Las Vegas
Money Saving Tips
- Don't buy drinks in the Casino bars. All the time you
are gaming you will be served complimentary drinks from the cocktail
waitresses you can have any thing from coffee, soda and fruit juices to
gin and tonics, rum and coke and beers. One tip however is to ask for a
branded bottle of beer don't drink the draft its muck. Although the
drinks are free you are expected to tip the waitresses. About $1 per
drink is fair, if you tip more you will get served more frequently if
you tip less you may well be avoided on future trips. We have
discovered that with the high pay back on the slots and the tips taken
into account it is far cheaper to get wasted on complimentary drinks
than it is to buy them at the bar. The quality of both the actual drink
and the general frequency of the service varies and is described in the
casino reviews.
- Book your hotel direct with the hotel on the Web,
with
MGM Mirage Resorts at least you only pay a deposit which is
the cost of the first night they guarentee the best rate and if the
rate drops you cancel and rebook to get the better rate. As well as the
better rate you are more likely to get a room upgrade and if you dont
book direct you wont be able to get it comped.
- Buffet dining. This is by far the cheapest way of
eating; you pay a fixed price, which includes as many visits to the
food stations as you wish to make covering many courses and all soft
drinks. Breakfast is cheapest then lunch with dinner being the most
expensive. You can save even more by getting your timing right. If you
want to go for lunch, go at the very end of the breakfast hours. The
lunch food will be available and you will only pay the cheaper
breakfast price. The same goes for the lunch and dinner sitting. There
are large varieties of food choices but there are always large amounts
of cheap stodge such as pasta and potatoes. Don't fill up on these go
for the smoked salmon and steak! The buffets vary from casino to
casino; generally the more you pay the better the quality of food. I
think that the Luxor represents some of the best value and gets the
compromise of price to quality about right.
- Specials. Most of the casino coffee shops and
restaurants have special offers of say lobster and steak or prime rib
dinner or steak and eggs. These are usually only available only at
certain times which are often the times you would least like to have
say steak and eggs. Look for the times of these offers and try to use
your jet lag to your advantage and eat at your bodies time and not the
time of your watch you will be surprised to see how this works and it
can save you a fortune.
- Avoid the weekends. The prices for hotel rooms vary
more than you would think possible. Our room at the Luxor a couple of
Christmases ago was $50 Monday to Thursday but come Friday and Saturday
it went up to $120 and this was low season. Holidays particularly
Labour Day weekend, New Years Eve and Independence Day see massive
price hikes. If we are in Vegas we try to avoid the weekend if there is
a weekend in the middle of our stay we skip town and go to either the
Grand Canyon about 5 hours drive or Laughlin which is about 1.5 hours
away from Vegas, you can still get a room for under $30 a night at low
season weekends in Laughlin. If you are staying over a weekend check
the price for the entirety of your stay when you check in to avoid any
unpleasant shocks.
- Stay at a cheap hotel, use the facilities of a 5*
Hotel. This is so simple I really don't know why more people don't do
it. With the exception of certain casinos at the far North of the Strip
all of the hotels are pretty good; however the general standard of
amenities varies tremendously. Think about it; you don't spend much
time awake in your room so are you really going to take advantage of a
far more expensive room? For example the Bellagio has great fountains,
a lovely shopping arcade and a very plush gaming area but costs upwards
of $200 per night. The Imperial Palace is right opposite, has a motor
museum, no shops and a noisy, smoky cramped casino but you can get a
room from as little as $30 per night. Are you getting it? Stay at the
IP, use the facilities of the Bellagio; your room is probably not that
much further from the casino floor than the rooms at the Bellagio are.
The same goes for most of the swimming pools just walk in bold as brass
and you will be given a towel usually without even a request for a room
number. The exceptions to the swimming pools are Mirage, Caesars and
Bellagio - don't even try. However Paris, Aladdin, Tropicana, Luxor,
and MGM all have great pools that are easy for non-guests to access.
- Slot Clubs. Even if you are not expecting to gamble a
lot join the slot club this gives you a credit type card that you put
into the slot machine whilst you are playing and gives you points
according to your play. What you can exchange these points for varies
from gifts to dining vouchers, show tickets, free stays to cash. You
often get extra freebies in the form of both vouchers which may contain
match play vouchers, show tickets, free drinks ect or gifts such as
caps, key rings cards ect which if nothing else make good presents to
take home. The Imperial Palace and the Tropicana offer the best
freebies on the Strip for joining their slot clubs. You may also
receive offers for the future once you get on the mailing list though
this is becoming less common for overseas visitors.
- If you plan to see a show try the consolidators
before you leave home to see if you can get a seat cheaper than the pay
on the day price. This will also give you a better chance of getting to
see the show that you really want as many shows sell out weeks in
advance.
- For gifts, clothing and general shopping try to avoid
the casino shops unless you particularly want to purchase something
with the casino logo blasted all over it. The two exceptions to this
are Forum Shops at Caesars' and the Desert Passage at the Aladdin.
Other than these go to the fashion show Mall. For better value still;
go to the Belz factory outlets as mentioned in the shopping section of
this site. If you are in the hotels near Waldens, the drugstore located
between the MGM and Aladdin, get water, chips (crisps) and snacks etc.
there as it is far cheaper than the hotel shops.
- All of the hotel rules state that it is law that you
can only drink alcohol purchased in the hotel on their premises even in
your own room. Each hotel has a shop that sells booze but it is
expensive, we risked breaking the law and smuggled our own champagne,
beer and gin in for consumption before bedtime.
- Look in the free magazine that should be in your
room, this will contain a host of vouchers covering anything from free
matinee show tickets to bungee jumping and dining discount vouchers. I
would suggest that if you do use both the bungee and dining vouchers
you jump before dining.
- On my second visit to Las Vegas in 1992 we spent a
whole evening on a budget of $10 and had a competition to get as many
freebies as we could. It was a great night. I really enjoyed it, we
spent the first half of the evening downtown and the rest on the Strip.
We were all drunk when we got back to the hotel and had all sorts of
T-shirts, mugs, hats, dice, pictures, food and discount vouchers -
great! The cherry on the trifle was that we had about $5 each left.
