, so check back for that very soon...

If you enjoyed this post then why not subscribe using the handy links at the bottom or on the side?


[A point for you to note as you search airlines; at the time of writing this blog ONLY Virgin and BA fly direct to Las Vegas (airport code LAS). But it does look like AA and Iberia (both part of BA now) may be coming to the party too...]

Psst... pass it on...

In my "Too old to Backpack?" blog (here) I am planning a 6 month trip away, but over the course of this planning for the last couple of weeks, I have completely forgotten that we are going to my favourite city in a few weeks... Las Vegas... yeah, baby!
So as the familiar well of excitement came over me today and I started to think about what we are going to do, see and, most importantly, eat and I thought I would share what I know from my several visits over the years with you, you lucky thing...