Vegas Update
posted in Travel |Yesterday we got back from a weekend in Las Vegas for a friend’s birthday. A couple of random observations-
1) There is an incredible amount of construction going on. There is always a lot of construction in Vegas but I have never seen so much. And chatting with a couple of cab drivers confirmed that its more than in the past. They said that the construction companies are aggressively recruiting workers from all over the country. I guess given that the town still sells out for big events and conferences and that there is this increasing trend of building condos/timeshares on the strip its not surprising but it still seems pretty extreme.
2) We had a dinner at Bouchon in their private room. The food was very good - although its not a place to get your mind blown with something new or amazingly good, its very strong and predictably good. The service was incredible- there were maybe a couple of rough edges, but the overall experience of them taking care of us in the private room and the orgy of extra deserts at the end were great.
3) It is interesting to see the evolution of various trends in the casino industry. Over the past couple of years I’ve seen lots of casinos having more and more of the lame continuous shuffle machines and the super-lame single-deck blackjack (with the horrible odds because of how they change the pay-outs on blackjack). Someone like myself looking for a game with reasonable odds (I like 2-deck, dealer stays on soft-17) was usually out of luck unless you were willing to have a huge minimum bet. I was happy to see that TI has moved back to the decent 2-deck tables. At the same time I did notice though that their overall selection of table games were pretty small and the trend towards casinos being mostly slot-machines doesn’t seem to have stopped that much.
4) The pools at Mandaly Bay are still crazy. The pools themselves are still fun (although the construction sucked), but every chair available is staked out by someone so there is literally no place to put your stuff. Its also especially lame that people stake out a chair just by putting a towel on it- the staff should be much stricter about removing towels left on chairs with no personal belongings since I suspect many of those people have entirely left. Also, the Mandalay “The Hotel” is cool, but getting from it to the pool is crazy because you have to go way around. They need to make some sort of passageway so you can get to the pools faster from The Hotel.