Sunday, October 24th, Bellagio, Olives and a hand pay!

View from our room at Palazzo

Today we slept until noon and didn't leave our room until 1:30am. Since we had a 5:00pm reservation tonight to eat dinner at Olives at Bellagio we just went to the Gold Lounge at Venetian for a snack and coffee. When we entered the lounge every table was dirty and all food was gone, and ice was melted. I guess they got a large group of people around lunch time and the staff was behind in cleaning up. Eventually a staff member came and replaced enough so we could have some coffee, cheese, rolls and fruit but we didn't stick around for the chicken skewers and other items.

Since we had to pass through the high limit room to exit we couldn't resist a few spins of $5 Wheel of Fortune and we got lucky enough to hit a spin for $175.00 which was a nice start for the day

Today we were checking into Bellagio though still staying at Palazzo tonight. I was coming in on a offer of 3 nights at Bellagio, limited food and beverage and some free play. It was a lovely day and we thought of walking to Bellagio but my feet were feeling a bit of pain so we took a taxi who decided to take us by freeway to the Bellagio and drop us off at the north entrance since we left our luggage back at Palazzo.



When we got to registration around 2:45pm the lines were long at invited and non invited check in so we waited about 15 minutes to check in. The registration clerk was nice and surprised us with the news we were expected at VIP check in and should have gone there, however she would go ahead and check us in, give us our line passes and then she suggested we go there and have a drink. The clerk also told us what restaurants were comped and they were Olives, Noodles, the buffet, cafe Bellagio, pool cafe, Palio, snacks, cafe gelato, and room service.  While we have used VIP check in at other MGM resort strip properties this was the first time Bellagio had decided we qualified, I just wish they had mentioned it at the time I was discussing my offer with them a month ago.

Vip Lounge at Bellagio

We then went to the VIP lounge and the server asked what we wanted to drink and we had a glass of wine and a couple cookies.

After leaving the lounge we had about 90 minutes before we would have to stand in line at Olives to ensure we were seated at a patio fountain table. Bellagio was very crowded today, there was no getting near the conservatory so we ended up playing the slots.

We tried the $5 Pinball at Bellagio and then 25 cent Stonehenge but both games sucked down a couple hundred very quickly. Trying Wolf Run we hit for a bit over $150.00 before it went cold on us.

After leaving Wolf Run we hit a few fun bonus games on the Hitchcock slots. In addition to the two in the photos, we had a $80.00 popcorn bonus which surprised me because I didn't think that bonus ever went that high.

After our brief run of luck at Hitchcock, we tried a bunch of slots at Bellagio, including the Mummy, Ruby Slippers, Kitty Glitter and others but were on a big losing streak.

At 4:30pm we went over to Olives and the restaurant already had several of those of us with 5pm reservations in line for the patio seating we we were 4th in line. By the time 5pm rolled around there was about 12 or more parties standing in line. We ended up with a lovely table for two at the railing in the center.

As we were seated they were already in the first few minutes of one of the fountain shows. During the second show that evening I took a video of the fountains while they played Elvis singing Viva Las Vegas and I'll upload it after I returned home.

They served our bread with olives and 2 spreads of Tapenade. For drinks, Randy ordered a gin and tonic and I tried a drink called the passionate O, which was made with passion fruit, limoncello, vodka and perhaps a couple other things. It was a bit on the sweet side but I enjoyed it.

The weather was perfect this evening, cool but not too cold that they needed to bring out the heat lamps.

I ordered the Belgium Endive salad as a started which contained shaved pears with roasted pistachios, grilled brie cheese, organic mixed greens with endive of course and a champagne vinaigrette. I enjoyed the salad a lot, it was nice that the pears were actually ripe as I've had salads before at other restaurants that featured pears and they were unripe and hard as a rock.

Randy ordered the special tonight which was swordfish, potatoes and greens. He really liked his swordfish but when I had a taste of it I really didn't like it, perhaps it was the sauce.

I usually don't eat beef but tonight I tried their grilled ribeye steak and it was fantastic! It was served with cheddar and ham croquettes, salsa verde, rapini, red wine glaze and tempura onions on top. The rapini on the plate was bitter but the sauce on it which was sort of sweet made a interesting contrast and I enjoyed it.

For dessert Randy ordered the vanilla souffle which is served with vanilla ice cream and since we were celebrating his birthday they wrote Happy Birthday on the plate.

We both loved Randy's souffle but I personally prefer the chocolate one at Cut. I decided to take our servers suggestion and ordered a chocolate pudding type cake thing that at the moment I can't recall the name of. It was good, but I preferred the souffle. The white glare next to the chocolate is ice cream.

After dinner, we tried a few more slots but our luck was really bad so we took a taxi back to Palazzo where we continued to lose with the exception of one good hit on WOZ, Ruby Slippers.

After a couple hours of more losses I found Terri (socalgirl) at a slot and decided to join her for at Venetian. Calling Randy to see where he was I discovered he had gone back to the room and was tired of losing. I coaxed Randy back downstairs so he could give me some money so I could gamble with Terri and he ended up walking over with us to Venetian to grab a drink at the Gold Lounge. Before we went to the lounge we decided to cash in our player points for our slot credit as did Terri and play it off at the Venetian high limit room. Randy and Terri pooled their money to play the $5 Pinball but didn't hit anything. I played mine off at Cleopatra at Randy's suggestion and took out a couple hundred.

Terri started playing Top Dollor and while she hit a couple the offers weren't very good. Randy and I went to a different Pinball machine, a $5 one that played 2 credits instead of the previous one that required 3 and weren't having much luck until I hit 2 double diamond symbols and a 7. The pinball machine starts playing music, while I say darn it, why couldn't I get the 3rd double diamond. I'm then checking to see if I got any credits for the 2 but the machine is just playing music and no credits are adding up while I fuss. Terri who is 2 machines over starts laughing at me and says dummy (a couple words have been cleaned up. ;) you hit a jackpot call the slot attendant. We then notice that on the bottom left the machine is telling us to do that and we hit $1600.00 for a hand pay!

After the slot attendant paid me our winnings and I tipped him, we played the rest of our original hundred through the machine without hitting anything else and decided it was time to leave the high limit area and get that drink in the gold lounge. Terri who had also been having a run of bad luck was in bitter gambler mode, however Randy had recovered and decided he wouldn't go back to the room to read. :)

The gold lounge was very crowded and while we were drinking our soft drinks and water, there was a group of 6 guys and one women at a table with out a dozen beer bottles on it who were very loud so it was difficult to ignore them. As we were chatting we noticed the cocktail server bring them all new drinks and she was tipped with a flourish to a one dollar bill for all those drinks! We saw her sort of hold it up and look at it but she didn't say anything and left the room. We just couldn't believe what we witnessed and I suspect they weren't served anymore drinks after that.

After we left the Gold Lounge the three of us hung out gambling together and Terri's luck started to change and she was hitting a lot of bonus rounds on various slots and recovered some of her losses. We hit a decent Glinda bonus on Venetian's Wizard of Oz and played a few hours again on the casino's money and had a lot of fun.

Tomorrow, Randy will leave to return home and to work on a afternoon flight. I'll be moving to Bellagio for the next two days before leaving on Wednesday. If I can get a good internet connection in my room at Bellagio I will continue the live trip report. If I have problems with it, I'll post it on Twitter and anything interesting that might happen will then have to be posted after my return home.