DAY ONE - December 24, 2000
We left our home at about 1:45pm after cleaning up after our early Christmas celebration. We drove across the bay to Oakland to catch our direct flight to Las Vegas. We arrived to find a sign saying that the long-term parking was full, but we could use an overflow lot. On our way to the lot, we found an empty space not too far from the terminal. We parked and made our way inside to find a huge line at the ticket counter.
[Dan Says]: Oakland Airport is the only airport in the bay Area with long-term parking within walking distance of the terminal. Gotta love it.
Luckily the line moved quickly and we were on our way to gate 17. Dan said that it was great that we were so close as we approached Gate 24. We passed gates 23, 22, 21 and 20 and then rounded a corner past gates 19 and 18. We turned another corner to find the gates started at Gate 1 and went up from there. We joked that our flight should be really short as we had already walked halfway to Las Vegas. :)
We checked in at the gate and got boarding passes 71 and 72. I've been having some health issues lately and because of that we were able to get into the pre-boarding group. I'm so glad because the plane was packed to capacity and we needed the extra time to get situated.
Our plane was delayed in Phoenix so the flight was about 30 minutes late taking off, but we landed in Las Vegas at 5:40. Because we were in the 2nd row of seats, we were off the plane quickly and on our way to the baggage claim only to have to wait a long time for our bags. Dan got me set up in some chairs with our carry-on bags while he got the big suitcase.
We got our bags together and headed out the door to the Alamo bus. It was a crowded bus, but we were the only ones headed into the Quicksilver room while everyone else got to stand in line. I had made reservations for our car through TravelNow. I had called Alamo and they assured me that they had added our Quicksilver information to the reservation, but the reservation wasn't on the Quicksilver account when we got there. No problem though because there were two clerks at the counter in the Quicksilver room and even with a paper jam in their computer, we were out of there in less than 5 minutes and on our way to C-3 where our gray Mitsubishi Mirage was waiting for us.
We drove down Sunset to Las Vegas Boulevard and into Mandalay Bay's valet parking. There was a delay AGAIN at the Valet. I've never been to Mandalay Bay's main valet without having to wait in my car for at least 5-10 minutes for someone to come take my keys. I don't know what the problem is.
I left Dan with the car and I headed in to get our room. There was no line at the front desk and I walked right up to a very friendly clerk. I gave her my name and told her that I would love it if I could get a room with a great view of the strip… emphasis on the great. After my last trip and my request for a strip view at Aladdin, I now emphasize the "great". She smiled and asked if I wanted one bed or two, smoking or non-smoking. I told her, "Does it have a great view of the strip?" We laughed a little and I told her that I'd trade my preference for a king bed and non-smoking room for something with a really great view. Do you notice a trend here? :) She gave me keys to room 32223 in the Fiji Wing of the hotel and a coupon book with all my extras.
I turned around from the desk to find Dan coming in the front doors. We headed to the elevators and up to the 32nd floor. There are two banks of elevators, one serving the bottom 17 floors and one serving 18 through 35. There is another set of elevators for the Four Seasons rooms and one for the House of Blues Foundation Room. Our room was about 2/3rds of the way down the hall on the left.
We opened the door and stepped into a hallway, past that was a room with a king-sized bed, armoire, table with two chairs and a bigger chair and ottoman by the window. Behind us were two his and hers closets (one closet had an iron and ironing board hanging on the inside of the door) and a huge bathroom with separate tub and shower, a double sink, vanity mirror, hairdryer and separate room with a toilet.
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We opened the draped across our four floor-to-ceiling windows to see an amazing view of the strip and a good portion of the Las Vegas Valley. I think that the view from our room at Mandalay Bay is a close second to the one at Treasure Island. (The TI view has everything much closer and larger, so it gains a couple extra points to beat out Mandalay Bay) This view does bump Rio into 3rd place, something that I didn't think was going to be possible.
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We called the Bell Desk for our suitcase and began to get ourselves organized. The bag arrived in about 3-5 minutes and we did a little unpacking. Having only had a small lunch at home, we were ready for dinner and headed down to Raffles Café for some dinner.
There was no wait at the coffee shop, although there was a line at the Noodle Palace next door. We were seated right away in a comfortable table for two. Dan ordered a chicken teriyaki bowl and a Samuel Adams while I got my old stand-by of a club sandwich and a coke. Oh.. correction.. a Pepsi. Apparently Mandalay Bay is a coke-free hotel. You can't get anything but Pepsi products anywhere on the property.
The service was a little bit slow, but not too terribly bad. Our waitress had a number of tables to cover and I can be sympathetic with them to a point. It's not easy to work on Christmas Eve so I didn't complain about the slight delay in getting our food. When it arrived it was delicious and the portions were large. The price was reasonable with our final bill being about $23 including tip.
Dan went to the cage to cash in $120 in Visa Las Vegas cash-back vouchers while I went to the slot club to update our address information and check on the status of our accounts.
After that we played a little bit of $0.05 triple play Video Poker. We didn't have any particularly great success so we headed upstairs to get our camera and our coats. It was very windy outside, but we wanted to explore out front. We hadn't been to the front of the hotel since our stay in June of 1998 when the property was still under construction. The flames weren't on because of the wind, but I still enjoyed walking around the waterfalls and fountains.
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We went back inside and Dan wanted to play some Reel Deal Video Poker. I always do terribly on those machines. The pay tables suck and so did I. :) Dan did pretty well, but the buttons on his machine didn't work. He had to wait for someone to open the machine to cash out so I headed back over to the triple play machines.
[Dan Says]: I had to have the machined opened twice. The first time was when the deal button stopped working. Later, the cash-out button wouldn't funciton, so I had to wait about 15 minutes to get a floor person over. It was the same problem both times. The cluster of wires that attaches to the buttons was loose. Pressing in back up into the button woked both times. You'd think wires that hang would be better attached. At least I had turned $10 into about $15.[]
We were going to go sit in the Coral Reef Lounge and watch the band, but they were about to take a break so we headed back upstairs. I was surprised to find out that it was already after midnight. We stopped at the newsstand by the elevator to get some juice for breakfast in the morning. There were way too many kids in there considering the hour. One kid in front of me in line was getting a Starbucks mocha frappacino drink. He couldn't have been more than 8-10 years old. Nice parenting!
[Dan Says]: Well, at least it wasn't a school night!
After some grumbling about the crowds and kids from me we got up to the room. Dan got out the laptop to look at our pictures while I turned on the tv. We watched some weird Christmas movie with Dudley Moore and Jonathan Lithgow for awhile and finally gave up on it and went to sleep at 1:30am.
