A Wonderful Dream

Day 7 Stardate Mon. Dec. 8, 1997

We found these quiet Bonus VP quarter machines near a waterfall in Luxor and enjoyed playing there. I hit four Aces for 400 quarters. At Excalibur, Karen hit those four 8s on the same nickel machines again.

Played a prominently placed end of row 5 nickel Wild Cherry machine (near the front desk) and won a whole bunch of nickels. Grabbed a cab to TI.

Tried the dollar VP but it was cold and lost money. We ate a complimentary buffet. Its pretty good there. 

Cabbed up to the Stratosphere to try the full pay quarter VP there.

Signed up for the slot club and started playing. I had the most incredible run on this quarter Bonus machine. It was like a wonderful dream - it kept paying and paying and paying. It seemed like I won every hand. My initial 10 quarters built up past 100. Then past 200. We kept resetting our stop loss point. Then 300. I cashed out and played the rest of the roll with not much else. What a great start.

Karen hammered on nickel VP and had a very long run while I futzed around with quarter slots and video BJ. You have to get 50 points to get full membership in the slot club - at that point you get a free buffet.

Would you believe Karen earned 42 of the 50 points on nickel VP? (I think its 40 hands per point!) She played for a couple of hours on $5.00. Damn she's good! She wasn't hungry so I ate the buffet. They have an amazing variety of pretty good quality food.

Grabbed a cab to the Hilton to check out the Space Quest Casino. It was a disappointment. It looks okay, but not as good as I'd hoped.

The uniforms are cool, but the space 'windows' showing planets and spaceships go by look hokey as hell. They are obviously poor quality projections. Very disappointing.

The place was dead. Just to rub it in, we won $53.00 on quarter slots there.

I think they'll do better when the attraction opens. They'd better! If you do go, make sure you check out the washrooms. Nuff said.

When you're at the Hilton, you've gotta give a hunka-hunka burnin' love to (underexposed) Elvis.

Back to TI, but no luck there. Lost on everything. Our luck seems to be run out. Ended the day with our budget gone after loosing the last of it at Luxor. Can't win every day, but I wish you could!

Boy the days of giveaways, free plus, and slot club incentives! Sign up for a card at Strat, get 50 points, get a free buffet. You usually got some crappy keychain or your 792nd bungee 'card keeper' cord clip springy strangle tool thingy when you signed up, too.

I remember when the Hilton's SpaceQuest project was announced. We were so excited! We had visions of a hotel environment completely themed to feel like you were on the Starship Enterprise. We imagined turbolifts, and fake star displays out the windows of the hotel. And the casino would be out of this world!

Well, it ended up that the casino was the only part that really got built. (I don't know if they ever really planned a themed hotel, we just assumed it would be an immersive thing.)

The attraction mentioned was one of those jiggly movie rides where you get in a pod that is on hydraulic legs. It was called Star Trek: The Experience and wouldn't open until the next year. We did come back and ride it, of course. It was similar to the jiggly movie ride at Luxor, except Star Trek, not Cleopatra. The Luxor one made my Anubis sore.

At least they had Quark's bar. And when you were done there, the men's room had one of the most interesting choices for theming. While you used the urinal, a display at eye level did an 'analysis' of your vital pee signs. Men have bad enough aim without throwing a Starbase TV into the mix.

There was a promotion for a while at the casino where you got to try to unlock a vault and win some huge prize. I think maybe it was a million dollars. It was kind of fun. You went and stood on a little platform and things were displayed up above the casino. You had to make a series of choices (Pluto, Earth, or Uranus?) and if you got to a high enough level, you won a prize. To get the grand prize, you had to get through all the levels, guessing correctly each time. I think one time I won a shirt or something. Of course, to win the million was ridiculously hard, but it was fun to play!