Just back report: Four Seasons - Vegas 6/1 - 6/7. Our experience w/ "Love", Limo ride to the Dam, Red Rock Canyon, Met Craig from Craig's list, and other Hotels :o)
Jun 11th, 2008, 08:35 AM
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Just back report: Four Seasons - Vegas 6/1 - 6/7. Our experience w/ "Love", Limo ride to the Dam, Red Rock Canyon, Met Craig from Craig's list, and other Hotels :o)
Just returned from great, first time trip with my wife to Las Vegas from Maryland. Got free air tickets due to saved up points from credit card promos sent to us ("Open an acct, buy 1 thing and get 20K free miles" - sure, why not!). We also got 5 free nights at the Four Seasons due to a sales contest at work so that was sweet. We got into Vegas VERY late at night and got a cab to the FS hotel. We were zonked. Check in was fast, the hotel was quiet and they gave us a strip view, upgraded room type (our pts were only for a non strip view) just for asking. It was our anniversary week so that helped. It's always our anniversary celebration when we travel 
. They also brought up a highly alcoholic cake for us which was nice, but we don't drink so had to throw it out after 2 bites.
We asked for some more soaps and lotions and they brought us a TON of stuff in a large bag. My wife really appreciated these, as she uses them all throughout the year, a nice reminder of our fabulous stay here. We can't usually afford hotels like this, so it's very much appreciated when we get them for "free" through work or points. Every person we dealt with at this hotel was excellent and the concierge (the guy from London) was the best by far. He gave us so many tips and was enthusiastic every time I talked with him, even though he may have been bored to tears by my questions.
The room seemed very small at first even though it was 500 sq ft. Much of this was the bathroom. I called to see how much it would cost to upgrade and they said that for $200 more per nt, we could get an 1100 sq ft suite! Pretty great deal, but my wife wanted to save that money for ... shopping.
Eventually, we got used to the smallish sized but sumptuos room and loved it. The bed was very comfortable and the chair and ottoman was out of this world. Had a killer strip view, albeit a little too much of the airport view for my taste. I wasn't complaining though as we could see all "the lights" of Vegas. The bathroom was gorgeous marble everywhere and the shower pressure was outstanding. The hallways were stunning and being on the top floor #39 of the hotel was spectacular. We picked this hotel as there's no gambling - my wife is not into hearing the whirling machines, seeing people at 730am as we go to breakfast blowing smoke in our direction while they play the slots and walking around half drunk. I only wish it was closer to the strip but you can't have quiet AND the very close in location.
We still saw all this, at the Mandalay hotel "Raffles" breakfast spot, but it wasn't in our little refuge hotel the FS that much. Our breakfast restaurant was about twice the price of the Mandalay's so we ate mostly at the Mandalay. TheHotel had a gorgeous, Manhattanish looking breakfast restaurant and we enjoyed that one very much as well. It was amazing to us to see people stumbling into the Mandalay's restaurant at 600am from a night of drinking and gambling in their dresses and high heels ordering burgers as we ordered oatmeal and coffee! We've never seen this before, in a way, it was kind of cool. We felt like we were part of the afterparty.
While we were there, I rented a stretch limo as an anniversary gift to my wife and we took it to the Hoover Dam and a tour of the strip (Presidential Limo). It was amazing. We felt like lifestyles of the rich and famous. She's never been in a limo, so for $215, it was the bargain of the trip. It would have cost us $70 or so to rent a car for the day anyway... The Dam tour blew me away - I love this stuff.
Another day we did rent a car and did Red Rock Canyon. She was disappointed, I liked it enough. Not very impressive compared to other Nat Parks out west but nice enough.
Other days we toured the Wynn - scary lines in reception made us glad we stayed at the FS, but it had incredible floors, gardens, restaurants, shops, waterfall views from those restaurants. Bellagio - even longer line in check in (ouch), way too croweded for us, seemed like Disney, amazing shops and the water show was great outside. The pools looked splendid but I'm glad we stayed way down the strip, away from all of this, in our little bit of quiet, secluded, remote, expensive cab fare away - paradise. We were starving and ate at the first restaurant we saw there, it looked like it could hold 500+ people, and the caesar salad and soup we had was surprising great. I'll bet everything there was pretty decent.
The Venetian seemed very contrived to us, but I still liked it. I didn't like it near as much as the other two hotels, but the Palazzo was VERY impressive. The best shopping we'd seen the entire trip was at the drop dead gorgeous Palazzo. What a beautiful mall, and huge.
The Forum Shops were also quite nice, but not in the same league as Palazzo.
Foodwise, we ate at Burger Bar once to save money and it was one of the best meals of the trip. Awesome veggie and regular burger. Great seasoned fries. We were so full we couldn't even eat dessert, a rarity for us. They had a long wait so we ate at the bar in the back, something we never do, and it was fun.
We also ate at Joe's (Stoned Crab) at one of the malls. It was amazing! We ate there in Miami once and liked it enough but this experience transcended that by a mile. The salmon and halibut we ordered was top notch, as was the amazing side dishes, salad and they gave us a free Key Lime dessert even though we said we were too full. They said you don't have to have an appetite to enjoy this, and it came with the check as an anniversary treat. Very impressive. We were in food heaven.
We also ate at Japonaise in the Mirage hotel. It was an experience like no other on this trip - the pork chop with the clams on top of it in a tall tower was a great picture. My salmon was the best of the trip. It being in a Casino wasn't ideal, but we had to eat there as we heard it was good, and we were to see "Love" right afterwards.
The Ugly... I had looked forward to "Love", the cirque show for some time now. It was a toss up between that and Mystere, and in the end, I chose Love. Big mistake... We had seats really high up in #304 I think it was. We were told to sit high up to see everything. Wrong... My wife complained it like sitting in the sky seats, and couldn't see alot of the show. 1/2 way up would have been much better. I didn't like the show, at all. I had no idea what was going on most of the time and I LOVE the Beatles! I thought it was weak, the "story line" was poor, and the stunts were just ok. It was my first Cirque show in 20+ years, the first being in a tent in Wash DC which I didn't like either that much. People love this show, I was thinking, what's wrong with me? I wanted to get out of there at the half way point. The seats were very comfortable though and the music was mostly great. I was cringing through most of it, thinking my wife was hating it 10X more than I did as she doesn't like the Beatles that much. She said it was OK afterwards. I never shared my thoughts about it with her.
Things we learned: I learned to try to get a morning flight to Vegas. Our flight left at 830pm and got in at 11pm West Coast time, which was 2am to us. By the time we got our room it was 3am our time, which made us totally out of it. We usually don't stay up or out past 1am. We never, ever caught up to West Coast Time the whole trip. We got up a 5am every day (8am to us) and went to bed at 830-9pm. We have never gone on a trip before where we didn't adjust to the time after a day or so.
The pools at Mandalay rocked! The wave pool was great for a little while, the lazy river was good only with a float, and the Four Seasons pool was decadent yet so small. It was so quiet and peaceful at our hotel, we loved that about it. All the other hotels we visited were CRAZY! We liked the Mirage alot too, even though it's not over the top like the really big hotels. It seemed classy and old school nice.
Funny thing happened at the FS 1/2 way through our stay. We were lost coming from the Mandalay one day trying to find the Four Seasons and this nice, non descript gentleman heard me say "Where the heck IS our hotel!?". He said to follow him, that he was going there too. We chatted with him for a while, he said he was from San Franciso, we got on the elevator with another gent that knew him. We went up, the nice guy got off, and my wife commented to me, "He was really nice to do that for us". The other guy said "Oh yeah, he's great. That's Craig, from Craig's list. He was the keynote speaker at the software convention we both just left tonight".
Too funny... if I had known it was him, I would have thanked him for his great free resource. We've sold so much stuff on Craig's list which made it easier for us to move recently.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Sorry in advance if there's any typos or grammaticals as I'm typing fast on my lunch break.
Miami, Florida Four Seasons and the Naples, Florida Ritz Carlton (for the 2nd year in a row) is our next review - 6/21-27. Stay tuned.
Cheers,
Steve and Julia R
Gaithersburg, MD USA
. They also brought up a highly alcoholic cake for us which was nice, but we don't drink so had to throw it out after 2 bites.We asked for some more soaps and lotions and they brought us a TON of stuff in a large bag. My wife really appreciated these, as she uses them all throughout the year, a nice reminder of our fabulous stay here. We can't usually afford hotels like this, so it's very much appreciated when we get them for "free" through work or points. Every person we dealt with at this hotel was excellent and the concierge (the guy from London) was the best by far. He gave us so many tips and was enthusiastic every time I talked with him, even though he may have been bored to tears by my questions.
The room seemed very small at first even though it was 500 sq ft. Much of this was the bathroom. I called to see how much it would cost to upgrade and they said that for $200 more per nt, we could get an 1100 sq ft suite! Pretty great deal, but my wife wanted to save that money for ... shopping.
Eventually, we got used to the smallish sized but sumptuos room and loved it. The bed was very comfortable and the chair and ottoman was out of this world. Had a killer strip view, albeit a little too much of the airport view for my taste. I wasn't complaining though as we could see all "the lights" of Vegas. The bathroom was gorgeous marble everywhere and the shower pressure was outstanding. The hallways were stunning and being on the top floor #39 of the hotel was spectacular. We picked this hotel as there's no gambling - my wife is not into hearing the whirling machines, seeing people at 730am as we go to breakfast blowing smoke in our direction while they play the slots and walking around half drunk. I only wish it was closer to the strip but you can't have quiet AND the very close in location.
We still saw all this, at the Mandalay hotel "Raffles" breakfast spot, but it wasn't in our little refuge hotel the FS that much. Our breakfast restaurant was about twice the price of the Mandalay's so we ate mostly at the Mandalay. TheHotel had a gorgeous, Manhattanish looking breakfast restaurant and we enjoyed that one very much as well. It was amazing to us to see people stumbling into the Mandalay's restaurant at 600am from a night of drinking and gambling in their dresses and high heels ordering burgers as we ordered oatmeal and coffee! We've never seen this before, in a way, it was kind of cool. We felt like we were part of the afterparty.
While we were there, I rented a stretch limo as an anniversary gift to my wife and we took it to the Hoover Dam and a tour of the strip (Presidential Limo). It was amazing. We felt like lifestyles of the rich and famous. She's never been in a limo, so for $215, it was the bargain of the trip. It would have cost us $70 or so to rent a car for the day anyway... The Dam tour blew me away - I love this stuff.
Another day we did rent a car and did Red Rock Canyon. She was disappointed, I liked it enough. Not very impressive compared to other Nat Parks out west but nice enough.
Other days we toured the Wynn - scary lines in reception made us glad we stayed at the FS, but it had incredible floors, gardens, restaurants, shops, waterfall views from those restaurants. Bellagio - even longer line in check in (ouch), way too croweded for us, seemed like Disney, amazing shops and the water show was great outside. The pools looked splendid but I'm glad we stayed way down the strip, away from all of this, in our little bit of quiet, secluded, remote, expensive cab fare away - paradise. We were starving and ate at the first restaurant we saw there, it looked like it could hold 500+ people, and the caesar salad and soup we had was surprising great. I'll bet everything there was pretty decent.
The Venetian seemed very contrived to us, but I still liked it. I didn't like it near as much as the other two hotels, but the Palazzo was VERY impressive. The best shopping we'd seen the entire trip was at the drop dead gorgeous Palazzo. What a beautiful mall, and huge.
The Forum Shops were also quite nice, but not in the same league as Palazzo.
Foodwise, we ate at Burger Bar once to save money and it was one of the best meals of the trip. Awesome veggie and regular burger. Great seasoned fries. We were so full we couldn't even eat dessert, a rarity for us. They had a long wait so we ate at the bar in the back, something we never do, and it was fun.
We also ate at Joe's (Stoned Crab) at one of the malls. It was amazing! We ate there in Miami once and liked it enough but this experience transcended that by a mile. The salmon and halibut we ordered was top notch, as was the amazing side dishes, salad and they gave us a free Key Lime dessert even though we said we were too full. They said you don't have to have an appetite to enjoy this, and it came with the check as an anniversary treat. Very impressive. We were in food heaven
.We also ate at Japonaise in the Mirage hotel. It was an experience like no other on this trip - the pork chop with the clams on top of it in a tall tower was a great picture. My salmon was the best of the trip. It being in a Casino wasn't ideal, but we had to eat there as we heard it was good, and we were to see "Love" right afterwards.
The Ugly... I had looked forward to "Love", the cirque show for some time now. It was a toss up between that and Mystere, and in the end, I chose Love. Big mistake... We had seats really high up in #304 I think it was. We were told to sit high up to see everything. Wrong... My wife complained it like sitting in the sky seats, and couldn't see alot of the show. 1/2 way up would have been much better. I didn't like the show, at all. I had no idea what was going on most of the time and I LOVE the Beatles! I thought it was weak, the "story line" was poor, and the stunts were just ok. It was my first Cirque show in 20+ years, the first being in a tent in Wash DC which I didn't like either that much. People love this show, I was thinking, what's wrong with me? I wanted to get out of there at the half way point. The seats were very comfortable though and the music was mostly great. I was cringing through most of it, thinking my wife was hating it 10X more than I did as she doesn't like the Beatles that much. She said it was OK afterwards. I never shared my thoughts about it with her.
Things we learned: I learned to try to get a morning flight to Vegas. Our flight left at 830pm and got in at 11pm West Coast time, which was 2am to us. By the time we got our room it was 3am our time, which made us totally out of it. We usually don't stay up or out past 1am. We never, ever caught up to West Coast Time the whole trip. We got up a 5am every day (8am to us) and went to bed at 830-9pm. We have never gone on a trip before where we didn't adjust to the time after a day or so.
The pools at Mandalay rocked! The wave pool was great for a little while, the lazy river was good only with a float, and the Four Seasons pool was decadent yet so small. It was so quiet and peaceful at our hotel, we loved that about it. All the other hotels we visited were CRAZY! We liked the Mirage alot too, even though it's not over the top like the really big hotels. It seemed classy and old school nice.
Funny thing happened at the FS 1/2 way through our stay. We were lost coming from the Mandalay one day trying to find the Four Seasons and this nice, non descript gentleman heard me say "Where the heck IS our hotel!?". He said to follow him, that he was going there too. We chatted with him for a while, he said he was from San Franciso, we got on the elevator with another gent that knew him. We went up, the nice guy got off, and my wife commented to me, "He was really nice to do that for us". The other guy said "Oh yeah, he's great. That's Craig, from Craig's list. He was the keynote speaker at the software convention we both just left tonight".
Too funny... if I had known it was him, I would have thanked him for his great free resource. We've sold so much stuff on Craig's list which made it easier for us to move recently.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Sorry in advance if there's any typos or grammaticals as I'm typing fast on my lunch break.
Miami, Florida Four Seasons and the Naples, Florida Ritz Carlton (for the 2nd year in a row) is our next review - 6/21-27. Stay tuned.
Cheers,
Steve and Julia R
Gaithersburg, MD USA
Jun 11th, 2008, 08:52 AM
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What a great trip and trip report! I'm not a huge Vegas fan (in fact, I really don't like it at all), but we were there for a couple of days for my DD's 21st birthday. We stayed at the Venetian, so I laughed at your description of it being "contrived". We referred to it as "faux elegance". Glad you had such a good time.
Jun 11th, 2008, 09:15 AM
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Thx for the comments. My wife didn't want to go to Vegas that much either. We don't drink or gamble but due to the pools we went to, the shopping we experience, the sights, the sounds, the countryside, the friendly people we encountered, the wild taxi drivers we talked to, we had alot of fun.
One taxi driver had a $9k Rolex Daytona watch and said he made about $70K a year. I believed him as he was very knowledgeable about many things and was great to talk to. He also said he got free show tix to most of the shows due his role as a Taxi driver and being a part of some taxi association. He said he gets the tix because he talks to alot of tourists and if he likes the shows, he tells them all about it. Great deal for them.
Yeah, Vegas is fairly slick and sleazy, but under it's surface, it was also friendly and easily accessible to us non-Vegas types. Friends told us it would be innappropriate for us to take our 14 year old "kid" there, but the opposite was true. She would have LOVED it there, the part we enjoyed of it. Vegas is for everyone, anytime.
Steve R
Gaithersburg MD
One taxi driver had a $9k Rolex Daytona watch and said he made about $70K a year. I believed him as he was very knowledgeable about many things and was great to talk to. He also said he got free show tix to most of the shows due his role as a Taxi driver and being a part of some taxi association. He said he gets the tix because he talks to alot of tourists and if he likes the shows, he tells them all about it. Great deal for them.
Yeah, Vegas is fairly slick and sleazy, but under it's surface, it was also friendly and easily accessible to us non-Vegas types. Friends told us it would be innappropriate for us to take our 14 year old "kid" there, but the opposite was true. She would have LOVED it there, the part we enjoyed of it. Vegas is for everyone, anytime.
Steve R
Gaithersburg MD
Jun 11th, 2008, 09:19 AM
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Great report. We were in the LV for a few nights just before you were. Where do you work? Didn't you win a trip to Cabo last year from your job? You are one lucky guy.
Keep us posted on your other trips!!
MY
Keep us posted on your other trips!!
MY
Jun 11th, 2008, 09:49 AM
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Thanks for the comments on "Love". We couldn't decide between that and Mystere. But, opted for Mystere after looking at the soundtrack and seeing a few scenes online and on Larry King.
We loved every second of Mystere. Though, we made the mistake of front row seats. Except for the trapeze performances (my favorite), seats were awesome.
We loved every second of Mystere. Though, we made the mistake of front row seats. Except for the trapeze performances (my favorite), seats were awesome.
Jun 11th, 2008, 03:24 PM
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To answer some questions, I work for a cable company and sometimes they have sales contests. I pretty much win most of the contests, being the top rep each year . I'm kind of blessed in that regard.
They have some good prizes now and then.
Wish we had seen Mystere then. I thought all Cirque shows are just weird and "off" after seeing Love, but the next time I'm out there, if there's a next time, I'll try to see Mystere as I've heard such great things about it.
Steve
. I'm kind of blessed in that regard.They have some good prizes now and then.
Wish we had seen Mystere then. I thought all Cirque shows are just weird and "off" after seeing Love, but the next time I'm out there, if there's a next time, I'll try to see Mystere as I've heard such great things about it.
Steve
Jun 12th, 2008, 07:32 AM
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Hi Steve-
I'll admit that I usually don't read TR of Vegas, but your title caught my eye... Your TR is so well written and entertaining that I read it all, even though I had no intention to visit Vegas anytime soon. just want to say it is a very enjoyable read.
I'll admit that I usually don't read TR of Vegas, but your title caught my eye... Your TR is so well written and entertaining that I read it all, even though I had no intention to visit Vegas anytime soon. just want to say it is a very enjoyable read.
Jun 13th, 2008, 08:53 PM
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Thanks yk - I aimed to please .
I hope to be find the time to write another Just Back Report from Naples and Miami after we return at the end of June. We've never stayed downtown in Miami before at the Four Seasons so I look forward to writing a review of that.
For the price of a Comfort Inn in February, we get to stay at one of the top hotels in Miami in June. Gotta love the "off season".
Cheers,
Steve R
.I hope to be find the time to write another Just Back Report from Naples and Miami after we return at the end of June. We've never stayed downtown in Miami before at the Four Seasons so I look forward to writing a review of that.
For the price of a Comfort Inn in February, we get to stay at one of the top hotels in Miami in June. Gotta love the "off season".
Cheers,
Steve R
Jun 23rd, 2008, 05:54 PM
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glad you had a great time, stever, and thanks for reporting back!
Sorry you didn't like Love. I really enjoyed it, but we had seats about 1/2 way up, maybe that makes a difference...
thanks again...
Sorry you didn't like Love. I really enjoyed it, but we had seats about 1/2 way up, maybe that makes a difference...
thanks again...
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