Thursday was the last day we were going to have our friends with us in Vegas. They wanted to spend the day at the pool. My children were happy with that plan, but I didn't want that much sun, so after a lazy morning sleeping in a little late, they went with our friends to the pool. CM decided he wanted to do another poker tournament and I decided to do some gambling of my own. I played a little Let it Ride, some slots and some video poker. I ended up up a little bit, nothing major. CM got to 9th place in the poker tourney - payout started at 5th place, so he didn't make any money there. He did play some video poker and recouped a portion of his entry fee.
CM wanted to try the Burger Barn in Mandalay Place for lunch so he took AOSB there. HG, her friend, SG and I decided to walk over to Excalibur to the food court to find some lunch. HG also wanted to go to the candy store there since she did not get anything when we went there before. HG and her friend had Pizza Hut and SG and I ate Chinese food form the Manchu Wok. The little girls got suckers and the adults some chocolate treats before heading back to the pool. That afternoon we hung out by the pool - girls swam most of the time while adults relaxed with our tasty beverages. I have to say that the beverage service at the Mandalay Bay pool left a lot to be desired. That and one of the elevators (that stalled every time the door opened) were my only complaints about the place.
The plan that evening was to go over to the Rio and eat at the Carnival World Buffet and watch the Show in the Sky. We did that and the girls (teen-aged and pre-teen) all got a big kick out of having their pictures taken with a couple of the dancers and with a couple of Chippendales. We spent a fair amount of time deciding what pictures to buy. Each girl ended up with a photo of the group. My friend had not yet had a chance to play her all-time favorite slot machine (the Wheel of Fortune) so she had to do that before we left the Rio (since they don't have that game at Mandalay Bay). She lost her $100 pretty quickly - only getting into the bonus twice. After that we all headed back to the hotel for the evening.
Friday started pretty slowly. We had gotten up fairly early but puttered around the room most of the morning just running down to get some fruit, croissants, a bagel, oatmeal, coffee and tea at the Red, White and Blue and Starbucks. Today was the day that our friends were going home, so the kids wanted to hang out with them. Since the weather was predicted to be bad, the kids all went to the Shark Reef. CM was driving them to the airport, so the Mom and I got their bags to our room so they could check out and be ready to go at noon. While the kids were at the Reef, CM gambled and my friend and I went to the pool to read. Weather was better than we’d thought it would be so it was nice. When the kids were done, we all went back to the room and said our good-byes. They took off and we got ready for our day. We had planned to go down to see what kind of show tickets we could get. HG really wanted to see a Cirque show and Love at the Mirage was our first choice. Little did we know, they were on vacation the same week were. Turns out all but two of the Cirque shows in town were on vacation, and of course the two that weren’t were sold out for the weekend. While we were there we got hungry so we ate lunch in a nice café. Since the Mirage is not far from the Fashion Show Mall and the ½ price ticket booth, we decided next to go there and see what we could see. We wandered through the lovely atrium at the Mirage and took photos. We took the tram to Treasure Island and walked by the ships on our way to the mall.
We went to Tix4Tonight to get coupons for Benihana for dinner and discovered we could get discount tickets to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum which we thought the kids would enjoy, so we got them. When we tried to get reservations for Benihana, but they didn’t have any time that worked for us. While we were there we also decided that we would like to see Lance Burton, so we bought discount tickets for the next night. We also (on the advice of the crazy ticket lady) got coupons for Planet Hollywood (see above). AOSB had been begging to go shopping and we knew that the Fashion Show Mall had Abercrombie and Hollister so we went in search of those stores. We found them along with many other lovely places. This was definitely not CM’s favorite portion of the trip, but he was a trooper. Kids found a few items on clearance and HG found Ethel’s Chocolate Lounge and got a treat for herself and a gift for her BFF. Next we walked to the Venetian via the Wynn to look around and to go to the wax museum. We had a lot of fun in the wax museum taking pictures posing with various famous people. They had an especially good gift shop which everyone (except CM again) really enjoyed.
It was after 7 p.m. by the time we were done and we had planned to go to South Point so the kids could bowl or see a movie and we could gamble. By the time we found our car and got to the casino it was nearing 8 p.m.. HG was starving, but the plan was pizza at the bowling alley. It didn’t work out too well, though since there was no open bowling. The movie theater is next to the bowling alley and amazingly enough they had an 8 p.m. showing of Monsters and Aliens. HG had hit the wall, and she was having nothing to do with a last minute change of plans, so she refused to go to the movie. CM had already mentioned once that he thought because of her crabbiness that we should just go back to the hotel. I refused to spend an evening sitting around the hotel room, and it didn’t seem fair that because HG and CM were crabby AOSB should suffer, so I said I’d take him and SG to the movie and we would take a cab home. The movie was very cute and we staved off hunger with popcorn. When we got home HG and CM were sleeping off their crabbiness. AOSB had a stomach ache (probably from all the popcorn and no dinner!) so he went straight to bed. SG and I wanted some real food so we went down to the little store in the lobby and bought a turkey sandwich and some water. We went backup to SG's room and had a nice chat while we ate our late-night snack and then we went to bed.
We went to Tix4Tonight to get coupons for Benihana for dinner and discovered we could get discount tickets to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum which we thought the kids would enjoy, so we got them. When we tried to get reservations for Benihana, but they didn’t have any time that worked for us. While we were there we also decided that we would like to see Lance Burton, so we bought discount tickets for the next night. We also (on the advice of the crazy ticket lady) got coupons for Planet Hollywood (see above). AOSB had been begging to go shopping and we knew that the Fashion Show Mall had Abercrombie and Hollister so we went in search of those stores. We found them along with many other lovely places. This was definitely not CM’s favorite portion of the trip, but he was a trooper. Kids found a few items on clearance and HG found Ethel’s Chocolate Lounge and got a treat for herself and a gift for her BFF. Next we walked to the Venetian via the Wynn to look around and to go to the wax museum. We had a lot of fun in the wax museum taking pictures posing with various famous people. They had an especially good gift shop which everyone (except CM again) really enjoyed.
It was after 7 p.m. by the time we were done and we had planned to go to South Point so the kids could bowl or see a movie and we could gamble. By the time we found our car and got to the casino it was nearing 8 p.m.. HG was starving, but the plan was pizza at the bowling alley. It didn’t work out too well, though since there was no open bowling. The movie theater is next to the bowling alley and amazingly enough they had an 8 p.m. showing of Monsters and Aliens. HG had hit the wall, and she was having nothing to do with a last minute change of plans, so she refused to go to the movie. CM had already mentioned once that he thought because of her crabbiness that we should just go back to the hotel. I refused to spend an evening sitting around the hotel room, and it didn’t seem fair that because HG and CM were crabby AOSB should suffer, so I said I’d take him and SG to the movie and we would take a cab home. The movie was very cute and we staved off hunger with popcorn. When we got home HG and CM were sleeping off their crabbiness. AOSB had a stomach ache (probably from all the popcorn and no dinner!) so he went straight to bed. SG and I wanted some real food so we went down to the little store in the lobby and bought a turkey sandwich and some water. We went backup to SG's room and had a nice chat while we ate our late-night snack and then we went to bed.
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