Business in Vegas

In February we had the opportunity to fly to Las Vegas for my wifes design company Imagic Designs. What a fiasco! Upon arriving at the Airport we checked in and were waiting at the gate to board. While waiting we hear "Attention passengers United Airlines flight ### to Las Vegas... Flight has been delayed..." Great, just great. So we wait some more... Listen to a few conversations at the check in desk and find out "blah blah, mechanical difficulties, blah blah". Hmm, that doesn't sound good so I decided to look out the window to see ground crew milling around the jet engine. Upon closer inspection I noticed a huge hydraulic oil leak. Did I say huge and did I mention that this jet just came in with a full load of passengers! United Airlines cancelled the flight and get this, left the passengers to find their own alternative flights! You wonder why people don't like to fly?!

We arrived at Vegas at about 12am ( that's a 3am e.s.t) to be greeted with only one "subway" working which translated into a huge pileup. When I say pileup I mean we were going down the escalator and noticed a huge crowd of people not going anywhere. This was not good because by the time we got to the bottom there was no room to get off the escalator and people were being piled up on top of each other as the escalator kept delivering people to the bottom. It was so bad that people started running back up the escalator and I had to straddle the stairs at the bottom to keep from getting trampled. Luckily somebody at the bottom had enough smarts to push the emergency stop and avoided what might have been a huge disaster.

We stayed at the MGM Grand, we were greeted by a nice young girl who "upgraded" us to a larger suite because our original room was taken. The upgrade was not exactly that. We had a fantastic view of the dumpsters and construction and the room had the pleasant smell of rotton eggs!

Ok, things did get better. After doing the "business" thing we took time to take in the sights, watch a few people loose small fortunes and take in two great shows one for free. The free one was the "V Show" located at the Planet Hollywood casino. V standing for variety. It was absolutly fantastic and "The Crazy Gauchos" stole the show. One notable happening not on stage: The man sitting next to me had a son about 12 years old who ordered a soda. Well, the soda came back, the boy took a sip and made a very funny, "sour puss" face. The father tasted the soda only to find out it was a a 7&7. Segrams Seven that is. What happens in Vegas... The mall was huge with every type of shop you can imagine. It even had an hourly "rain show" in the middle of the mall. Go figure. The magic shop at the Planet Hollywood was awesome as we found a magician who performed a floating trick. He could make any small object just float in mid air. He took Loris room key and floated it right in front of us, around his back. Well of course the trick was for sale and we bought it to impress our children when we got back. We practiced it a few times and thought we were at least as good as "David Copperfield". Our kids came in, we did our trick and they proceeded to tell us exactly how it was done. What a bummer. At least we have our studio to fall back on.

The Cirque du Solei show "KA" was fantastic. Great story and the stage alone was worth the price of admission. It raised, tilted, the actors fell off, flaming arrows... Very cool.

The trip back had me arguing with the airline about the size of my carry on bag. Seems they decided to single me out for what ever reason. When I made a big scene and challanged them by comparing my carry on with everybody elses getting on the flight they did back down. This was the same exact carry on I flew down with no problem.

In case you are wondering how much we lost at the casinos... Not a thin dime! We don't gamble. In fact we came out ahead because I found about 7 quarters in a vending machine. That's the very short of it.