Thursday, April 21, 2016

Vegas Ain't What it Used to Be (Part 1)

Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably noticed a series of tweets from me during my recent Vegas trip expressing my displeasure with Vegas.  I even implied—hell, I may have actually said it outright—that I wouldn’t be coming back to Vegas any time soon, if at all.

Did I mean it?  Well, you say a lot of things when you’re in the middle of a bad run of poker.  And yes, there were things happening, Vegas wise, that were pissing me off.  But of course I will be back in Vegas.

But yes, when I sent those tweets, I was annoyed with Vegas, and it wasn’t just due to a bad run of poker. A couple of my readers who do follow me on Twitter even commented on one of my recent blog posts, requesting that I explain what was making me all of a sudden hate Vegas.  And so, here we go.

As the title of this post says, Vegas ain’t what it used be.  But before I explain that, let me take a detour to Jean, NV.  This has nothing to do with anything I don’t like about Vegas, but I thought my readers might find this noteworthy. I figure that most of you read Tony’s blog. You might remember a few years back he was residing at The Gold Strike, a casino located about 15-20 miles south of Vegas in the middle of nowhere. I believe he was getting free rooms there in exchange for his video blackjack play.  The casino didn’t have a poker room, and to the best of my knowledge, never had one. 

The hotel/casino is about 7 miles north of the California/Nevada state line, right on the I-15.  So I drive past it every time I go to or leave Vegas.  By the way, there are three hotel/casinos right on the Stateline, so it’s not the first place to legally gamble when you come to Vegas from Southern California.  I’ve never played anything there, but I may have stopped for a meal or two over the years. And it is a convenient stop for a restroom break, so I’ve stopped there a number of times for that over the years.

On this recent trip, I did indeed pull off the freeway to use their Men’s Room. Knowing the time I’d be hitting Vegas, I was concerned that I’d be running into heavy traffic in the Strip corridor, so why take a chance?  As another aside—whoever designed the new Tropicana exit for the northbound I-15 traffic should be sentenced to life imprisonment (and hard labor too)—it is the worst fustercluck imaginable.  Slows down the entire freeway, too.  Just horrible. 

So, I used the facilities and then as I was leaving I couldn’t help notice the casino.  It was empty.  This was Thursday afternoon, first day of March Madness, so it was a bit surprising.  But what was even more surprising that the pit was mostly gone.  Seriously, they had three blackjack tables and a roulette table in the entire casino.  That’s it.  At the time, there were two players playing blackjack, another blackjack table manned by a dealer just standing there, and the roulette table was not open.  The back part of the pit, which I’m sure had more live games when I last stopped in, was now filled with four or five cars.  Prizes for slot machine jackpots, I guess.  Yes, there were slot machines, but a lot of empty space. It was really pathetic. Maybe it was losing Tony’s business that hurt their business? Based on what I saw, I have a feeling that place will be shut down in the near future.  I just hope they leave the restrooms up.

Anyway, I was already annoyed with Vegas before I even got there.  I’m sure you heard that MGM Resorts announced, at the beginning of the year, they were going to start charging for parking at all their casinos on the Strip. 


Details were murky, speculation was rampant, rumors were wild, tempers were short.  But one thing was obvious.  The era of free parking in Vegas was over. 

The announcement affects everyone who drives in Vegas and ever has reason to visit a Strip casino—residents and visitors alike.  But poker players were especially concerned. For one thing, it is assumed that all the other Strip casinos will eventually follow suit and charge as well.  I mean, even if they didn’t want to, they won’t have a choice.  People will park at nearby casinos that aren’t charging and then walk to the casino that is charging.  And the parking structures will fill up with other casino’s customers.

For example, if Mirage is charging and Caesars Palace isn’t, people will park at Caesars and walk to the Mirage.  Similarly, if you want to visit MGM, people will fill up the Tropicana’s parking lot and walk over the foot bridge.  So it’s got to be only a matter of time before they all do it. 

The initial announcement said it would be like $10 or less.  I’m pretty sure that the charge was going to be for each entry/exit and not per day (if you were staying at the hotel).  So a day of visiting a few poker rooms via car would get expensive. Pretty sure they said that they wouldn’t validate parking if you were going to eat in one of the restaurants.  So, if you live in Vegas or were visiting and staying off strip or at the Venetian, and you wanted to have dinner at the pricey Craftsteak at MGM, you’d have to cough up another $10 just to leave after you finished your meal. 

They announced something vague about “earning” free parking though the use of your MLife card (the corporate rewards card for MGM properties).  That might be fine for slot players, and pit game players, who get enough points with their play to move up tiers on their cards, but as poker players know, at MGM properties, you get no credit on your rewards card for playing poker.  You could play poker at the Bellagio 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and never move off the basic entry level tier.  But if you dumped some money in a slot machine (and I have no idea how much it would take), you can move up the tiers.  Another thing they announced was that locals would have some extra grace period before they started charging them.  Not that that would help your humble scribe.

So the poker players who were unhappy wondered if the poker rooms maybe would be allowed to validate for parking. The consensus guess—and it was just a guess—was that they would not.  Of course, I contacted all the poker room managers at MGM properties to find out if they knew how they were going to handle the issue.  Hey, it was arguably part of my job.  They all said that they didn’t know anything yet.  I did ask one of my buddies at one of the properties—not one of the managers but someone a bit higher in the food chain than a floorman—if he thought the rooms would validate parking.  He said that in the absence of any other kind of accommodation (which he knew nothing about, of course), he didn’t see how the rooms could afford to be charged for parking for all their poker players.  It didn’t sound good.

I should point out that they do, technically at least, charge for parking downtown.  But you can get your parking validated easily.  When you buy into the tournament at Binion’s, you can just hand them your parking ticket and they stamp it.  No fee to leave the garage.  I recalled one of TheTrooper’s videos where he said you don’t even have to play—if you take your ticket to the security desk, they will stamp it, no questions asked.

What I’ve described above was the status of things when I was in Vegas, last month, when I got annoyed at Vegas.  As it happens, while I was drafting this post, word squeaked out about how MGM was going to handle poker players when the new parking fees kicked in.  You can find a link here to a post on the Two + Two Forums about it.  I have extremely good reason to believe that the information there is basically correct.  Note, for reasons of pure paranoia, I am not going to tell you what it says, if you are interested, please check out the link.

It would appear that the local poker regs and grinders will come out just fine.  Even a non-local like me will be fine, at least.  I’ve put in enough hours to qualify, for sure.  But as nice as it is for me, it will still be bad news for lots of people.  If you come to Vegas a few times or year (or less) for just a few days, you are not going to be able to qualify for free parking by just playing poker. This will make MGM owned poker rooms less desirable for tourists to play in and likely hurt the games themselves.  Also, it might make Vegas a less desirable tourist destination in the long run.

Note: I am positive that all the poker people in the MGM rooms were not happy about decision to charge for parking.  I don’t blame them at all, in fact, I give them a lot of credit for getting their bosses to accommodate poker players as much as they apparently have.  The poker room managers are the good guys here.  The corporate suits who made the call?  Not so much. 

Again, the point of this post is to explain why I was upset with Vegas back in March. My explanation for that is dependent on how I felt at the time, not how I feel now.  Furthermore, I want to address how much Vegas has changed since I started visiting there, and despite any accommodation for poker players they make, charging for parking is definitely a change, and not for the better.

So as I headed to Vegas, I couldn’t help thinking that this might be my last visit to Vegas where I wouldn’t have to pay for parking on the Strip (at least at certain properties).  Originally it was supposed to start in April and I wasn’t sure I’d be back before it started.

I guess it was just in the back of mind when pulled into to the NYNY parking garage for my first poker session, after getting settled in at my temporary residence.  I parked there because my pre-poker meal was going to be a slice of pizza and a hot dog at Nathan’s, probably my favorite junk food place ever.  From there, I walk across the bridge and am at the MGM poker room.  I’m pretty sure the walk from the NYNY garage to the MGM poker room is no longer than the walk from the MGM garage to the same place.

It didn’t take me long to be reminded of the coming parking change.  The ramp up the garage had been repainted, re-aligned, and there were already parking kiosks installed to either give out parking stubs or receive payment.  They were non-functional for the time being.  Several of the floors in the garage were closed off for the change, and for some reason, they had renumbered the floors….but hadn’t told the elevators.  So the sign in front of the garage elevators said you were on a different floor than the elevator thought you were on.

But the real tip off was the lights above the parking spaces.  When MGM announced the change, they tried to justify it by saying they were offering their patrons “enhanced parking.”  What that meant was that they installed lights over all the parking spaces, so you could more easily find an open space.  If the light was red, the space was occupied.  If it was green, it was an available space. Does that seem like something ten bucks of your hard earned money?  Doesn’t seem that difficult to tell if a space has a car in it without the lights.

So I saw all this, including the damn lights, and got annoyed.  Rub my face in the fact that parking would no longer be free.  But yes, I did see that the green light above the space I parked had changed to red when I pulled in.  Super.

A few days later I had the experience I described in the post here, where I was essentially charged three bucks for asking for pickles and onions with my burger.  Another twist of the knife from the city of Vegas.

It was at that point I started tweeting negative stuff, saying I was done with the town.  So now you have the full picture.

And….as you can tell from the “Part 1” in the title, this is a two-parter.  I’ll have more to say about parking and how Vegas has changed in the second part, coming on Sunday.  Be sure to come back to check it out.  (Edited to add:  Part 2 is now posted and can be found here).

27 comments:

  1. B+++++++++++++++++ only 1 pic!!!!!!!!!!!! rumor has it that 9ontheturn had/has a killer rack plz confirm for an A rating

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry anger, one pic is the norm. Sometimes I add more, but it is usually one.

      Michelle (9ontheturn) is a friend and I would discuss a friend's breasts. In fact, I really make it a point not to notice a female friend's breasts.

      Delete
    2. Rob, if you don't notice your friend's lovely bust, you are a better man than I!

      Delete
    3. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

      Delete
  2. Pretty interesting article. I havent been to vegas yet but was considering travelling there... What do you think? Is it still worth the visit?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. YES! I mean you won't notice how different it is since you won't have anything to compare it to.

      Although it is a shame you never saw Vegas when it was better, you HAVE to go to Vegas. Everyone should go to Vegas at least once. At the very least, once.

      There's no place like it. As much as they try to take away the uniqueness of it, it is still like no other place on Earth.

      Definitely visit Vegas.

      Delete
  3. I think the impact this will have on tourist traffic to MGM poker rooms will be pretty minimal. The vast majority of tourists do not rent a car, so I don't see it as being a big deal in that regard.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks...but I believe you are incorrect. I don't remember the statistic exactly but I know someone posted that between people who drive to Vegas from surrounding states (Mostly CA but AZ, UT, & others also) and those that fly in and do rent a car, it's well over 50% of the visitors who actual have a car all or part of the time they are in Vegas.

      I'll discuss this more in Part 2.

      Delete
  4. For me this just essentially means that unless I am meeting up with you or others I will avoid that part of the strip completely (MGM, Excalibur, Mandalay...) when playing poker.
    I also means that I am less likely to attend a concert or event there and I will now NEVER randomly hit up their casinos to get dinner or a snack, and I enjoy several of the dining establishments on more than an occasion.

    Meh

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That will only be an option for now, before CET and the other Strip poker rooms start charging. Then, you won't have a choice. And don't for a minute think that it will be long before they are charging you to park at Bally's and the rest.

      I guess you can go to a locals poker room, they probably won't charge for parking any time soon.

      Delete
    2. Yeah I felt like vomiting when I heard a couple of months ago that Caesars was already doing surveys with people parking in its garages. MGM did that before they made the announcements.

      Steve007

      Delete
    3. Did they do survey? I mean MGM? I wasn't aware. But yeah, CET will follow suit, they will have no choice.

      It will be interesting to see if Wynn & Venetian also do it because the are a bit farther out there. But you could park at the V and walk to Mirage or Harrah's easily so I don't see how the will be able to resist (assuming they even want to).

      Delete
    4. I'm not 100% sure but I could have sworn I read that MGM did surveys before.

      I was pretty upset when I first heard about this because my opinion was (and still is) that Caesars, Venetian, Wynn, etc. are all going to do it out of greed.

      Steve007

      Delete
    5. Yeah, MGM just opened the door. And as I say, the other casinos won't have a choice, as their garages will fill up with MGM partrons if they don't.

      Delete
  5. A $10 parking charge is nothing compared to the $32.95 daily amenities charge at all the casino's. Yes we will give you a free room any Monday through Thursday... but you still have to pay this fee. Which is what the room cost 10 years ago before those fees were added.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, Steven, I will look at "resort fees" in Part 2. But I have a feeling you won't like what I say about them.

      Delete
    2. Valet will be $17. I personally prefer to self park and hate valet but some people strongly prefer using valet and they will need twice as many hours in the poker room to get it.

      Steve007

      Delete
    3. Those $10 fees will eventually go up, just like the $17 valet fees will increase and the resort fees will increase. This is an additional way for them to nickel and dime people and they will try and use these fees to do that even more over time. I just hope they don't decide to charge players who have Pearl any time in the near future.

      Who knows? Maybe 5 years from now they could require Gold or higher for free self parking AND charge higher fees for those who aren't at Gold.

      Steve007

      Delete
    4. Thanks, Steve....regarding valet, one of my female followers on Twitter (Vegas local) says she always valet parks. She feels as a single woman, it is much safer than going to a parking garage late at nite or early in the morning. She will not be happy about this, for sure. 150 hours in a poker room a year is a lot unless you are an actual grinder. She has a real job.

      Delete
  6. One thing that I rarely see mentioned (and you won't find it in the Vegas Review Journal now because Sheldon Adelson owns the paper and you know he wants this to succeed so he can start charging) is the top people with MGM all gave themselves bonuses and they obviously wouldn't want to give those up.

    This article explains the real reason they are charging for parking. All the other excuses about the stadium and enhancing the parking experience are just to get the public to accept it (fortunately their attempts to "explain" the new fees got a huge backlash which may explain why they are backing down so much).

    http://www.vegastripping.com/news/blog/5746/look-who-plans-to-profit-from-the-mgm-profit-growth-plan/

    Also when I wrote them to complain a few months ago, they said only players with a high status might get it waived. That sounded like Platinum to me (some people argued Gold but that is more of an intermediate status than a high status IMO). But recently they have backed down from that position.

    Steve007

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, I heard about that. Just trying to get the stock price up so they can get huge bonuses. Terrible.

      BTW, I saw your posts on 2+2. I didn't want to respond in that forum, but the "automatic" nature of the tier upgrades only applies if the hours are in one room. If you need more than one room to make the next tier, you have to go to one of the rooms and they can do it manually. I'm not sure how many rooms they will combine for you. Two for sure. But if you only have 75 hours by combining 5 different MGM rooms, will they do that for you? Not sure.

      Delete
    2. Interesting. I know I'll be fine but there are still things that bother me about this.

      Also, I did go into the NYNY parking garage less than a month ago and saw several signs saying "pay at pay stations" and "take your ticket with you" and that bothered me. The elevators weren't working and I had to use the stairs. As for the lights, I've been told they even have them at Silverton and they don't charge for parking there.

      And I know this is shocking but I was easily able to find a spot without relying on the lights.

      Delete
    3. This is pretty bad....I understand that if you try to park at NYNY or Monte Carlo on a nite when the Arena has event, there is NO free parking, it's all $20 as if you were going to the event. That's going on right now, in advance of the charge for parking elsewhere kicking in.

      And....for those nites, doesn't matter if you've earned free parking on your MLife card. You have pay the twenty bucks regardless.

      Want to swing by NYNY for a hot dog at Nathan's on an event night? That'll be $20 to park!

      Delete