Las Vegas signature event (partial) trip report
Thanks to the person who posted here that they made a last-minute change allowing double-dipping with the signature event, I decided to do it. Prior to reading that, I was going to skip the whole thing, as they did not offer Caesar's to me as a lodging option, meaning my choice was either to stay at Caesars with no signature event, or to stay at the Rio with the signature event. Neither were appealing.
Anyway, I made a regular Seven Stars reservation at Caesars, and I combined it with a non-lodger at Rio for the signature event. So my only dealing with the Rio involved having to go down once and pick up the stuff.
Knowing there would be a ton of Seven Stars in town, I called in advance to reserve my room in the Augustus Tower with the Bellagio fountains view. The earliest I could call about this was early that same day, as they won't pre-register rooms before that. I did it, only to find that they un-pre-registered my room and gave it to someone else. I discovered this when I happened to call back about a separate matter, and just double-checked my room was still the one they promised me. They gave me the type of room I wanted -- king bed, non-smoking, Augustus tower, Bellagio view, high floor.
However, this was my first time staying on the "right side" of the elevator. The rooms on this side are somewhat smaller. I would suggest getting a room on the left side of the elevator (the ones xx75 and below) in the future, though it wasn't all that bad, just smaller. Arrived late Thursday night.
Friday morning I went to the Rio to get my stuff. I encountered a very bitchy, obnoxious woman working the special events desk. For example, I noticed that you had a choice of 3 different brunches on Sunday, but I was already assigned a specific one. When I asked if I could switch, she snapped, "No, you are assigned this one. That's what you get." When I pointed to the paper which said I get to "select one of the three", she sneered and said, "This is what you're assigned, this is what you're getting."
Alan might theorize that her attitude was because of my "overcomped" status there, but I don't believe special events people have access to that info. She was just a bitch.
She told me that my Seven Stars gift will be mailed to me. I asked what it was, and she said, "A camcorder." A camcorder? Is this 1989? In any case, a lot of the time these "mailed" gifts never show up, so I won't hold my breath.
I got a whopping $100 freeplay, which I used at the blackjack table, and came away with $100. I almost got cheated by a idiot dealer who didn't understand the proper order to deal the cards when splitting, and she tried to undo my 21! The pit boss took my side and told her she was incorrect.
On Friday night, they had a Linq tour, High Roller reception, and High Roller ride. We skipped the Linq tour, but did go to the High Roller reception. The food quantity and quality was surprisingly good. It was a full buffet-style dinner, though the venue was small, and there was a pathetic lack of seating/tables. Afterwards, we went on the High Roller. There were only 4 other people on board with us, despite the fact that the pods hold 40 people! This was my 4th time on the High Roller, but I went because my son enjoys it. It inexplicably stopped near the top, and we got stuck for awhile. After sitting in the same place, it finally moved very slowly until we got off. The staff claimed not to know what happened, or even that it got stuck. What?? I will say that they have the video screen prepared for the ride being stuck, as it breaks from the usual program and starts cycling a bunch of Linq trivia questions.
On Saturday, I visited the events desk at Caesars, because I wanted to change something. I found out that the Caesars events desk gave people Seven Stars pins (big deal) and two cupcakes from Sprinkles at the Linq. The Rio gave neither of these things. They offered me a cupcake box when I asked what those were for.
On Saturday at 4pm, they had the Brooklyn Bowl reception at the Linq. It was overcrowded and poorly organized. Again, there was a lack of seating, and the food was served hors-d'oeuvre style. The best of the food served was the breaded/fried chicken tenders, which apparently is Brooklyn Bowl's specialty. They let you bowl as much as you wanted on a first-come, first-served basis, with free shoe rental. Surprisingly, despite the crazy crowds which must have been a violation of the place's fire code, few people wanted to bowl. We easily got a lane, and in fact got a second lane so my 4-year-old son could bowl with bumpers. Several lanes remained open the entire time.
Perhaps most laughable was the "1,000,000 Great Gift Wrap-Up Point Drawing". On the plus side, it was a physical drawing where each person got one entry, so it wasn't one of those super-rigged electronic drawings which are so common at Caesars properties nowadays. However, the "1,000,000 GGWU Points" was BS, and instead was ten separate 100,000 GGWU point prizes. That still sounds impressive, until you realize that the value of 100,000 GGWU points is less than $300! So everyone hung around until 5:30 for the results of this stupid drawing, when in reality they were waiting on a fairly slim chance of winning less than $300 wort of GGWU points. These were all Seven Stars members, meaning $300 probably isn't even worth very much to them. The DJ, who did the drawing, was either clueless or pretended to be, when he repeatedly told the winners that they can buy "a whole lot of stuff now" with their 100,000 GGWU points.
We bowled 4 full games. We left right after the drawing was over, and surprisingly they had shut down the bar already, instead of giving everyone a chance to get one more drink before leaving.
Tomorrow is the brunch, which is the last event. Haven't done that yet.
We had fun at both events so far, but again there was some pretty poor planning on CET's part to make these various mistakes. Pretty sure they would have gotten in some deep shit at Brooklyn Bowl if anyone called the fire marshal.
