Not long after returning from our June Vegas trip, Geoff and I were working on plans for a another trip in August 2023. The dates shifted a few times, which is not normally something I tend to do. Usually when I schedule a trip, there aren’t too many events that can cause me to move it. But for whatever reason, we kept slightly shifting the dates this time, first pushing it back a week, then pushing it back another day.
This is noteworthy is because our flight out ended up being scheduled on the tail end of Hurricane Hillary, and we got emails offering to let us change our flight several days in advance. Had we stuck with our original dates, we might not have been able to change our flights as easily, which was necessary because of issues that would arise at the last minute.
Our routine with early morning flights is to travel to Omaha the night before and do a little gambling at one of the local casinos across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa. This was a “business trip” for Geoff and I, mostly filming for the vegaswalking.com website with a little “boosting of the local economy” thrown in for good measure. We also were going to meet & gamble with Elliot (@TheVegasVice) and Reggie (@ThatCasinoLife).
Geoff had some complications arise the day before we were to depart, leaving me to travel by myself to Omaha. His plan at that point was to meet me in the morning for the flight. I stayed at the Ameristar Council Bluffs. Of the 3 main casinos in Council Bluffs, Ameristar is probably my favorite. The casino is an actual riverboat, although it no longer goes out on the river. There are several connected hotels giving you multiple options for places to stay, and several restaurant options can be found without leaving the property.
Day 0
After settling into my room and getting some food, what else was I going to do but head down to the casino and see how my luck was going to be this trip. I had decided I was going to track all my gambling this trip using an app I had purchased for $3.99 called Gamble Diary. We asked on twitter awhile back if people track their gambling and the majority of the responses were “hell no”, but I’m one of those people that always wants to know exactly where I stand, if I am up or down. I also know that its possible to use your gambling losses on your taxes if you keep detailed records of it, so on the very rare chance that I might end of losing some money, I wanted to be able to show my tax guy this app and say “get me my money back”.
Ameristar CB is now a Penn property, typically I swipe my card at the kiosk and they give me a little bit of free play. This time was no different, as I received $10. I headed over to the slot machine where I never lose: Dragon Link.
It took maybe 3 spins for me to hit a bonus. After that, I bet conservatively, but hit another bonus and actually won more money on the second bonus with a smaller bet. I quickly cashed out with an extra $150.60 (as the app precisely tells me), and I was off to a great start!
After I swaggered upstairs to the video poker machines, I sat down for some Deuces Wild. I sat there and battled the random number gods for a long time, but eventually they took back my $150 (well actually, just $149.75). This would be a theme for my video poker “adventures” this trip, as I didn’t have a single winning session.
Not yet ready to head up to the room for the night, and not wanting to chat up the 86 year old lady eyeing me across the bar, I put some money in the stadium craps. It’s worth noting, the Roll to Win electronic craps table at Ameristar is gone, suffering the same fate as the ones in Vegas. The guys who somehow cheated these machines at Cosmo might have sent them to the big casino in the sky. The company that makes them going bankrupt might have something to do with it also.
Craps purists look down their crappy noses as stadium craps, but I am not a craps purist, and I have had some very good sessions playing stadium craps….. including this one. It always amazes me how sometimes craps seems like such an easy game, I wonder how I ever lose money at it. Point after point hit, and I cashed out up $299.40 according to my trusty Gambling Diary app. I returned to my room, happy to be up about $300 the first night.
When I got back to the room, Geoff had rescheduled his flight for late in the evening the next day, taking advantage of the “Hurricane” to change the flight for free. I decided to do the same and push my flight until late afternoon, so I didn’t have to get up so early. Also I figured the gambling at Ameristar was going well so why not keep going in the morning.
Day 1
I woke up still riding the buzz from the night before, but I resisted the urge to immediately go downstairs and gamble some more. I knew if I went down and blew all my gambling budget for the day, then I would have nothing to do from the time I had to check out until the time I went to the airport, which was about 3-4 hours. So I watched TV until it was time to check out at 11 AM, stashed my luggage in the car, and headed back into the casino, sure I was on the verge of the greatest winning streak I had ever seen.
I was feeling unstoppable on the stadium craps, so that’s where I went first. It’s always amazes me how sometimes craps seems like such an impossible game, I wonder how I ever win money at it. It took very little time for me to give back $194. I quit earlier than I usually do because 1) I was getting my ass kicked 2) I wanted to save a little money to play “the unicow slot” I had seen in all the tiktok and instagram videos.
“The unicow slot” is actually called Invaders from the Planet Moolah. You know how sometimes you play a new slot and you don’t know what’s going on, but it seems like everything that happens is winning you money….. that was my experience here. I’m getting wilds, free spins, bonuses, cows are flying all over the place, and before I know it, I’m up almost $500. I’d like to tell you I wisely cashed out, but I didn’t, I pressed on, losing a little of my winnings. Still, I walked away from the machine having gained almost $400. So Planet Moolah had lived up to the hype!
Next, it was right back to stadium craps. Normally I’m a very boring pass line/odds/6/8 player, but since it was only $5 minimum, I started playing all the numbers and pressing when they would hit. And this worked out quite well for me, as I banked another $300.
I took my $800 of winnings over to my lady Autumn Moon (Dragon Link). I was feeling like such a badass I moved up to $10 a spin… and promptly hit a bonus that put me up $800 for the Dragon Link session and $1600 overall.
If only I could just end the story right here…..
I kept going with $10 a spin and that was a big mistake. I cashed out up $200, but it felt like a loss having been up $800 at one point. Next it was back to the video poker, and once again, I slowly lost my money, eventually giving back about $100. I made one more “heat check” to see if my luck was gone on a slot called Fu Dai Lian Lian Dragon. It took me for $100 and I decided I better to head to the airport. I was up about $800 overall.
At the airport, they have a Godfathers pizza counter by the gates. I love Godfathers pizza, so I decided to grab a mini pizza before my flight. There was no one at the counter, so I grabbed the pizza from the warmer and went to one of the other counters to pay and ask if I could get a drink from the cooler behind the counter.
They directed me back to the Godfathers counter, where now a guy was standing towards the back and angrily asking “Can I help you?” He wasn’t wearing a uniform and looked like maybe he was stocking the food, so I asked where I should go to pay and get a drink from the cooler, he repeated just as angrily “Can I help you?”. I told him the drink I wanted and he grabbed it and went over to a register hidden behind the pizza warmer. It was a very awkward checkout process, and there was no way I was going to leave a tip despite being prompted when I swiped my card. I think this really angered him, because as I walked away I heard him call me a “f*cking idiot”. I paused for a second, deciding if I was going to let that go or turn around, confront him and make a scene. But I continued walking away. Little did I know, by cursing at me, he had actually cursed me for the rest of the trip. Minutes later Geoff called me to tell me he wasn’t going to be able to make it to Vegas that night, but he would try and make it in the morning….. #GodfathersGuyCurse confirmed!
The flight was uneventful, I snagged an exit row seat, which is the closest thing Southwest has to first class. I’m 6’4″, so my knees are always pressed against the seat in front of me in the normal seats.
The exit row seat feels so spacious and luxurious. I am binge watching “Suits” on Netflix (I don’t understand how I completely missed this show’s nearly decade long run), so the 2.5 hour flight was over quick.
I got to Vegas and caught a cab to The Linq. Westbound Flamingo Rd had been closed down to one lane with traffic cones, despite no apparent work going on. This meant that even though we wanted to simply turn right onto Linq Ln, we had to wait for the stoplight to cycle about 5 times. My cab driver decided to pull between the traffic cones into a blocked off lane so he could make the right turn quicker. Just as he was about to do this, someone ahead of him did the same thing. Seconds later a police car was behind the car pulling it over. We watched two more cars get pulled over for driving through the traffic cones before we made our right turn. Traffic really is a shit show right now in Vegas because of the F1 construction and people that drive it regularly are fed up!
I had 3 nights booked at The Linq and 2 nights at Aria, my plan was to spend the first night at The Linq to cross it off my list (trying to stay at every hotel on the strip) and then move to Aria for the rest of the trip. The Linq was comped by Caesars and Aria was comped through myVegas.
As I walked into The Linq, there was no line at the registration desk, one guy had entered the queue just in front of me but I was pleased I wouldn’t have to wait long after my Flamingo experience last trip.
Fifteen minutes later, the one guy in front of me is still talking to the only available agent. #GodfathersGuyCurse Finally another agent shows up to help me and I get my room key. I head up to the elevators and settle into my room that is about the same size as a bathroom at Aria. I always tell people “a standard room is a standard room, there isn’t much difference from property to property in the mid tier and lower range”…. well, the exception to that is The Linq. Their rooms are f-ing tiny. But I knew I wasn’t going to be staying there long so I wasn’t sweating it too much.
Someone had locked the safe with the door open, so I had to call maintenance to unlock it so I could use it. I assume the previous person had done it on purpose, they also had thrown a half full water bottle in the safe, and I don’t know why you would ever lock it with the door open and leave it that way…
I was hungry, so I made my way to In N Out burger for dinner. I’m not a huge In N Out fan, but it’s decent, and I just wanted something quick and simple.
The quick part is debatable, because while the order line was short, there were 15-20 people standing around waiting on their food. It didn’t take terribly long, maybe 5-10 minutes, but it wasn’t “quick”.
I stopped by O’Sheas on the way back, wanting to verify that if you gambled at the bar, you could get frozen baileys comped. You can, which makes me mad now that I paid for them so many times before discovering this. They are smaller sized versions, but the bartender had no problem serving me two of them. I gambled for maybe 30-45 minutes and broke even at video poker…. my best video poker session of the trip.
I was pretty tired so I decided to head up to the room, facetime with my girls, and call it a night. On the way to the elevators, I happened to pass an empty Invaders from the Planet Moolah slot machine. I burned through $200 in the blink of an eye. #GodfathersGuyCurse Immediately after that headed up to my closet for the night.
Day 2
Geoff was supposed to be getting in pretty early and he was staying at Park MGM, so I hopped on the monorail, which was just minutes from my room elevators, and headed south. I stopped at 48th and Crepe in NYNY for a quick breakfast snack while I waited. I was only moderately hungry, but I was hoping I could annoy Geoff because he had wanted to try the place…….I was successful.
I redeemed my $25 Konami free play at Park while I waited for Geoff. I went back to Dragon Link I walked away up $100. Why I would play any other slot machine is really a mystery. Geoff still hadn’t arrived, so I decided to play some craps. I wasn’t interested in the $15 live table, and oddly Park has no stadium, hybrid, or electronic craps, so I settled in for some old school bubble craps.
It was just me and another guy, with his wife/gf “rolling” for him. And she actually did pretty well (pressing the button), I was just betting $5 on the pass and $6 on 6/8 but was up $75 by the time Geoff finally showed up. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be the most I would win in any session the rest of the trip
I was at a Kansas City Royals game earlier this summer and they have a Chickie’s and Pete’s in the stadium. C&P is a sports bar that is mostly on the east coast, I was not familiar with it at the time, but I have since learned it started in Philadelphia. Anyway, at the game, they were really pushing these crab fries on the jumbotron. So we tried them….. and I realized my top 5 restaurant fries list had a crab sized hole in it. The fries come with this delicious cheese sauce to dip them in, but its also the crabby seasoning that really sets it apart. They are absolutely amazing!
Next I began researching how I was going to be able to eat these delicious cholesterol sticks in the future without having to sit through a baseball game featuring a triple A team pretending to be an MLB team. The problem was, as I mentioned, C&P is almost exclusively an East coast chain…. but then I spotted it on the map… they had a location in Vegas… f*ck yeah…. At the Sahara….. f*ck no!
I knew going into this trip, I was going to have to figure out a way to get to the Sahara so I could have these crab fries again. Since we were planning to film downtown anyway for vegaswalking.com, Geoff and I decided to take the monorail to the Sahara and we’d get a mid-morning crabby snack at C&P before catching an uber to Fremont street.
It was about 10:30 AM and we were just about the only people in the restaurant. We ordered two orders of crab fries and then Geoff decides he wants wings on top of all this, even though this is just a “snack” because we want to eat at Pizza Rock for lunch. The waitress told us we should probably share an order of crab fries, but we weren’t listening. The fries I had at the baseball game came in a cup and I knew I could finish them all myself. The menu showed the fries in the same cup so we confidently asked for 2 orders of crab fries.
The fries came in a large basket, a much larger portion than I had at the baseball game, and a portion we could have easily shared. But they were SO GOOD! Geoff managed to eat his wings and we both finished about half our crab fries. I joked with the waitress that she should have warned us that we could share an order of crab fries…and she was not amused.
We took an uber downtown and began filming so we could add Fremont street to vegaswalking.com. I’ve been to Fremont Street many times, but this is the most time I’ve spent exploring the casinos. I am starting to get why people like to go downtown to gamble, particularly locals. I could see staying downtown on a future trip, in fact I think it will probably happen.
We have filmed the strip from Mandalay Bay to the Strat and haven’t had a single encounter with security, but downtown, Geoff was asked to leave at 3 different casinos. Fremont, California, and Downtown Grand all refused to let us film on the property. #GodfathersGuyCurse
After I finished filming in Circa, I signed up for a players card at the kiosk and then went to the desk where they status matched my Caesars Diamond status. Since they had so graciously matched my status, I figured Geoff would be OK with me playing a little slots while he was filming.
I started at Invaders from the Planet Moolah and quickly lost a hundred. I moved to Dragon Link, the slot that never lets me down, and **gasp** lost another hundred. #GodfathersGuyCurse
Geoff called and wondered where I disappeared to, I told him I had sprained my ankle but I would limp over and meet him at The D. When I got there, he was still filming so I limped over and put another $100 in a Dragon Link machine because there was no way I was going to lose money two times in a row on DL……. and I lost another hundred dollars. #GodfathersGuyCurse
It was about 3 or 4 o’clock at this point, so we headed over to Pizza Rock for “lunch”. Our late lunch meant we happened to arrive during happy hour. Our pizzas were delicious and our waitress was sassy. And happy hour made it an incredibly cheap meal…. so of course Geoff decided to pay for this one and let me get the next.
While we were at eating, Geoff was also communicating with Mark from the 360 Vegas podcast, attempting to make arrangements to meet up for a quick chat or maybe some gambling. We finished our meal and took an uber to The Linq, where I collected my stuff and then we went over to Aria so I could check in.
Unsurprisingly, The Aria room was a giant upgrade over The Linq. I settled in, figured out how to operate the shades and the lights on the touchpad, then went down to meet Geoff at NYNY. We had been texting with Elliot (@TheVegasVice) and we were going to try and meet him for some gambling when he arrived. Mark had seemingly ghosted us, so we thought, but we later learned Geoff had been texting the wrong number, and Mark was thinking we were ghosting him. It was a tangled web of unintentional ghosting.
I was looking for a $10 craps table at NYNY. Not finding one, I sat down at the stadium craps because Geoff was still in his room slapping his monkey. By the time Geoff showed up, I was down another $113. #GodfathersGuyCurse
Elliot hadn’t arrived, so we decided to make our way to Earl of Sandwich for a late dinner. On our way there, we did some filming with our new 360 degree camera and caught a few interesting things, including a near collision between two vehicles on Las Vegas boulevard and a guy aggressively trying to get us to go to a strip club by telling us we could “shove our camera right up a strippers skirt”.
We arrived back at our rooms about midnight (2 AM our time) pretty worn out, and of course that’s about the time Elliot texted us ready to go. We had to explain to him that we were old men that turn into pumpkins after midnight, but promised we would get together the next day for some gambling fun. Geoff had also resolved the communications issues with Mark, so we also had plans to meet up with him in the morning and were looking forward to that. Unfortunately, Reggie had messaged us and let us know he had canceled his trip because he was sick. #GodfathersGuyCurse
COMING UP IN PART 2 OF MY AUGUST 2023 VEGAS TRIP RECAP: We gamble with Elliot and his lovely GF Marshawn and meet Mark from the 360 Vegas Podcast (spoiler: all of these people are awesome!). I participate in a slot tournament. We get caught in a rare Vegas thunderstorm. Also, will the #GodfathersGuyCurse continue?
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