I like Vegas. My wife and I have a tendency to spend some time out there at least once a year and have become quite familiar with all of the sights and sounds that go along with a place labeled affectionately as Sin City. Our recent visit was actually to go to a family wedding being held there, but for specific reasons I am going to hold off on commenting about that specific event (for now). As a perk from visiting that city at a regular frequency, we tend to get fairly good rates on hotels. Such good rates that we often end up going back to the same hotel(s) even after we have decided we wanted a change. That is the situation we had on our recent trip. Even though we have stayed at the Luxor like 6 or 7 times now, the $59/night room rates is hard to pass up especially since they usually end up comping them out at the end of stay anyway. We could also use our offer to get a cheap room for others that were heading out there with us. So, setting the tone for this post is we went to Vegas, stayed at a hotel even though we would prefer to go elsewhere and had brought a number of people with us.
Four things stick out about that visit that has significantly impacted my desire to ever go to that particular hotel again. I will let you form your own opinion if I am simply overreacting. The first of these issues is the room location we were given. Having been to Vegas so many times, the room view is not an issue for us – to be honest, I really do not sleep much while I am out there and prefer to spend time out in the lights rather than just looking at them from a window. What is critical is my ability to actually get some sleep when I decide to head there. Keep in mind, this usually consists of me going to the room after 4am and getting up around 10am to sleep the rest off under the sun at the pool. Note, the reason for the couple of hours in the sun is to detox from the smoke and fumes from the casino floors. The first day plays out as expected, hit the room about 3am and hit the zzz’s. At 8:30am I am awakened by extremely loud drilling from what appears to be the floor right below my room. This I find extremely annoying and even try to drown it out with the pillow without success. Frustrated, I decided to simply get up and head out to some places my wife wanted to visit. Day plays out again exactly the same along with the same drilling which starts closer to 8am this time. Furious, I call the front desk and ask them how long I am going to have to listen to them drilling every morning. The response was “Oh, they are replacing windows below you, but we can move you to the other tower if you want to?” No, really I enjoy the sound; I just wanted to know if you could add a jackhammer. Idiot, of course I want moved or I would not have bothered to call you. My take away from this was that they KNEW this was happening but put us there anyway. The other issue is they had to move another party that was on the same floor (they needed to be close to us… no comment at this time). I relayed that they needed to be moved as well and that was agreed to by the clerk. So we packed up both rooms and headed out to the casino floor to kill sometime before the rooms were ready. At 1:00pm we gathered up our luggage and headed to the registration desk to get the new room assignment. Turns out they second room wasn’t done yet, but ours was. We took the keys and I specifically asked the clerk what the second room number was and wrote it down on the key envelope as well. We dropped all the stuff off at our room and headed out to the casino floor again.
Issue number two: At 6:30pm we stopped by the desk to get the keys to the other room. At that point we were informed that the second room was no longer available because they gave it to someone else. When pleasantly asked about that (okay, maybe not so pleasant anymore) we were told that we didn’t get the keys to the room by 4:30pm so they figured we didn’t want it. First off, they never told us any time we had to get back and secondly, we have the exact room number they had reserved for us so it wasn’t a question of whether we wanted it or not. After some discussion from my wife, we were able to get a room a number of floors up in the same tower. At least this was in the same tower, but didn’t address the fact that the other room really needed to be close to us so we could deal with any issues that might arise while we were there.
Issue number three: As a setup, I can’t stand going to the New York New York hotel because the minute you step foot into the second floor entrance off of the overpasses you are descended upon by the scour of the earth more commonly referred to as Time Share Peddlers. These people essentially get in your face, disrupt your flow, annoy the crap out of you by trying to trick you by “free” (lie) show tickets into signing up for their Time Share Marketing sessions. This consists of holding you hostage at an offsite location for 1.5 hrs or more while their Predators of the Weak Minded move in for the kill. I had a discussion with my brother on these people and we both agree that these people:
- Enjoy harassing people
- Are fully aware that they are swindling people
- Have no guilt about their motives
- Unaffected by the opinions of others
Translated… worse than Jehovah’s Witnesses who bring their little kids to my door in hopes of converting me and that is pretty darn low on my social scale (another post, another time). In summary, I treat them like carnies and pass them without responding to their baited comments. With their new MGM properties going up, apparently they feel the need to expand this process. To my surprise, this included adding these people to the Luxor hotel, and even worse than NY, NY, placed them directly out from the registration area. I missed them when we first got there because we get to use the VIP entrance. True to form, I walk through the area and get harassed by one of their staff. My disgust was probably amplified due to the other issues, but I held my temper and continued through with a quick dismiss nod. A couple days later, I had to pass through that area again with my wife. My defensive posture is usually with my hands in my pocket – this protects from pick pockets in heavy populated areas and eliminates any unintentional signs or unwanted contacts
sidebar: in case you are wondering, if you leave your fingers fairly loose and together (not in fists) and let your shoulders and elbows drop you can defend absolutely any attack. Simply turn the shoulder directly across from the attack hand toward the enemy which will narrow your profile. In one fluid motion, bring your hand out (fingers stiffened, thumb locked against side of hand to prevent catching in the pocket) in an inside to outside crescent manner wrapping around the outstretched arm and push it outside your body. At the same time, bright the other hand out (knife hand again) in an outside to inside motion (this hand will mirror the direction of the arm pushing the attacking arm away from your body). Drop your thumb down and under your index finger and make a direct forceful blow to the opponent’s neck. If you still feel you are in danger, come back with the blocking hand and make contact with the face – there are varying degrees of that final blow which you can learn by heading down to your local self defense establishment. Long explanation to simply inform you that hands in the pocket is not a vulnerable position as many people wrongly believe – unless you have your fingers curled up in which case you are probably toast.
Waaay off course here – sorry about that. Anway, I am passing through the area when a lady jumps out in front of me with her arm extend out across myself and my wife who was walking on the outside of me. She then proceeds to try and direct us over to their stand up stations. This is not going to happen in any way shape or form. I do not deviate at all from my original path – without changing any posture I continue on in the same pace while shaking my head no. At the last minute, I guess she realizes that her tactic is doomed to failure and sidesteps out the way removing her arm from across us – NO CONTACT WAS MADE. A second or two later I hear her start loudly accusing me of trying to knock her on the ground. I turned back to see if she was actually directing that comment to me. At which time she increases her tone and continues the accusations. This was the tipping point forcing me to respond that my hands were in my pocket the entire time and made no such movement. More comments were made and more responses were issued at a distance of about 20 feet so by no a number of people are witnessing this. My wife ended up tugging on my shirt to let it go. I re-assessed the situation, recalled the bullet points above and decided to let it go. I was also a little stunned that no authority figures got involved seeing how they are generally all over the place and should have concern if their customers are getting verbally harassed. In any case, I was pretty annoyed and a little agitated for sometime afterward.
Issue number four: The above event actually turned out to be the last night of our stay. By tradition, I stay up all night on the last day to get the most of the remaining hours of gambling and sightseeing. I figure there are 4+ hours on the plane to catch up on any required winks the next day and I hate getting up after just an hour or two of sleep. After dwelling on the situation for awhile, I decided to talk to a manager about the incident. While I was checking on my comps for the week, I asked the Player’s Club attendant who I could talk to. After explaining the incident, he stated that it would actually be better to comment on the website because that bypassed the local management and went straight to upper management. He relayed that there was a comment section on their public website. Satisfied that it was a good approach, I closed out my points and headed up to the room for a quick shower before heading to the airport. As soon as I got home, I logged into the website to report my displeasure. Only one problem with that… THERE IS NO PLACE TO ADD COMMENTS ON THEIR WEBSITE – or to add text anywhere. Slapped in the face with a big fat wet scaly wide mouth bass.
All things considered, am I off base in my disgust? My wife and I just booked another trip out there, but as you hopefully expected, it is in a completely different hotel on the strip. Right now my plan is to avoid the Luxor if at all possible and definitely refrain from giving them any of my money.
