Free Shots, Let's Go, or Teresa's 40th Birthday Party!

Before this weekend I hadn't seen Teresa (Tbonz) since last November when we were having a girl's night out in Vegas celebrating Lantana's birthday which was just a fabulous night out with a terrific group of ladies! Before we said goodbye that trip Teresa mentioned her birthday party in March but I didn't think I could make it because I was already committed to a big Slot Machine Forum Meet in April, so I tried to put it out of my mind. Temptation arrives in February as Teresa and other Vegas friends who are going in March to celebrate her birthday are deep in plans for three or more days of riotous activities that I can't resist sharing with such a fun group of people, so I cave and book a flight and arrange to stay at Bellagio.

My plane had a short delay out of San Jose so I ate breakfast at Ruby Tuesday's and had one of their egg  quesadillas which was tasty and reasonably priced for airport food. After eating and while waiting for the announcement to board I made the cutest new friend!

Once we took off the flight was fine except for having every seat full.  On arrival in Las Vegas I found my Bellagio limo driver at the foot of the stairs and we only had to wait a few minutes for my luggage. At this point the trip starts out great as once we arrived at Bellagio there's a bellman waiting for me and addressing me by name who says he will be staying with me instead of taking my luggage away. Great, this is a first as normally even when I use VIP check in the bellman doesn't stay with me to escort me to my room.

VIP check in goes smoothly, they have my room ready early with the view of the fountains I requested and they give me a white key card that says VIP on it. I'm assuming for those who don't have a M-life card of gold level or higher then the VIP card key serves as a line pass at some of the restaurants.

Bellman escorts me to my room, gets ice and departs and I'm marveling at how smooth that went and that service is much better then when I was here for the one night in January. Unfortunately this was the last time during the trip I was to have VIP Services go smoothly, but more on that at the end of the trip report. 

The room was again one of their renovated rooms with the flat screen TV's, but this time I liked the wall paper pattern and color more then the green one in January.

Upon arrival I had sent a text to a couple friends Cassley, and Bhambound, and after unpacking and going downstairs I ran into Bhambound immediately and it didn't take us long to find Cassley and Yourstarla who were playing VP. After chatting for a few minutes I caught up with some of what I missed the night before when there had been a cupcake party courtesy of Cassley and Yourstarla and also a Meet at Bellagio's Lily Bar and Lounge (formally Caramel Lounge). It was then time to see if my new lucky charm, my glitter hello kitty was good luck and I went off to play the $5 Top Dollar with Cassley cheering me on, while Yourstarla continued to play VP and Bhambound looked for her own lucky slot . I quickly got a bonus and won $300. I then went to another Top Dollar slot and got another quick bonus for $225.0 so I'm thinking wow, kitty is lucky!

Well, it must have been Cassley who was my lucky charm because I left her watching Bhambound gambling and I went off to play the $5 Pink Diamond slot and then more Top Dollar and quickly lost my  winnings and more. Meeting back up with Cassley and Bhambound we walked back to the penny slots and joined up with Yourstarla and started playing various slots like Cash Wizard and others. 

Catching a glimpse of $1 Spin and Win I went over and sat down next to a man who glanced over and then did a double take and asked what's your name? It's Diana I replied which immediately caused the reaction of, "I read your blog all the time and follow you on Twitter".  It's always so much fun for me to have a unexpected meet with one of you who reads these trip reports and it was lovely to hear that some of my tips in my trip reports had helped him. Of course as Gregg (Maximus56k on the slot machine forum board) is telling me about the four hand pays he had so far at Bellagio, I'm thinking perhaps he should be giving me the gambling tips! Gregg it was great meeting you and your uncle! Congrats on making NOIR with M-Life this past trip and bigger congrats on all your wins. Hope to see you again in Vegas and next time you stop by the Slot Machine Forum say hi.

After losing on Spin and Win, I decided to go play the penny slots and I was losing on most of them when I decided to play the old Pompeii slot and had a nice hit of $102.00 on a $2.50 bet. Then as I continue to play, I have a feeling the bonus is going to hit so I move the bet up to $5.00 a spin and it hits and immediately pays $252.00 and gives me 20 spins!

So I'm really thinking at this point that I'm going to get a big win. WRONG! After 20 spins the total win including the $252.00 before the start of the spins was $279.00. Yep, in 20 spins I made $27.00. 

It was now time to meet up with Cassley and Bhambound  as we were walking over together to Cosmopolitan to meet up with about 20 plus people to eat dinner at the Wicked Spoon Buffet. Others out of the 60 some people here for the birthday celebration were eating elsewhere but would be joining us at the Bond Bar after their dinners. 

Above is Bhambound, Cassley and myself at Bond Bar for a drink before dinner at Wicked Spoon. 

This is where I decide to join some of the others in buying the wristband for the unlimited Champagne (I took the $75.00 deal for Moet and Chandon) good at all the Cosmopolitan bars.

On hindsight this wasn't the smartest move because then I felt I had to drink $75.00 worth of champagne that evening!

Above Yourstarla and Kidkind also having a drink before dinner at Cosmopolitan's Bond Bar. Kidkind did a great job of organizing our dinner at Wicked Spoon and the party later at Bond.

Some of our group waiting in front of Wicked Spoon for the rest of our party to join us. NYGreg below with fl_mermaid on the left.

Of course it wouldn't be a trip report from me if it didn't include some food photos.

It's been almost year since I've eaten at the Wicked Spoon Buffet and the first time for dinner, the other two times last year was lunch.

I thought the food was fine, but not as good as last year. However keep in mind that so far this year after eating at the Wynn Buffet and a couple others I think they have all downgraded their offerings and cost cutting measures have made the buffets not as good.

While I only show a few of the dessert offerings, the dessert selection is the one area where it's just as good as last year with a extensive selection of desserts including homemade Gelato.

Of course what made Wicked Spoon way above average that evening was the company! BrokenAlice is on the left, then me and Bhambound. Across from us is Harlemgirl, lemonlime, Retrosingle and it gets a bit too blurry at the end for me to remember who was sitting where though I know skimoak was there, fl_mermaid, Chuppa, kidkind, Skimoak, Topeka Ducky and NYGreg.

After Wicked Spoon it was time to head back to Cosmopolitan's Bond bar and catch up on my Champagne drinking! But first, I had a short stop with Topeka Ducky, one of the sweetest ladies around to show her how fast I could lose on the $1 DaVinci Diamonds at Cosmo! No photos of my losses so here's another one of our group at Wicked Spoon.

Yourstarla below saying they went that away, or in other words pointing out who went with what name tag. 

While not part of our party at Bond Bar I couldn't resist taking a photo of this bride, her dress was really lovely.

One of the left over gourmet cupcakes from the previous evening that Yourstarla and Cassley and brought from San Diego. Now rechristened as porncake!

Kidkind and Nicesheffielder at the Bond Bar Party. Nicesheffielder was handing out new and shiny pennies from the UK for luck. 

Chuppa our party girl, always fun to be with and makes any gathering better with her smiles. That's Yourstarla and Jon in the background.

We had a large group show up at the Bond Bar but a lot of my photos came out too blurry to use, darn that unlimited champagne! I did get to meet a lot of fun people at Bond from Trip Advisor that I've missed on past trips such as JupiterJoe and LaRue, two very sweet ladies who I didn't get a chance to see later in the trip.

Thanks to Chuppa for the above photo of Kidkind, me, yourstarla and rdtriptaker!

The Bond Girl's arrived for their show around 10pm I believe.

A little fun with beach balls?

The champagne around this time won, I couldn't drink anymore and while the party was still going strong, Cassley and I walked back to Bellagio.

Once back at Bellagio I had a few decent wins like the one above for $225.00 but not enough to offset the losses. 

I watched a man last trip at Venetian work his way up on this type of slot to a few thousand but this hit for $100 was the best I could do.

Last trip Epic Monopoly at Venetian killed me regardless if I bet 50 cents to $1.50 a push, but tonight for a short time period I saw that it can pay off during a bonus when I hit $200.40.

It was around 3am when I decided to call it a night but first I went to the Bellagio Conservatory to take photos of their spring display. The flowers had a wonderful fragrance. To see more photos click on this link:

http://www.lasvegasdaze.com/2012/03/bellagio-spring-conservatory-display.html

The next morning I slept in late and then had to rush to make our 11:30am reservation at Jasmine's Fountain Brunch. Yourstarla had arranged this lovely start to the day and we were seated at two tables by the windows. Above is lemonlime, southernohionailady and Robinsrose. Southernohionailady had such fabulous nails and later gave me some wonderfully sparkly silver nail polish!

I'm on the left with rollingwriter and it turns out we live very close to each other. 

The other table with our group had Yourstarla, Bhambound, Cassley, Lawgirl, DirtyErnie and others.

Like Wicked Spoon the Brunch at Jasmine has had some menu changes since I first reviewed it. The shrimp and crab are still there and delicious. My husband's favorite chicken green bean salad is no longer on the menu.

They still served the Peking Duck table side which is nice.

It looks very tasty in the above photo but our group were not duck eaters this trip.

They still had prime rib but no longer have Beef Wellington. The lobster medallions which I really liked in the past has been replaced by lobster profiteroles but I couldn't detect much lobster in them.

There is still eggs benedict and eggs made to order and salmon of course.

The desserts, especially the homemade truffles remain and are terrific!

After brunch the group split up and I played slots for a while with some small wins but more losses. It was time then to get ready for the party and to meet Cassley,Yourstarla,Rdtriptaker and Bhambound our Disco Queen who is pictured above, for going early to Kahunaville to set up for the birthday party.

The theme for Tbonz's 40th birthday party was the 70's so we mainly were dressed as hippies and in disco costumes.

Above is Rdtriptake, Bhambound and Cassley as we arrive at Kahunaville at Treasure Island.

Vadreamer and her huband Bob were already there and were sharing this great appetizer tray.

The staff at Kahunaville treated our group great. We were allowed into the party area about 45 minutes before our party was to start at 7pm.

Cassley, NYGreg, 2B, Yourstarla, Jess, Kidkind,Tbonz,lemonlime and others who organized the birthday party and other events during this celebration week did a fantastic job, kudos to all of you! The party bags below had some cute items and also a CD for all of us of the Party Bus Music Mix.

There were long tables set up between the main bar and stage with the DJ booth in the corner off the stage. The stage was used to set up the Birthday cupcake display that 2B had arranged. 

A lot of thought was put into the decorations. Tbonz's step daughter Jess, a wonderful young woman came up with the great idea of us sending messages to her for Tbonz to read and then she did the work of printing them out and matting them in different shapes and they were hung all around the DJ booth and the stage. Below is just one example of all the messages that decorated the walls.

Cassley printed out and matted this great photo of TBonz from a previous party at Kahunaville and here's our birthday queen posing with it and looking fabulous!

Nothing was forgotten to make this a special celebration. Yourstarla made the table banner below and in later photos you will also see the sash and crown she arranged for Teresa.

This photo of moi was taken as we were still setting up for the party.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I'm going to let the majority of these photos speak for themselves, enjoy!

Teresa and her husband Rich arriving at the party.

Below one of Kahunaville's specialty cocktails smoking from dry ice and contains 4 shots. They make them in a variety of flavors. It was delicious and I drank the whole thing so if some of my photos are blurry you know why!

Myself, lemonlime with rdtriptaker and lawgirl in the background.

Lowrance and his wife Roz, such cute costumes!

That's Acsmacan second from the left and Skimoak next to her with Kidkind in the background.

The appetizers at the party were quite good, coconut shrimp, nachos, sliders and egg rolls.

Pimpdaddy, err Kidking with our lovely 2B.

2b's special Tom Petty jacket and concert ticket from way back when!

Lawgirl, 2b, DirtyErnie and Fl_mermaid.

Chuppa knows how to enjoy a maraschino cherry! This photo soon to be a Facebook avatar. ;)

2b and Batman, err nicesheffiielder.

Another shot of Batman but this time with Princess Leia!

Singing Happy Birthday to our birthday girl!

My cupcake, I ate the whole thing it was delicious!

Acsmacan knows how to enjoy a cupcake, just too cute!

Below on the far left is Topeka Ducky, texasteejay and her husband who knows his way around a camera. Looking forward to those videos he took and I just love their trip reports!

I love Harlem Girl's smile in this photo and her hair and costume was so cute!

Two great smiles here on rollingwriter and Vadreamer!

Some group shots of the party.

We had fun doing a conga line dance through Kahunaville and the other patrons at the restaurant enjoyed slapping palms with us as we dance through.

The photo above of Topeka Ducky, me, lemonlime, texasteejay and law girl in part of our conga line is courtesy of Chuppa.

Below is Teresa in the booth with the Kahunaville DJ!

Lemonlime and B2's husband.

Below is Lowrance who lives one town over from me with two of my favorite ladies, Cassley and Bhambound!

Shrek and Bob, Vadreamer's husband. 

The flair bartender show at Kahunaville is so much fun, if you haven't been there go and experience it. I have a 11 minute video of this which if you are friends with me on Facebook you might have already watched it.  They start out singing "free shots, lets go", then there's a lot of tossing/juggling bottles in the air, and soon the bar counter is smoking from the dry ice. Several members of our party had fun with the free shots, but since I was filming the video I don't have any stills of that.

After the flair show and free shots the DJ played some 70's music in honor of Tbonz's birthday and our group were singing and dancing to YMCA and other songs.

Below is a photo of our birthday girl with Jon. Was great meeting you this trip Jon and hope to see you again soon in Vegas!

Above Chuppa and I, photo courtesy of YourStarla. Below is Kidkind and Foxywood.

Teresa had gifts for all of us who were at her party. Great travel bags filled with a covered crystal dish, and other goodies.

Teresa's stepdaughter Jess made these gorgeous cookie party favors!

Teresa arranged for the big blue limo which seats up to 45 people for us as transportation to the Mizuya lounge at Mandalay Bay so the party could go on non-stop as we left Kahunaville .

All Aboard!

Steady on there this limo seems to be starting to move!

A shot of the front half of the limo having fun.

On our way to Mandalay Bay we stopped for about 30 minutes at Bellagio to unload gifts and give some of the ladies in our party time to change into their dancing shoes.

I was sitting in a comfy section in the back of the limo with Harlem Girl, BrokenAlice, Yourstarla, and others. 

Time to play pass the bottle!

We had a great mix of songs that had been selected by the group in advance and I have a cute video of us singing to Poker Face on my FB page. Unfortunately I was singing along while filming and the video ends abruptly when I'm passed a shot of lemon Vodka! Priorities you know. :)

Hey, we're having fun in the back too!

We arrive at Mandalay Bay!

Heading to the Mizuya Lounge one of our favorites in the MB casino close to the pathway to the restaurants. Always a good band playing there.

The band welcomes our group and brings Teresa on stage with them.

Lemonlime thinking when will the music stop so I can get to the tables? ;)

It's around now when some of our group is dancing, others are talking, some are thinking of going to gamble, that I manage to lose my camera after the shot below.

It's a old camera so no great loss there, but I just spent a lot of time taking priceless (IMO) videos and photos of the birthday party and I'm bummed. It doesn't seem to be anywhere around and hasn't been turned in to security. Not wanting to drag down the rest of the party since I'm now sad about the missing photos I grab a cab back to Bellagio.  

Once back at Bellagio I played a few slots, took a couple photos with my iPhone of a couple minor wins, one on Epic Monopoly, another on Zeus II but the luck wasn't really with me and I soon went back to my room.

Waking up next morning,  almost the first thing I do is call the Mandalay Bay Lost and Found! After a lot of questions about my camera I'm relieved to hear it's been turned in so I ask them to send it down to the security desk so I can pick it up after lunch. 

It was now noon and I rushed downstairs to meet my friend Anne who is a nurse and was visiting Vegas due to a conference. Anne and I are members of a couple women's social groups back at home and it's always fun to spend some time with her. We end up eating at Cafe Bellagio and I ordered the shrimp above. If you are wondering what the birthday group is doing today, quite a few of them were enjoying a limo ride and downtown crawl with LemonLime. I decided to skip that as I will be doing a downtown stumble on Friday the 13th in April with GoldenGreeke and the SMF group.

Anne started out with some French Onion soup that she said was delicious!

I also got my usual at Cafe Bellagio which is the Dungeness Crab salad.

Anne had the club sandwich and said both it and the coleslaw it came with was good. After lunch I took Anne by the chocolate fountain and then gave her a comped ticket to the Monet Exhibit currently showing at the Bellagio Gallery and said goodbye.  I then grabbed the Tram to Monte Carlo to begin my walk to Mandalay Bay.

When I arrived at the Mandalay Bay Security Desk, my camera wasn't there so the guard had to call Lost and Found to bring it down. As I'm waiting I'm enjoying watching the kids with the inner tubes at a nearby casino store. Once reunited with my camera, I decide to put a hundred in a Quick Hits slot at Mandalay Bay and my bad luck continues when it keeps my money but doesn't give me any credits, plus the service lights on it and surrounding slots don't work! Eventually a slot attendant makes his way to me, opens up the slot, grabs my hundred that is stuck and mangled inside the machine and gives me a new one hundred that isn't mangled. He seems surprised that I no longer want to play this Quick Hits slot, but for me it's never a good luck sign when the slot jams up. 

For some reason on the way back to Bellagio I go out of my way to stop in at MGM Grand and promptly lose $200.00 there. My goal of reminding them what a loser I am, and to possibly send me some free play for my birthday accomplished I leave, and as I'm walking out I walk by the now closed space where the MGM lions exhibit used to be.

I walk back across the street and lose a bit more, this time at Monte Carlo on their $1 DaVinci Diamonds and a quarter Cheeseburger slot.

Back at Bellagio I returned to my room to change and then make the trek back to the Tram to take it to Aria where I'm meeting my friends Socalgirl and Hayleymsmom for drinks at View Bar. View Bar is between the casino and Aria registration and next to Sage. Above is our drinks and the bar snacks they serve. In my opinion this bar has comfortable seating, good service and is a great location for a future Meet as you can hear each other while talking!

Socalgirl and I had a great time catching up with HM and the 2 hours flew by and it was time to leave for our 7pm reservation at Jean Georges restaurant at Aria. Below is the chocolate dragon display outside of Jean Philippe Patisserie as we are walking to the restaurant.

As Socalgirl and I walk away she questions me on the time and oops, our reservation was for 6:45pm so Terri could order the early prix fix which sounded interesting. By the time we got to the restaurant it was 7pm and since they made us wait until 7:15pm to be seated the prix fix was history, at least for us. Sorry Terri, my bad!

Normally I don't eat bread but I couldn't resist the cracker or pretzel bread. Even though it was a Monday  Jean Georges was packed but service after a bit of a wait in the beginning was fine.

Terri liked her baby iceberg wedge salad with bacon and heirloom tomatoes with a blue cheese dressing.

I decided to go with what I ordered last year when eating here, the bacon wrapped shrimp with papaya mustard.

Terri enjoyed her slow cooked salmon with mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts and a black truffle vinaigrette.

I had really been looking forward to eating the roasted chilean sea bass with Miso-Yuzu Glaze and grilled Maitake mushrooms as last visit this dish had been the best sea bass I ever had. This trip it was still good, but not as great as I recall as the fish seemed to be a bit overcooked. The mushrooms however were still great.

Terri ordered the same dessert as our last visit here the chocolate molten cake which is excellent. The OMG dessert that is out of this world delicious however is the JG candy bar, which is not currently on their dessert menu but part of the regular prix fix menu and my server was able to arrange for me to order it. It was love at first bite!

After dinner I gambled briefly with Terri at Aria but the $5 Top Dollar that I won 20k on last year, wouldn't bonus for me and the 2 cent version of Princess Bride was cold as ice. We both set down and played Buffalo together but while we both hit a bonus we couldn't get ahead on it.

Terri kindly gave me a ride back to Bellagio because my feet were hurting from all that walking earlier in the day and then we said goodbye until I see her again in a couple weeks. It was about 10pm by now so I started playing the slots again and had some modest wins like the one above on Bamboozled but basically I was losing.

I decided to see if Epic Monopoly would be lucky like earlier in the trip and was betting $1.50 a push when I hit the $124. 80 above and then the bonus below with the wilds for $159.90.

I continued to play Epic Monopoly with the occasional bonus and I started to understand that if I was a better picker during those bonuses I could have won quite a bit of money so this slot in my opinion can hit for a lot if you are lucky with the bonuses.

I had moved from Epic Monopoly on to a new slot when around 11:30pm I ran into Teresa and her step daughter Jess dressed in their PJ's and ready to hit the bars from Ballys to Paris. Yep, one of the last events of these celebrations was a midnight to the wee hours of the morning PJ Casino/Bar party. They were dressed so cute with darling slippers and seeing them made me regret that I had decided to call it a early evening tonight. I later saw photos and heard about this party from others that were there and really regretted not making it, lots of fun was had by all!

The last slot played that night was Greatest Game in the West with Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill and at first I was hitting bonuses. This slot is one where as you play the multipliers increase over time depending on how long it takes for the bonus to hit up to a max of X10.

Lets just say that after getting some decent bonuses with only a X4 multiplier I kept betting when I saw it looked like I was going to get a X9 multiplier before the bonus hit and I gave back the win below and a couple more hundred and finally hit the bonus at X9 thinking oh this is going to be a big win and of course it ended up being the lowest of them all for $44.00, <sigh>.

I was so disgusted with the slot and myself that I just went to bed and called a end to gambling for this trip.

Above is one of the areas of the VIP lounge and registration desk at Bellagio. As I mentioned at the start of my trip report VIP services treated me beautifully at the beginning but they fell apart later. On Sunday as I was checking my bill on the TV I saw that they hadn't deducted my upfront food comp and were actually charging me for my comped room! I called up the VIP registration desk and they said they would correct it and since those charges a hour later were not there, I thought problem solved. Today after a room service breakfast I checked my statement in preparation of going downstairs to check out and discover the room charges are back, <sigh>. 

So down I go to the VIP lounge where for the second time they correct the room charge error and since I'm now in hurry to catch my limo to the airport I tell them to not track down my host but instead just use my express comps for the extra food charges, which they are happy to do. Great, all taken care of I think and I'm off in the Bellagio limo to the airport and had a nice flight home since the plane wasn't very full. 

Previous to this trip I've had a problem when using M-Life express comps that they will sometimes make a error and when subtracting express comps do it twice for the exact same amount. So after returning home I log on to my M-life account and discover sure enough they did it again! Once more I call VIP services and I get someone clueless who tells me they will have to run this by the accounting department and I go oh no you won't, I've had this problem before and we didn't need any accounting department to delay the correction of this error,  let me speak to your supervisor.  I'm put on hold but the same person quickly comes back and says my supervisor is correcting it now, which did turn out to be true and my account is now accurate. However, just a heads up to all of you,  track your express comps and when you use them at either a ticket office, restaurant or checking out at one of the resorts, review your account later to make sure there were not duplicate subtractions of comps!

I had a blast this trip, the gambling sucked but seeing again some of my friends I have met in the past and then meeting some online friends for the first time more then made up for the gambling. I'm hoping this group plans a large party like this again before the year is out or at least sometime next year, because everyone is so much fun to be with!

Considering I just returned home, the next trip is coming up way too fast on April 11th for 3 nights but I'm really looking forward to it. It's the annual Slot Machine Forum Meet and the organizers have been planning this for at least 9 months and the main event will once again be at Kahunaville and on Friday the 13th there will be a Goldengreeke downtown stumble! There's also a Meet with the Player's Life Forum on the 11th where we will be going out to dinner and then on to the Studios of WMS slot machines to take a tour and participate in a focus study.