Free and near-free things arrive in Flusherville and I love it.
And, much as I loathe flying Air Canada to Vegas, particularly on Rouge, my account shows a balance of over 25,000 air miles, partly thanks to the iWatch that Mrs. Flusher made me buy.
She wants me to fall down and have the iFall send for the Mounties automatically. I may have the motivation wrong, but that's the gist of it. It's got Flusher Fall Detection.
Anyway, Aeroplan gets you points when you purchase with other vendors, and for Apple stuff, there was a 7x points points offer. That's 7 Aeroplan miles for every dollar spent on an Apple iFall. Which also tells the time.
That topped me up over the magic 25K mark - enough miles to get to Las Vegas and back. (Some day... coming back will be optional. I wish.)
So a flight can be had for points and a few bucks. File that away.
My other freak flyer accounts have bits and pieces in them, not enough to get a flight, so if it's gonna happen, it's Air Fuckyou Canada.
With a way to get to Vegas, time to look at what sorts of goodies are in the casino offers bin?
Boyd bConnected
Since the great shunning of video poker players at Boyd casinos last year, my offers haven't changed too much. For a while they even went up.I still love the downtown triumvirate of Main Street / California / Fremont, so as long as I'm enjoying it and getting decent offers, I'll keep staying and playing there.
But my expectations are low, and I know I'm not going to get any much cash back for my play. And I won't be playing anywhere near the 10K a day I used to put in.
Nope, this is a now a low-roller play. Take whatever comps come and enjoy the loco moco, but no more caring about status or tiers.
I'm also still getting tournament offers, which are typically three nights, entry into the button bashing competition, and a dinner with all the other tournament mooks.
3 comped nights or 3 nights + tournament
$10 freeplay
$20 food
38,000 points I can use for $68 in food.
El Cortez
Hey, the El Cortez, now that they are fairly slowly and consistently gutting their video poker, like me again!I've got a shiny cardboard mailer (don't you just love getting those things?) that get me 3 nights plus some food and freeplay. My choice of tower or Cabana suite.
But only if I say it "Ca-bahn-ya".
This is definitely an option for a downtown stint.
MGM
My offer arc has gone like this... about four years ago, use a couple of offers and mostly no-play them. Wait a year. An offer comes in, and over a year the offers improve. I start using them and giving them some play and the offers continue to improve.The low end was something like three nights Sunday through Thursday at lower end properties, pay resort fee.
MGM's offers have escalated up adding more nights, no blackout periods, better rooms, freeplay, and resort credit. And they have gone up and up and up.
Additionally, the same offer can be booked multiple times, and I've taken advantage of this on recent trip.
Now it's four nights at any MGM property, $75 freeplay, $100 food. Book at Luxor and the offer is for a suite. This is hard to pass up.
4 comped nights
$75 freeplay
$100 food
Wynn
Oh how I love staying at Wynn and eating cheese sticks in my posh, posh room instead of paying to dine at their fine restaurants!We still get shitty offers from them, with Mrs. F. getting slightly better ones than I do, per usual.
Basically, it's a discount with various permutations like pay for two nights at casino rate, get one free, or pay for three nights, get $100 free play, and sometimes maybe we'll throw in a couple of buffets and if you earn 500 points we'll give you $100 freeplay. Prepay and get twenty bucks a night off. That kind of thing.
I pulled up the latest offer and plugged in some dates where the offer was allowed and the rate was the lowest.
...there is another way. The Wynn Slot game in which you can earn virtual gems for playing virtual slots and redeem them for free room nights that are virtually free.
I'm on it.
T.I.
My days at T.I. are definitely over - current offers are for $50 a night on some nights. Meh.Caesars
I've been giving Caesars properties a bit more play in the last year, including a stay at Bally's, which I enjoyed. And I did some tier matching to get Platinum status, whatever good that will do.
It looks like I have Sun-Thurs comp nights at the lower end properties - Flamingo, Planet Hollywood, Bally's, The Linq. Caesars can be had for under $100 a night.
All of these require paying the resort fee.
Tropicana
I thought Tropicana still liked me, with offers of 3 nights twice a month, but with the change in management, and my reduced play there, I seem to be dropping off the cliff.In July I have 3 comped nights with $25 food per day - and you now have to pay the resort fee on comped rooms. This didn't used to be the case.
My nights are now restricted to Sun-Thurs, but more importantly, are restricted to the point that there aren't any nights after July.
This is the last offer in the hopper, so I think I am persona non tropicana there again.
Others
I have various two for ones, casino rates, discounts etc. at Cosmopolitan, The D, Golden Nugget, and Plaza - nothing that seriously interests me.Still - lots of options for a cheap bastard like moi. Stay tuned!
