New Year's Eve 2014

[Alan Mendelson]

New Year's Eve is probably the most crowded time of the year for Vegas so I started to check to see what hotel rates and availability is looking like.

Keep in mind this is as of July 1st. I checked for two adults, queen beds, arriving December 30th and departing on New Year's Day.

In year's past many casino hotels would not allow arrivals on December 31st and I suspect that will be the policy again this year.

Here's what I found and these prices for the two nights do not include "resort fees" which will vary. These are only the quoted room rates for the two nights:

Red Rock $490
Caesars $998
Paris $612
MGM Grand $610
Bellagio $1078
Wynn Wynn's website says no rooms are available for New Year's Eve at either the Wynn or Encore, though there are prices for December 30 and January 1, 2014.

Personally, I stopped going to Vegas for New Year's Eve several years ago. The hotels and restaurants are too crowded, the casinos are jammed, the table game limits are high, and hotel services at even the best hotels are often overwhelmed.

About 7 or 8 years ago housekeeping was so overwhelmed at the hotel we were staying at that we couldn't get housekeeping to clean up our room, change sheets, deliver towels, clean for two days.

About 12 or 13 years ago, the lines to get into restaurants were so long I found myself "dining" on candy bars to keep up my blood sugar.

I'm not even going to mention the headaches about getting to Vegas and leaving Vegas but I have plenty of stories to tell about 12 hour car drives to and from Vegas for New Year's and I can't imagine what the airports are like.

[regnis]

Used to go on New years, super bowl, breeders cup(horses), ncaa hoops. Maybe it's old age but I never go on any of those busy dates anymore. Prefer a nice quiet Wednesday now, which I guess means I am getting old.

[Dan Druff]

I had a mostly good experience in Vegas for New Year's 2013.

I decided to have my Seven Stars Dinner ($500) on December 31. I arranged it for The Strip House (steak house) at Planet Hollywood. Of course, there were various failures along the way, including my $500 voucher failing and them wanting me to charge it to my room and "figure it out later". I told them absolutely not, and after about 15 minutes, they got it fixed. (The fact that I had a 2-year-old with me, and it was 10pm, was ammunition for me to refuse to wait around much longer than that,.)

The meal itself was pretty good. My parents and girlfriend came along (as well as my 2-year-old son), so it was easy to spend the $500 there.

I had 2 rooms with nice views of the strip (and fireworks) at Caesar's, in the Augustus Tower. I was only entitled to one for free, as a Seven Stars member, but I was "poached" by a new host at Rio, and I talked her into giving me a 2nd room. No way that would be done again for me this year, as I have played a lot less and stayed a lot more.

At midnight, instead of being out in the cold and the obnoxious crowds, we watched the fireworks from the hotel room, and it was a great show. My son really enjoyed it. We took back a cake from the restaurant, and ate it afterwards. Caesar's actually wanted to charge me $12 for "plateage" (is that even a word) to give us plates to eat it on, but I talked them out of it, again using my Seven Stars status as ammo.

Not sure if I will spend this New Year's in Vegas, but I am booking a room just in case.

One thing that surprised me was the drive from LA to Vegas on December 30th. I expected it to be an easy drive, with the bad traffic on the 31st. Nope! It was pretty bad on the 30th, too. It was really backed up in both Barstow and near the stateline. In both cases, I took detours. The Barstow detour (I-40, to Minneola, north to the 15) was an extra 10 miles. The stateline detour was like 60 miles (going east to the 95). Ended up being a brutal drive. Surprisingly, my son took it well, and was still very good at the long dinner we had planned that evening!