And I am talking about a no holds, full-on debauchery kind of Las Vegas vacation!
Are you referring to “spending” or “losing”?
Hi!
Oddly enough, there are no plans to gamble. Maybe I will set aside $100 to throw away. I am wondering more along the lines of spending as in paying for clubs and shows and hotel rooms and hookers. Okay, maybe not hookers, but that’s the gist of it.
Track down DMark – he lives in Vegas and has a website for visitors.
$200+ for friday and saturday night rooms, $75+ for shows, $50+ for dinner.
But Vegas is one place where there is no limits to the spending. It’s easy to spend $150 per person for dinner, and $400 for a room.
How do I find DMark? I searched but the only result lined back to this thread! 
Am I doing it wrong? Thanks, twickster.
$75 shows aren’t a big surprise. I think I might be coerced into paying for, and seeing Elton John. Ew! But $50 dinners? I heard someone say there were $5 steaks! :eek: Is that a myth? Maybe I should take advantage of the buffets then I only need to eat once a day.
It really depends on how you want to do it. There are many, MANY tasty, cheap places to eat in Vegas, even on the Strip, if you’re not looking for a fancy meal. I also know of a place north of the Strip that sells the biggest prime rib you’ve ever seen for $5 (it might be $8 for the large, which is about as big as my head).
I would highly recommend several Vegas buffets as well, though most of the ones I’d recommend aren’t necessarily cheap.
How big is you’r head? How much is “aren’t necessarily cheap” :dubious:for a buffet? I will be going to Vegas at the end of Oct myself. We are trying to set the world’s record for least amount spent on a three day trip to Vegas. And where is this place with the $8.00 prime rib?
Add another $200 to the tally for your trip to* tip *city. We asked what a fair tip was to have our 3 bags delivered to our room (from the valet parking area), they told us $25.00. We gave them $6.00. (We’re cheap).
My hate size is 7 5/8. 
The buffet prices vary depending on whether you’re there on a weekday or a weekend, and of course, whether or not you’re on the Strip. Both Texas Station and Sam’s Town (neither on the Strip) have weekday breakfast buffets that are about $6 the last time I checked, with dinner buffets around $10. On the other side, the last breakfast buffet I had at the Bellagio was $35, and I think Paris was closer to $40. I don’t really know the dinner buffet prices because I rarely do dinner buffets in Vegas.
Crap…I was afraid someone would call me on the prime rib place. I’ll poke around and see if I can find it. All I remember is that you go way north on Las Vegas Boulevard (well north of the strip, past where the Las Vegas 51s play, even) and that it’s across the street from a strip club that has a huge oil derrick on top of it.
ETA – that was supposed to say my HAT size! My hatred knows no constraints. 
I think this is better suited for IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
OK.
Rooms - depends upon the season, week, activity, etc. For good rooms, consider $250 a night for friday, saturday or sunday, $99 a night for other days.
Shows - the good ones are about $90 per ticket- like O, or Mystere, or Penn and Teller.
Food/drinks - relatively low priced. For example, the buffet at Luxor is about $20 per person.
A big cost - Transportation. The shuttles run too slow for my tastes, and walking gets to be tiring rather quick. You end up taking a lot of taxi’s from one casino to another, at about $10-$15 per trip with tip. In one evening period, from about 3 - midnight, we took about six cab rides. (To dinner, to show, to casino, to another show, to casino, back to the hotel). It can easily exceed $100 per day.
And gambling. It sort of sneaks up on you. They’ve got these amazing, sparkly, beautiful machines that you just have to play - for me, it was the Star Wars slot machines and Star Trek machines. They all have mini-games in them, where you fight the empire, or battle klingons, etc. To get to the mini-games, you have to play multiple lines on the slot machines. You can adjust the values of the machines, but its really, really incredibly easy to forget you’re spending money on the things. For example, I set the Star Wars machine at the penny-machine level, and then I kept playing multiple lines. I suddenly realized - I was playing $2 per pull, and I’d gone through $100 trying to get to the mini-games. Insidious, they are.
As a rule of thumb - budget what you think the trip will cost, then double it, and you should be right.
That is a very helpful link Asimovian! I’m sad to see the short list of drinks specials though. I also heard from a friend about $1 margaritas, but I guess not. 
Now that I have you guys here, I have an addendum to my original question. What type of shows would you guys recommend? Magicians sound wonderful, but watching fake medieval knights battle each other - not so much!
I know not to expect to win if I gamble, but games for the fun of it will suck me in just the same? :eek: Thanks for the tip I got to look out for that!
comes running in, out of breath
I’m here!
Sorry I am late.
You are SO in luck right now - due to lots of economic factors you might have noticed in the news, Las Vegas room rates have gone down quite a bit. Granted, weekend rates at the big places are still pricey, but you have a far better chance to get a huge bang for you buck now than, say, a year ago!
So, you want to go all out big?
OK - let’s avoid the subject of gambling (that budget is between you and your loan officer), but just the basics of a “big” trip.
Assuming there is no huge convention in town upping the prices, figure about $200-$300 a night for a top notch room in a hotel/casino, smack dab in the middle of the Strip (a lot less mid-week from Sun - Thur), but you can spend up to $5,000 a night and far more if you opt for one of those grand suites.
The best buffets (Paris Hotel, Wynn Hotel, Bellagio) cost about $35+ or so for dinner, but they are worth every damned penny - these ain’t no fried chicken and biscuits places, we are talking rissotto, shrimp scampi, Tiramisu…you get the idea. At any of the posh multi-star restaurants, figure about $100 per person as a ballpark price - but depending on what you order and if pricey wine is included, then it can go up drastically.
To get really good seats for good shows (LOVE at Mirage, or Cher or Bette Midler or Elton John, etc.) you can figure $250 minimum, but only if you order them WAY IN ADVANCE and pay list price. A friend came and wanted to see Bette Midler last minute - sold out, but you could still get a ticket at Ticketmaster for about $1000.
So, that is the basics of room, show and good eats.
Shopping, strip clubs, limo service, side trips, nightclubs…add a bunch of bucks there as well.
The good news is, if you actually take this wild spending spree trip here, you can damn well bet that hotel/casino will be writing you a nice little letter a few weeks later, offering you all kinds of incentives to return again soon! And be sure to get a player’s card at every casino where you might gamble a few bucks…they track that and the more you play, well…I know people who have been coming here for years and have never had to pay a singe dime for rooms or food - they just want them to come here and gamble. Really high rollers get private jets to fly them here and back.
Oh, and if you need a private guide, just email me your credit card number and I will be happy to meet you at the airport!
Have fun!
Go to Ellis Island for the special. It isn’t on the menu, you have to ask for it. Hit Terrible’s for the shrimp cocktail special, which you also have to look for. For Ghu’s sake stay away from the cheap buffets! They are total crap. You don’t have to hit Bellagio or Paris, but there are good mid-priced buffets that are wonderful. I like the Spice Market at Planet Hollywood, personally. The dollar margaritas went away, for the most part, when they tore down Westward Ho! and Broadway for new construction.
Go here for more than you need to know.
Use the other column on the search page – “find all posts by.” I know he’s had a couple of threads in Cafe Society recently. Once you find a post by him, click on his name to get to his profile, and you can PM him from there. (Guests can PM, right?) I think you can also PM directly from your User CP.
I’m still trying to work out what’s wrong with fried chicken and biscuits.
Drinks in casinos are pretty expensive if you’re not gambling. Especially poolside: $12 for a mojito, $6 for a can of Corona.
Which is why you don’t drink unless you’re playing. Sit at the bar, slip a $20 into the video poker machine, and slow-play your ass off while drinking for free. 