What constitutes a great player?

[Alan Mendelson]

If resort fees go away, the "real price" of rooms will be advertised. Resort fees only shift dollars from the advertised price to the room + fee price.

I would hate to think that free drinks will go away... but they might decide to "ration" the time that cocktail waitresses spend in the lower level gaming areas. I see that already. Cocktail waitresses are always available in high limit slots but not in lower coin-in gaming areas. It's like that in EVERY casino.

[redietz]

If resort fees go away, the "real price" of rooms will be advertised. Resort fees only shift dollars from the advertised price to the room + fee price.

I would hate to think that free drinks will go away... but they might decide to "ration" the time that cocktail waitresses spend in the lower level gaming areas. I see that already. Cocktail waitresses are always available in high limit slots but not in lower coin-in gaming areas. It's like that in EVERY casino.

Alan, it seems to me cocktail waitress numbers and placement are radically different from 25 years ago. I'm guessing fewer overall per square foot/number of gamblers, with some reduction in high limit areas and radical reductions in general floor coverage, including race/sports where there is still coverage.

Is that your sense of it?

[Dan Druff]

Maybe I should split this Disney discussion into its own topic, but I actually went to Disneyland fairly frugally late last year.

First off, I'm fortunate enough to have a friend who works for Disney (not Disneyland, but Disney). She used to be able to get me into BOTH Disneyland and CA Adventure for free, but they clamped down on that, so now she was only able to get me 1 free park-hopper ticket and an okay discount (like 20%) on the other two tickets I needed (one other adult, one child). Still, that was a large savings overall.

So we went to both parks. You end up doing a LOT of walking when you squeeze 2 parks in one day. I was exhausted by the end.

Fortunately my son (who had just turned 5 when we went) is not a big "buy me merchandise" type of kid. So we didn't have to buy any souvenirs. We kept our food consumption to a minimum. That is, we didn't go hungry, but we also didn't gorge ourselves or buy tons of snacks.

I stayed in a nearby chain hotel (walking distance) where I was able to get an upgraded room thanks to my tier status there. I also got an additional discount, so our room was something like $99, and we got to park there for free.

All in all, I spent $285 total on tickets (for BOTH parks combined, 3 people), $99 on a hotel, zero on parking, and probably about $80 on food.

So I got away under $500, which was a pretty amazing feat given that it involved 3 people going to both Disney parks.

I always hate missing California Adventure because my favorite ride (Soarin' Over California) is in that park. If you've never been on that ride, you should definitely try it. It's not a roller coaster, and it's not wild or scary at all. It's the closest feeling you'll ever have to free-form flying over landscapes. I could sit on that thing for hours and not get sick of it. One "trick" to that ride is to make sure you get the upper row, so you don't see feet dangling over you (ruins the flying illusion).