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6 Nights in Vegas - On a Budget

A little background on us. I’m 35 my wife is 28. We aren’t major gamblers by any stretch, but we usually hit up a local casino maybe once a month, twice if we do good, and usually gambling about $100 a piece each time. We are both huge sports fans, especially college sports (Notre Dame). I’m a bit of a tightwad most of the time.
The morning of April 2, 2016 I asked her if she wanted to marry me (both of us have been married once before), she said yes. I bought tickets that morning, didn’t tell anyone our plans and drove from South Bend Indiana area to Chicago O’Hare, and arrived in Vegas right around dark.
The first couple of Hotels I tried for were booked, but we ended up finding a room at Planet Hollywood (which we spent all of about 4 hours in). We then flew out the next morning, spending a total of about 12 hours in Vegas.
This time around, after finding out my kids would be with their mom over Spring Break, I decided to save up and actually plan a trip this time. We debated Florida, Canada, the Smokies, and ended up deciding on Vegas.
Tuesday – March 27 We stayed the night at Blue Chip Casino (BOYD Gaming) in Michigan City Indiana (halfway to O’Hare). Both of us had comps for a free room and Buffet’s as well and about $75 worth of food credit that we had been saving for our Vegas trip. They also gave me a $25 gas card. We decided to gamble $100, and lost pretty quickly. After eating our “free buffets” we decided to go to bed, anticipating an early morning.
Wednesday – March 28 Once we got to O’Hare, we went and checked our 1 bag in at the Spirit Airlines desk. Everything at Spirit is A la Carte, and I had paid for 1 checked bag, however the lady in front of me discovered that their checked bags cost even more if over 40lbs. I had gone with Spirit to save a buck, and overall the experience wasn’t terrible, but I’ve had much better experiences with other non-discount airlines. After arriving in Vegas, we rode the bus from the airport to the Rental Car facility, and in short time had our new car for the week. The nice lady at Payless tried selling me several extras, and I politely declined each of them. I’ve come to expect the sales pitch no matter what rental company I use, and overall my experience with these guys was very good. We ended up changing reservations last minute for our Hotel due to additional offers I received while at Blue Chip. After checking in at the Fremont (all 6 nights) we unpacked, stopped at IN & OUT Burger, and made a run to Wal-Mart for snacks and drinks. We then decided to go check out the Nuwu Dispensary, we were both very impressed with the selection, cleanliness, and friendliness of everyone we talked to there (we are novices at this lol). After making a “small” purchase, we decided to drive out to Mount Charleston for the evening and ended up catching the sunset before driving back into town. We spent the rest of the evening walking around Fremont Street mostly just people watching, before we grabbed a snack from the Café inside the Fremont and went back to our room for the night. The food was average at best, but the price was right, even if I hadn’t used my points.
Thursday – March 29 We slept in until about 9:30, and slowly made our way over to the Hoover Dam. On our way to the Dam, we stopped at Sunset Station for their Brunch Buffet, and were really impressed, especially for the $7 price. After gambling a little and not winning we continued to the Dam. Waze had me going some crazy roads that I’d never taken before to get there, and took us about 3 times longer than I had ever remembered. After getting closer and seeing all of the traffic/road construction I now knew why. All of the lower parking lots were full, so we drove to the little gift shop on the Arizona side (I was surprised to see the road now ends here), got a couple of little souvenirs for our boys, and walked around a little bit before exploring Lake Meade a little and driving back to Fremont. After relaxing for a little bit we again decided to walk around Fremont Street and ended up getting Margaritas and Enchilada Nacho’s at Nachodaddy’s. I would highly recommend this place if you want a good drink and great nachos, we both loved it, and our bartenders were great. After walking back to the Fremont and going back and forth on winning/losing at the slot machines, my wife got a bonus feature on the machine she was playing, when I noticed a guy standing behind her watching. He looked really familiar, and after seeing “Deez Nuts” on the back of his jacket, I realized he was the youtube star from the Deez Nuts video. He posed for a picture with my wife and then went on his way. We gambled for a few hours and went to bed about even on the day.
Friday – March 30 After grabbing coffee from Dunkin Donuts inside the Fremont, we decided to drive down to Primm, because my wife had never been to California. We stopped at the truck stop and decided against topping off on gas, due to the price being over $4/gallon. We walked around the shop, found some more souvenirs for the kids, and ate lunch at Qdoba. After driving around behind the outlet mall, I realized there wasn’t a sign saying welcome to California, so I hopped on I15 and continued South/West until she got to see her sign. We went a few exits and decided a trip all the way to Baker wasn’t worth the drive, so we turned around just past the giant solar farm on the right. In the stretch from about a mile outside of Primm to where we turned around, we passed probably a dozen of each Nevada State Police and California Highway Patrol, many of which were on motorcycles and all of which had at least 1 car pulled over. About the time we made it back into Vegas, my buddy’s flight from Washington DC had arrived (he’s getting ready to leave for Japan for the next 3 years) so we went and picked him up at his hotel (Hooters). My wife won some money on the “Vacation” machine in Hooters and we decided to go walk the strip, which wasn’t a bad walk at all. We ended up going through the MGM, across to the Aria/Monte Carlo area and decided all the bars were a bit too busy due to a Golden Knights game getting ready to start. We walked over to Excalibur and rode the monorail to Mandalay Bay. We spent the rest of the evening here, and I decided to bet on Notre Dame Women, which turned out to be a good bet. My buddy, being born in Connecticut bet on UConn and that pretty much set the tone for his luck the rest of his trip. My wife and I ended up getting a giant hot dog/pepsi combo for $3.99 at the Café inside the Fremont after returning, and it was a better bet than the Chinese food we had tried earlier in the week.
Saturday – March 31 Another buddy of ours had moved to Vegas about 6 weeks ago, while his wife and kids are moving out there today. He called me late Saturday morning, and had us meet him out at the RV Dealership he works for. After getting a tour of their half million dollar Motorhomes (built here in Indiana), we hopped in his convertible and rode out to Red Rock Canyon. The line to get in was about 100 cars long, and it looked like they were only letting a few in every 15 minutes, so we drove out along that area and headed back a different way to the south side of town. The company he works for sponsors the Horse Arena at the South Point Casino, so we rode over, watched some of the show, and got the behind the scenes tour of the stalls, practice arena, and got to meet the horses/cowboys. We ended up spending most of the day at South Point, and we really enjoyed it, probably our favorite one on the “strip” so to speak. We ate dinner at Baja Miguel’s and all enjoyed our food. Later on Saturday night we rode back to downtown. My buddy that now lives in Vegas, took us to Container Park, which was really cool. After that we walked back down Fremont Street and I had bet earlier on Michigan beating Loyola in Men’s basketball. Another good choice, however I had to find a casino with a sports book that could cash me out. We ended up going to “The D” and really enjoyed the atmosphere/older machines. My wife ended up playing the old school Horse Racing Quarter Machine upstairs and stayed on it for quite a while. We ended up heading back to the Fremont, where we gambled the rest of our “$200 limit” for the day, and did pretty good. After several hours of gambling, we decided we were hungry, so we walked over to the Café at Binions, and were really impressed with what we had.
Sunday – April 1 We ate the Breakfast Buffet at the Fremont (comped), took an Uber back to our rental car on the other side of town, picked our buddy up at Hooters and headed north to Zion National Park. A couple hours later we arrived and were somewhat surprised that it wasn’t completely packed. My buddy has a free pass (Military) so we saved $30 on the gate fee. We spent most of the day at Zion, climbing, hiking, and exploring, it was my 4th time there, but the first time for my wife and buddy, and while my wife isn’t a hiker like me, she really enjoyed it and mentioned that it was one of her top 3 things we did on our trip. On our way back to town we stopped at Casa Blanca in Mesquite for a few hours, we didn’t do any good, but enjoyed the change of pace from the Vegas casinos.
Monday – April 2 We walked the strip again, and ate the brunch buffet at the Bellagio. It was really good, but if I hadn’t used the buy 1 get 1 free coupon I had, I wouldn’t have been quite as impressed. We walked around the strip some more, and ended up buying tickets to X-Country for my wife and I for the 10pm show at Harrah’s. The lady at the Box Office didn’t offer any discount, but when I asked about using my players card, she gave me a $10/ticket discount on the tickets. After that we drove across town to Sams Town (Boyd Gaming) and gambled for a few hours, I remembered a Steak House from several years back that I really enjoyed here, but we ended deciding against it for our anniversary meal. After going back to our hotel to change and shower, we ended up going to Viva Zapata’s (based on Reddit reviews). We weren’t disappointed! The food was amazing, the atmosphere even better, and the wait staff was the best! Our waiter asked what brought us out there, I told him it was our 2 year anniversary and we had flown in from Indiana to celebrate. We were enjoying the live Mariachi music, but started getting a little anxious as we were waiting on our bill (we wanted to get to Harrah’s by 9:30). A few minutes later here came the wait staff/musician to our table, put giant sombrero’s on us, gave us a couple of churros and each of us a shot of Tequila (no charge) while they sang us a song. I tipped them well and we were on our way to the show. My wife is a huge country music fan, and while I enjoy some of the older stuff, I’m more of a metalhead. I was pleasantly surprised at the price of our tickets, and for the money, the show wasn’t bad. 1 of the dancers really stood out from the rest though, but all in all it was a good experience. I wanted to go see Absinthe but found out they weren’t playing on Monday night. After our show we walked down to the Bellagio Fountains to see a show before heading back to the hotel.
Tuesday – April 3 We spent most of the morning packing up from our 6 nights at the Fremont, I checked with the Casino host to see about possibly comping more than 2 of our nights, but she showed me where my score in their algorithm was only a 65, and needed to be 100 to qualify for more. I still only paid $165 for the 4 nights I had to pay for, which was more than fair in my opinion, considering how little time we actually spent in the room. We went to Hooters and gambled for about 20 minutes, winning a couple hundred dollars, then took my buddy to the airport. Our flight wasn’t until 6:30pm, so we drove back North and had to try another Reddit suggestion for our last meal in town. We ended up at Hamburger Hut as we love to eat wings, and although the location and building were a bit sketchy, we ordered hot wings, a hot dog, and chili fries, this was our favorite food of the trip. We also really enjoyed hanging with some of the locals while we ate lunch. After eating lunch we hit up Walmart by the airport to find some last minute souvenirs to take back home, and then returned our rental car and waited a few hours for our flight back home.
What I would recommend
Sight Seeing - Zion National Park, Red Rock Canyon, Lake Mead, Container Park (especially if you have kids)
Food - Hamburger Hut, Viva Zapata’s, In & Out Burger, Nachodaddy, Hotdogs at South Point, Breakfast Buffet at Sunset Station, also saved a bunch of money by getting snacks and drinks for our room at the grocery store on day 1.
Casinos – As a gambler, the ones off the Strip seemed to pay better, but the ones on the strip were much classier and had newer slots you can’t find elsewhere. My 3 favorite were the Fremont, The D, and South Point. My wife really enjoyed seeing the sights at the Bellagio, the Flamingo, and others on the Strip. No matter what, if you’re going to gamble, get a players card, it saved me a bunch of money.
Transportation – If you like to do more than just stay in town and walk all week, I’d highly recommend getting a rental car like we did (about $200 for the week for a nice sized car), but if you don’t plan on going on long day trips like we did, UbeLyft would be great.
Entertainment – XCountry at Harrahs wasn’t the top show I’ve ever seen, but 2 tickets for $80 something and a happy wife, I can’t complain at all. Watching all the entrepreneurs on Fremont Street as well as the stage shows for free was hard to beat, and any trip to Vegas should include the Bellagio Fountains, the Flamingo Habitat, and any other free entertainment you can find along the strip.
What I wouldn’t recommend
Airlines – don’t go with the budget airlines expecting to save a bunch of money if you plan on taking a bag with you, checked or carry on, prefer to pick your seats out in advance, or want to get a snack while flying.
Food – While we didn’t really have any “bad” experiences, the café and Buffet at the Fremont were probably my least favorite, but I can’t complain because I didn’t have to pay for anything at either of them. Also I was looking forward to checking out Heart Attack Grill (based on Ducktales review), but they were packed and took Cash Only fyi.
Sight Seeing – Fremont Street after dark really isn’t the place to take your small kids but be sure to take them to Container Park during the day, Hoover Dam (unless you go early), Red Rock Canyon scenic trail on a holiday weekend. Pawn Stars was packed and if you’ve seen it once, the excitement kind of wore off, and they apparently charge for parking now. I parked up the street for free and only had a short walk, but the people trying to push you to buy extras outside of the store really kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

I know this is a long shot, but I figured its worth a shot anyway.
I was in Vegas during the middle of October last year for a convention and one night while I was having drinks by myself in Toby Keith's I Love this Bar and Grill in the Harrah's, I got to chatting to a local couple that were there to having a few drinks and enjoy the music. After chatting for a hour or so we left and went to this...I guess you would call it a club. Its right next to the Harrah's and has kind of a circus tent. Anyway, we went in there and had a few more drinks and talked and they even offered to go hook me up with someone there. Very nice people. We parted ways after a few hours, I have the guy my cell number and told him to give me a holler, but nothing ever came of it.
So its a year later and I am going back to Vegas for the same convention and if they read this subreddit and see this, then I would love to try and meet up again. Here are some details about them so maybe it might jog there memory and prove I am not talking out of my ass. I don't remember there names.
Guy:
White
5'8"-5'10"
Wore a beanie hat. (Really? Its Vegas.)
Worked doing something with energy. Wind farms, solar, something like that. Said he traveled a fare amount for work.
Girl:
White
5'2"-5'6"
Blonde
Petite
She said she was a dealer for a casino. MGM maybe? She also gave me the best advice to come out ahead in Vegas. Dont gamble. She told me that a day earlier she had taken $20,000 or $30,000 from some guy at a table.
Me:
Ray from Washington DC
White
5'10"ish
I was wearing black and a black t-shirt with a pig on the back of it. (Free industry shirt)
I work as a lighting technician and designer for concerts/corporate events.
I am pretty sure they are/were a couple, or at least it sure seemed like it since they were definitely going at it while I was hanging out with them.
Anyway, like I said, I know this is a long shot, but I thought I would give it a try. If you happen to see this, let me know. I will be in Vegas next week and staying at the Harrah's again.