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Wednesday, March 13, 2019

To the El Cortez

You have to watch them like a hawk. What good is $50 resort credit if they don't take it off your bill? Check and double check!


Check out morning at Mandalay Bay, so first thing, I foiled 'em with some Little Giant coffee and spurted out a blog post for the best readers in the internet world out there.

I still had time to grab a bite so I burned some Express Comps for breakfast buffet. I like the Man Bay Break Fet - I always enjoy it.


Giant Cholula. Going straight to the pool room.
This visit provided a bonus - a pocketful of cream cheese (still in its carrying cases). And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Mandalay Bay is really a grand hotel in the traditional sense, with its marble and class. I'm not fond of the scent they use (or any scent for that matter) though, and so much of the business is convention-related that you end up with the dweeb factor pulling the rug out from under the ritzy titzy factor.

I played a quick twenty after breakfast without my card in that the QQ doesn't know about. Why no card? In case they look at daily average. And yesterday we didn't play a dime at MGM Resorts properties so we'll see if that affects things.

We did a decent amount of coin in though, around $10K between Luxor and Mandalay Bay. I was kind of surprised it was that high. In fact, I can't imagine how we hit the $3K at Luxor. Losses on $10K were around $700.

The room bill showing on the TV was $181 and I noticed that food charges were not taken off based on the $50 resort credit.

(Sneak preview... Wednesday morning I called in and sure enough, they hadn't been applied. $50 phone call in my favor, but why should I have to ride herd over this??? Be warned resort credit peeps. Check that bill!)

We got out of the room right at 11 and grabbed a Lyft to the El Cortez.

Our Lyft guy's car was a beat to shit Malibu. He told me to pull up on the trunk while he pushed the release from the 'cockpit'. The trunk stank of gas, telegraphing that there was a leak in the tank.

No shocks, bad brakes... not sure how we survived, but we managed. I'm surprised this guy got approved by Lyft. No, I didn't do anything about it.

What a relief to be checking in to the El Cortez, which is much a historical true gambler's casino as any of them (until they completely ruin it).



We're on casino rate, total of $100 for two nights, with $15 food. Good enough for me.

The room seems servicable. It doesn't seem particularly renovated. Perhaps they haven't done them all. It has the same 1930s furniture the rooms have always had. It's a big room, but with nowhere to sit and type, it's quirky with a weird bathroom, with angled walls, and a strange angled counter, and a squat till your ACLs pop puce toilet that rises six inches off the floor. And to top it off, there's a window in the tub/shower.




Patented American Standard 'Squat 'n Strain' in puce, 1955.




We opted for the north side of the tower, hoping for less noise at night.

They provide coffee and a fridge, but the L.G. makes better joe than those k-cups anyway - and the fridge is full of buffet cream cheese.

We had one of those safe events. Safe doesn't work. Call down. Wait 30 minutes. Call again. Two minutes later they arrive to fix it, meaning that the first person called didn't tell them to come.
No 'Contempra' phone???



I got to make my salmon in the safe joke once again "I left a salmon in there six months ago and I need to get the safe open to get it out" and finally we could hit the casino.

First things first - we'd watched the keno channel while waiting for the safe guys so we knew which numbers would hit - we loaded up on horrible return keno tickets. Okay, okay, $30 worth.

We made a $20 donation in the alcove on the dollar coin droppers (testing the waters) and then headed to the other end of the joint.


Next things next - targeting the Double Deuces machines. Since the El Cortez removed my beloved Downtown Deuces machines, these are the next best thing.

From what I can see, the paytable is the same, except that the Royal is $1000 instead of $1199. You have to hit the Royal for that to make a difference, and if I do, I'm going to be damn glad regardless.

The best part, of course, is that the Deuces pay $500. The machines are old, old, old, with the old algorithms and sounds, and they play at the speed of glacial dinosaurs. If there is or was such a thing.

These babies deal so slowly that you can take a sip of coffee, or check the sports scores in between cards and you don't miss a thing.

We gave them a really good going over for about two hours and produced no royals and no sets of ducks.

I did get yet another set of pointless pointies, though.


The Quad Queen has been dabbling in Joker Wild every time we come here and today was no different. I have no clue how to play it, and neither does she - but she seems very intrigued by the game. And we know that it can be very favorable to play with the right paytables.

More on that later.

Our general trend of getting ass-kicked seemed to be continuing - this called for a drastic move to shake things up - heading to the Four Queens to eat and hammer the 9/6 Jacks like we did the day before.

To be continued...





    2 comments:

    1. shoooting at El Cortez last night...hope you were not in the middle of it...cheers..

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. Yeah, scary to hear about that this morning. We just checked out a few days ago. Anyway, we are fine thanks.

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