Saturday, November 16, 2013
We did sleep in and couldn’t seem to get started. Clay has
skipped 2 days of using the treadmills now. I finally just got up to leave and
told him let's go eat breakfast. We left and he asked if we could go to Carnegie
Deli. I said sure (even though we had looked at the menu the day we arrived and
I had nixed it). It is small and the breakfast buffet place had not yet opened
(I think it opened after 9am) so it was packed, with about 30 people in line outside. I
got in line and told Clay we’d wait and see how the line moved. It moved mostly
by people dropping out. About 20 to 30 minutes later we were seated inside and
ordering. Clay was disappointed by his eggs and corned beef omelet style
sandwich. I got a bagel with a schmear of cream cheese. The bagel was the best
I can remember having and evidently a schmear is not the smear it sounds like
but an inch thick slab. I had to scrape some away. The coffee was just so-so. I was still happy and it was probably our least expensive breakfast yet.
We went back upstairs to brush our teeth, finish packing and
get checked out. We dropped the room keycards in a box by the elevator on our
way out. While we were upstairs we got
the addresses for the Atomic Testing Museum and an outlet mall so we’d have
something to do today until afternoon and checking into Mandalay Bay for 2
nights.
Traffic just keeps getting heavier. We thought it might peak
today, Saturday. We were wrong. Tomorrow the Strip is shut down along with a
bunch of other streets for Vegas’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. The good news is that
we won’t be leaving Mandalay Bay at all tomorrow. Lucky planning for once on
our part.
The Atomic Museum was really crowded and we spent an extra
$6 for the Area 51 Exhibit. It was a bit of a disappointment. It was just about
noon when we left so I set the GPS to the Outlet Mall that Clay had put in
thinking to get a snack and wander for a couple of hours. Well, the Atomic
Museum is closer to the airport than downtown, but he had programmed in the
outlet mall by downtown. So, we spent 2 hours in traffic without ever leaving
the car until we were parked at Mandalay Bay. I would advise avoiding the
outlet mall near downtown, especially on Saturday. There is inadequate parking
and it is designed with only one way in and one way out, so there are a
thousand cars just stuck in there waiting for one to move so someone else can
enter or exit. It was stupid. Once we realized the lots were closed and full we
tried to turn around immediately and get back out but it took an hour because
there was no alternate egress! This was after we had driven all the way
downtown from near the airport! There is another outlet mall out near the
airport, btw. Clay told me he had a reason for picking the downtown one, but I
won’t try to repeat it because it made no sense to me.
We got to Mandalay Bay about 3pm. We drove by MGM which is
where we are eating at Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House and going to Cirque du Soleil’s KA tonight. I
could not see any self-parking or car entrance there. Traffic was horrendous and
even pedestrian traffic was a nightmare. I told Clay that we needed to walk
there and see if we could take a tram to cover part of the distance. The tram
appeared to go right into Mandalay Bay. We asked at check in and she confirmed
with the traffic and crowds this weekend for the marathon that we should take
the tram to Excalibur and then take the pedestrian bridge over to MGM. I’ve just Googled it and all but one website
say it stops running at 10:30pm, so that will get us there but not back. Clay
called the concierge and was told it runs from 9:30am to 12:30am. We shall see
if we have to walk all the way back after 10:30pm or not. More later. Yep. They
have up signs that say it runs from 9am to 12:30am, so no problems.
We got room 3331 in Mandalay Bay. We did not request or pay
extra for any particular view here as we did at the last 2 hotels. So, we have
a view of 3 huge restaurant exhaust fans on the roof of a building. Beyond the fans
I can see Border Grill and the Convention Center, so the Beach pool complex
must be out there past the exhaust fans but we can’t see it. It doesn’t really
matter and I think that is why we didn’t pay extra to book a view room here. We
are paying $170 tonight but only $100 Sunday night. I guess that is because of
the Rock n Roll Marathon. Though Carlos Santana is performing here at the House
of Blues and you would think that would be worth something.
Anyway. It is a big and well laid out room. It has the same minibar, snacks
vending area as all the other rooms with the same no touching rules and the
fridge not being for your personal use, but this time we weren’t told up front.
It is a big soft bed. There is lots of comfortable seating and a big desk. The
bathroom is the hugest yet. It has 2 sinks, a big tub and a big free standing
shower. There is a TV by the sinks on one end of the counter and a magnifying
mirror on the other end. The toilet is in a little room alone at the back of
the bathroom. The shower floor is like rubber fake rocks. I think they are fake rocks and not real, it feels like it has some give and it is a non-slip surface. I like it. I told
Clay that is the shower floor I want when we redo our bathroom. He didn’t
notice it. There isn't much privacy in this bathroom though. It has a glass pane over the tub to the entry hall and big swinging, recessed double doors into the room. You have to really think about it or look for them before you think about getting any privacy in the bathroom area. It appears to just be open to the bedroom area.
So, it was quite quick and easy to take the Express Tram
back and forth to Excalibur. From there you just walk around to the pedestrian
bridge over the Strip to the Tropicana where you do have to take an escalator
down and walk about ½ a block around a hedge and the Tropicana driveway to get
to the up escalator to the pedestrian bridge that takes you into MGM Grand.
Then, of course you have to go across the casino to get to Emeril’s New Orleans
Fish House or to the KA Theater. The way back was unpleasant, there were 2 men
smoking cigars in a large drunken group of 5 people. We got apace with them in MGM’s casino
on the way back to Mandalay Bay and could not escape them by either speeding up or
slowing down. No matter what we did, there they were. And these cigars smelled
like ass. They were sickening. It is bad
enough that evidently Las Vegas is the only place left on Earth that you can
light up anywhere you want. I am sure though that those tram cars were
non-smoking. They not only got on, but we were in the furthest car alone when
they burst in puffing away just before the tram left. It seemed like less than
a minute ride over, but it must have been closer to 3 minutes. Because we couldn’t
hold our breath that long and we were both about green by the time the doors
opened and we burst out of there. Some people are just nasty.
Before dinner and the show, Clay bought a KA t-shirt. We stopped at
a Sugar Factory store because he had seen some big malted milk balls at LICK at
the Shoppes of Mandalay at about $15/lb and he balked. At Sugar Factory the
prices were listed at 99 cents an ounce, so basically the same price but they
didn’t have any big malt balls. They did have chocolate coated ridged potato
chips a la Cow Chips. We decided to try some and put what we thought was about
1 to 2 ounces in the little plastic bag and put it on the scale to pay.
Evidently the minimum amount they will charge for a sale is .25 pounds (this is
not posted anywhere!). Clay was pretty mad and we had some excessively
expensive and not so good chocolate covered potato chips.
We walked on over to the KA theater as the first show people
were exiting and it wasn’t too long before we were inside. We were at the end
of a row finally. But, we were only 4 rows from the front and beside the left
side of the stage. This was the largest and most elaborate theater yet. It was
not as steeply raked as the others, but most of the action was on moving and
steeply raked stage floors floating above the main surface, so it worked out. There
was a lot going on over our heads and behind us. We didn’t choose our seats
well again. It was hot when we walked in, but the least smoky Cirque Theater so
far. As we entered and sat to wait, flames kept shooting up from below the
lip of the stage. We were right there and could feel the heat every time. It
just kept getting hotter. I told Clay that they can’t shoot those flames once
the performance starts so it should cool off once it begins and that was true.
It got cold by the time we left the theater. It was a pretty spectacular show
and I was not disappointed. Clay said he didn’t like it to well. He said he didn't understand what it was about. Huh? Clay went to
sleep before it even started and I would nudge him when it got interesting, but
he mostly slept. Probably a world record for priciest nap for him, which is
saying something. These tickets were $88 per person. He has been sleeping more than 8 hours a night plus taking 2
to 3 hour naps every afternoon so I don’t know why he is still so tired. We
will sleep in again tomorrow with no plans other than visiting the Mandalay Bay
Shark Reef aquarium during the day. We have dinner reservations at 5pm at Fleur
and tickets to Michael Jackson One first showing.
Photos
Photos
