Las Vegas

[disneyholic family]

you should plan your visit to las vegas for midweek, without a weekend and stay in one hotel rather than switch...
switching disrupts your stay and the relaxation of your holiday.....

all of the hotels in vegas have much lower prices midweek....i think the low rates are from sunday night through wednesday or thursday night.....

so you can stay during those days and avoid the weekend.....

i suggest getting a guidebook on las vegas that includes all the hotels and entertainment....make sure it was published recently (since things change)...

the Unofficial Guides have a very good Las Vegas guide book - look for that one.

 

[CharleyUK]

Hi

We did a twin centre a couple of years ago for my birthday. We had a week in LV and then a week in Palm Springs.

If we went to LV again we would try and stay at the MGM or New York New York as this is where we spent most of our evenings.
We also went in November and it was a bit cool- but remember it can be cold in the hotels at any time due to the A/C.

I would definately recommend the helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon. We went with Papillon helicopters and booked it on the internet before we went. It was amazing. It was cheeper to book from home and it meant we could plan other things around it.

We had a car for the trip which i would recommend. We drove out to the Hoover Dam. It's not far i think 17 miles but someone might be able to correct me. I wanted to go to Red rock canyon as well but was ill so didn't make it.

A must do tip is to go to the top of the Stratesphere tower and check out the view. There are three rides too which are great. There is also a revolving resturant - I think it's called the "Top of the World" which would be lovely for your anniversary. We also ate at the southwestern resturant in MGM and had the best margarita of my whole life.

Palm Springs is nice but not sure i would recommend it fro a whole week but you could go for a few days then drive up to LA.

Whatever you decide have a great trip

 

[wideeyes]

I would love to do NY and LV however I am not sure how child friendly a trip it would be, so will wait till dd is older and can stay at a grandparents house.

 

[Netty]

here are a couple of websites that i got from the dis i think....

http://www.excalibur.com/

http://www.cheapovegas.com/index.php

 

[Pootle]

I would buy the "Unoffical Guide to las Vegas" this is a great guide book. It gives you all the dates for the big conferences - so you know when to avoid going. .......
We loved staying at the Paris as you overlook the Bellagio and we had a superb view of the fountains. The Paris has a very good buffet - in fact Las Vegas is known for its fabulous buffets... .....
.

I've been to LV more times than is good for me and I agree with this advice. UG to LV is a great starting point and Paris is a good hotel, right in the centre of the Strip. I've stayed at quite a few LV hotels, including Luxor and Caesars, and Paris is definitely a favourite (although if it was summer and lots of pool time needed, I'd probably go for Mirage, Caesars or Bellagio). Best of all, you can quite often get good discounts.

Harrahs owns Paris, Bally's, Caesars and the Flamingo and so if you try the reservations section on any of the sites, it is easy to get prices for rooms at the others without the need to re-submit your information. Here's the link I use for Paris

(I don't think I'll ever get the hang of inserting an email link , here it is for real: http://www.caesars.com/MCMSWebSites...4DA-4D92-82D1-C04751450CBB}&NRCACHEHINT=Guest)

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

I have been to Las Vegas twice and last time went on a pre cruise visit staying there then Hollywood Disneyland then DCL.

We didn't have a car there, although usually I drive in the states. I arranged with Virgin to have a limo take us from the airport to CEASARS that was fantastic, just a few minutes off the plane and driving already with the driver handling the luggage and offering us drinks to the hotel.

We got around by the Las Vegas monorail a lot, all the way up and down the strip, I only needed a taxi to go to the Fremont street light show and that was cheep, the strip is always grid locked and the taxis know the short cuts along the freeways and back routes and are cheep, no parking cars etc. its door to door..

There are buses and trolley shuttles up and down the strip and you can get a taxi from every hotel.
You can walk to most places and the strip is far safer now than it was last time I visited LV More family friendly now.

We did a grand canyon helicopter trip that picked us up in a limo as well, we went to the start of the GC via hover dame, but last time I went I had a coach all the way to the visitor centre of GC, But the helicopter trip was fantastic.

 

[Julie L]

Thanks Andrew for the good tips. can you remember who you booked the limo/grand canyon helicopter trip with??? That sounds a great idea!!
Is the monorail free like at Disney??

 

[carolfoy]

try searching for papillon helicopters, they're a heli and plane company who offer lots of different grand canyon itineraries, also you don't need a taxi to get to fremont street, the Deuce bus drops there, $5 for a 24 hour ticket and drops all up and down the strip. (at least it was last week )

 

[disneyholic family]

Thanks Andrew for the good tips. can you remember who you booked the limo/grand canyon helicopter trip with??? That sounds a great idea!!
Is the monorail free like at Disney??

from what i remember, the monorail only goes on a small segment of the strip - between certain of the hotels. And i do think it was free.
We only rode it once because of a very unpleasant experience.
We took it in the evening and were in a car with 3 extremely drunk unpleasant young men....who were threatening everyone in the car. The monorail car is sealed without any security and it stopped between the stations. we all thought we were done for. Here we were, about 10 people dressed in evening wear on our way to a show or whatever, and these guys were dressed like white trash (which they were) and carrying knives (which they proceeded to play with while we were stuck).
It was extremely scary. After that we only walked or took taxis.

As several people have said, buy the Unofficial Guide to Las Vegas for a complete description of everything, including the hotels, transportation etc.

 

[layzphil]

The monorail runs from MGM to Sahara with stops at Flamingo, Ballys, Imperial Palace and LV Hilton.

It is $5 one-way, $9 return, and $15 for 24 hours. I believe you can also get 10 rides for $35 which are transferable. Check ebay.com for tickets as the prices went up a lot as the whole monorail project is haemorrhaging money, so people who bought them cheap might be selling the tickets on there.

Some of the stations are better than the others. The MGM one is fine if you are staying there, but the walk is long from the strip entrance. Ballys has the worst one, I think someone said it is 1.1km from the strip!

 

[disneyholic family]

The monorail runs from MGM to Sahara with stops at Flamingo, Ballys, Imperial Palace and LV Hilton.

It is $5 one-way, $9 return, and $15 for 24 hours. I believe you can also get 10 rides for $35 which are transferrable. Check ebay.com for tickets as the prices went up a lot as the whole monorail project is haemorraging money, so people who bought them cheap might be selling the tickets on there.

Some of the stations are better than the others. The MGM one is fine if you are staying there, but the walk is long from the strip entrance. Ballys has the worst one, I think someone said it is 1.1km from the strip!

we weren't on that one.
There is another one on the west side between the bellagio and somewhere else. And it was definitely free. it's more of an elevated tram sort of thing.

 

[layzphil]

Yeah there is a free one between MonteCarlo and Bellagio, but the free ones are only marginally better than walking. I'd expect the numbers of knife weilding thugs to be lower on one that costs five bucks to ride though.

 

[disneyholic family]

Yeah there is a free one between MonteCarlo and Bellagio, but the free ones are only marginally better than walking. I'd expect the numbers of knife weilding thugs to be lower on one that costs five bucks to ride though.

i'm sure you're right.
We were totally shocked. I mean, we're talking the bellagio. Who would expect people like that to get on the tram. And then when we got stuck between stations, we really did think we had bought the farm.

After that experience, we stuck with taxis, when we didn't just walk. The taxis were inexpensive enough that it didn't matter.

 

[wickesy]

If you would like to see The Strip from a different perspective I can recommend Papillon Helicopters for a night flight.

Dad and I did it last week - there was free champagne before the flight then there were a total of five of us taken out to the helicopter for a short flight up one side of the strip, around the Stratosphere and back down the other side of the strip. The total flight time was only about 15 minutes but it was definitely worth it.