Our February Las Vegas Trip got off to a rocky start the day before we were due to leave thanks to the turmoil of changes that Venetian and Palazzo were doing with canceling many of their customer's comped reservations at the last minute because they had decided to tighten up their comping policies. When friends of ours had gotten their reservation canceled a couple days before their Super Bowl trip to Vegas by the LVS group, I called my host at Venetian and Palazzo and asked if there was any chance of that happening to us and he said no that we always gave them consistent gambling business and were the demographic they wanted. However, I continued to see posts on various Las Vegas message boards where others were also getting last minute calls saying their comp reservation wouldn't be honored but they were welcome to still stay at Venetian or Palazzo for X amount of dollars. This led me to call our host the day before we were leaving and ask once again if he was sure our reservation was safe and he said of course, so imagine our dismay when he called back 3 hours later to tell me that he had found our name on the list of people to call to tell them their comped offer was not being honored. Feeling sorry for him and the 60 other people he needed to call in addition to us to give this bad news to I didn't give him a hard time but just said that in that case we wouldn't be staying there this trip. After getting off the phone with him I looked at our other offers from Bellagio, Wynn, Mandalay and others and decided the Aria offer was the best and called them and was quickly booked again. As I was going over our change of plans with my husband our Venetian/Palazzo host called back and said he spoke to the Vice President of Casino Marketing and they had made a mistake and didn't know what they were doing at the moment and we were not suppose to be on the list. Since our host also added that he had scheduled us for a limo pickup, VIP lounge checkin and access during our trip, along with a $100.00 a day food&beverage credit in addition to our free play it trumped the Aria offer so our trip was back on for staying at Palazzo and I called Aria back and canceled out.
Our flight out of San Jose the next day was smooth and the limo driver was waiting for us at baggage claim. We quickly got our luggage and decided to enjoy the ride so the driver took us to Palazzo via the strip. Once at Palazzo we went to VIP check in which is very nice and we were quickly given a suite with the usual view of Treasure Island.
Since dinner was hours a way we quickly had a snack of some finger sandwiches, fruit and cookies that were always available in the VIP lounge. For those who are wondering this is one VIP lounge where they check when you enter to see if you belong there and they do it by asking to see your room key which has a band of gold at the end of it if you are a VIP guest.
My husband who wasn't feeling well, something that would persist with him for the first 2 days of our 5 night trip, decided to go up to our suite immediately and have valet deliver our luggage, while I went to visit our host. I had a nice chat with our host and all seemed to be well, though it was obvious from what he was telling me that these sudden changes were surprising all of them and they were currently still attending meetings meant to educate the staff on what these changes would mean and that the orders were coming from the very top.
I soon went up to the room to unpack, but while doing that discovered our safe was locked by the previous room's occupants and had to call to have them open it up as I needed to put both cash and laptop in it. After waiting for them for about a hour they did come and open up the safe which was empty.
After the safe was fixed we went to the Venetian casino so I could show Randy the new Star War's slot machine which he really enjoyed playing since for the next hour or so he continued to hit bonuses on it and was ahead.
Unfortunately while he was winning I was busy losing with the exception of a nice hit on Wolf Run. I also went looking for the Alice Adventures in Wonderland slot which I was looking forward to playing so much and while I found it at Venetian the pay offs for the bonuses were pitiful for me even betting max. I have movies of several of the bonus games here:
http://www.lasvegasdaze.com/2011/02/new-alices-adventures-in-wonderland.html
