Vegas Revisited

My son, Mickey, is employed as a Regional Sales Manager by the best company in the world:  Storm Bowling Products.  Seriously -- they are the best! Not that that has anything to do with this blog....I just wanted to point that out.  Any hoooooo......

This year, Mickey was assigned to work the T-A-T which is a bowling tournament that is sponsored by Storm/Roto Grip and held at the Orleans Casino Hotel in Las Vegas.  Being the loving and caring mother that I am, there was no possible way I was about to send my son to "Sin City" on his own so I used my FF miles to hop on the same plane.

Naturally there were only two real things that could occupy my time for the week:  gambling and watching the Casey Anthony trial.  I won't go into what transpired with the trial since there probably isn't anyone able to read who doesn't already know what happened.  (and if you can't read, what are you doing trying to read this blog?)  So gambling it would be.

Unfortunately, having been laid off just a mere 6 weeks before departure, the funds available for gambling were quite low.  On top of that, I already had plans to fly from Vegas to Myrtle Beach for our annual family vacation once the Vegas Vacation was complete, and I knew I'd need money for that.  Needless to say, I approached my first video poker machine with trepidation.

The first couple of hours started off pretty good with a few low card four-of-a-kinds and I had a few hundred more than I started.  Aaaaaah, I though to myself, this is going to be a great week.  NOT!  By the time I went to bed, I had spent all of the money I planned to use for 4 days!

Day 2 was more of the same and I was starting to wonder how the hell I was going to make it through an entire week.  I was also starting to wonder why anyone would consider this a good local's casino.  Finally, I was starting to wonder how all of these progressive video poker royals were being hit and I wasn't even getting a sniff!

On the third day, after they were finished working, Mickey's co-worker Ernest drove us all downtown to visit a pawn shop that is the site of the tv show Pawn Stars.  Although I had never seen the show, I went along just to get out of the casino for a while.  In case you're wondering, yes, it's sort of cool but I guess you would appreciate it more if you actually watched the show and no, we didn't see "the old guy" whoever that is but that seems to be the most popular question people asked us.   Returning to the casino from the parking garage, I spotted a bank of progressive penny video poker machine  (100 coin max bet) and decided to sit down for a smoke.  Sticking in a twenty, I hit the Royal on my second spin for $819.  Very exciting and it was really funny, too when I found out later that Ernest had gone to get change and sat at my machine just a couple of minutes later and the guy next to him said "oh, some woman just hit the royal on that one"

That Royal must have been the ice breaker because suddenly all of the machines started to loosen up and though I wasn't hitting any royal flushes, I was hitting lots and lots of 4-of-a-kind (even some being dealt on triple play machines which is always exciting!)  I was finally on the upswing....able to put some hundreds in my suitcase and still have plenty to play with.

Finally, on my second to last day, I hit a progressive royal for $1222 on a triple play machine.  It wasn't dealt to me -- that would have made my jackpot over $10k -- but it was nice to pull one since I hadn't even been getting any straights or straight flushes.

All in all, it was a positive trip financially and I really did like the Orleans quite a bit more than Sam's Town.  Definitely, cleaner rooms and cleaner casino area.... I give this trip a resounding two thumbs up!