Outside of gambling and taking it easy, we did do 2 new things: we watched The Price is Right LIVE! show at Bally's and had a nice dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Postrio, located in the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian.
Day 1
If anyone from LA is wondering, we got on the 210 @ Santa Anita at 3:50PM and were able to reach Primm at exactly 7PM. We had dinner at the Primm Outlets at Cafe Koraku, a regular stop of ours and a place I highly recommend if you're looking for cheap and good asian food, specifically ramen & fried rice. For this trip, we stayed at the Venezia tower at the Venetian, for which I received a mailer for $79/night through June 30th. N.B. The Venezia has a separate check-in area on the 10th floor, but, if there's a backup there, I'd recommend checking in downstairs as there were only 1-2 awfully slow attendants available on the 10th, even on a Friday.
Day 2
After having a quick breakfast at San Gennaro Grill (located in the Venetian food court adjacent to the casino), we went to the Tix 4 Tonight half price show tickets booth just north of the Wynn to see what they had. We had been tracking prices for The Price is Right LIVE! show ($55+tax at the box office, $39+tax at bestofvegas.com) so we were excited when we saw it for $32+tax at Tix 4 Tonight.
The show started at 2:30PM and, while there were a lot of people, it wasn't full. Our host for the day was the guy who did Supermarket Sweep. There were 5 bidding contests to get on the stage, 1 big wheel spinoff, and 1 showcase showdown. Uyen and I didn't get called down for any of the games, sadly, but the guy sitting right in front of me got called down for the first event, bid exactly correct and got $100, and got on stage (didn't win anything up there, but cool nonetheless)! One thing different from the show was that for each event, brand new people were called down, so they cycle through a lot more people. So, it was always 4 new people bidding, and the showcase and big wheel contestants weren't drawn from the people who had already gotten on stage. There was a car (Nissan Versa) available to be won in the showcase showdown, but a contestant had to come within 100 dollars of the actual price of the showcase to win everything. Otherwise, the contestant with the closest bid without going over won a Mexico cruise (one of the items in the showcase). Both contestants overbid on the day we were there, so nobody won anything in the showcase. All in all, a very enjoyable show (even though we didn't get called up); we learned quite a bit about the history of the show, our audience was very into it, and it was a good deal IMO for the 2 of us at $70. That said, it's not something the 2 of us would feel the need to do again unless it was with a large, interested group.After the show, we had a quick snack at the Venetian food court (in the Canal Shoppes, where you can't charge to the suite btw, in case anyone is after resort loyalty points, like me) and then hung out at the Venezia pool deck (lots of kids this weekend - bleck!) until dinner, which was at Wolfgang's Postrio.
We actually received a 25% off coupon to Pastrio in our suite on both nights, but the expiration date was 3/31/09. I called the concierge about this and got a rude woman who stated that it would not be accepted and the coupons shouldn't have been placed out in the first place. Undeterred, and definitely not pleased, we stopped by Postrio before heading out in the morning and was very pleasantly assured our discount would be honored. And it was, without a hitch. We had a bowl of the split pea soup with dungeness crab, crab/lobster cakes, 2 glasses of Malbec, the ribeye steak, and homemade mixed berry sorbet for dessert. Postrio also serves this awesome complimentary pita bread with hummus and some sort of olive oil/vinegar reduction w/ finely chopped olives. The steak was $48, which they split for us, but when we saw it we were worried that they might have misunderstood and had given us 2 separate orders - it was big! Each "half" was 10-12 ounces. Granted, we don't eat a lot, but, if one is so inclined to get the steak, I'd seriously recommend sharing to leave room to sample the other things on the menu, as well as the pita bread.OK, so we've all seen those crane games where you can win a stuffed animal. While we were in Bally's, I ran across this:
Day 3
On our last day we just chilled in our suite, bringing back brunch from San Gennaro and the neighboring Rialto Deli. We left Vegas just before 4PM, had dinner at Peggy Sue's in Yermo (salad never tasted so good), and arrived home a little after 10PM.
Cost Breakdown
$172.22 ($79+tax/per night) - 2 nights at The Venetian (also included $25 gambling credit) via Club Grazie mailer
$70.02 - Tickets to The Price Is Right LIVE! from Tix 4 Tonight (visit link for a "$2 off service charge" coupon)
$86.47 - Dinner at Postrio, with 25% discount
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$328.71
Just one note about our gambling on this trip, as I believe it fitting: we discovered a new machine this trip to add to our repertoire of everything Monopoly: The Price is Right! "Always remember to spay and neuter your pets."
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The Price is Right! Love it!
ReplyDeleteToo bad we never made it out to the original.. but you should try out the Vegas one. Hopefully you'll have better luck than Uyen and me!
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