My First Vegas Trip and Quartermania Hijinks

The thing I remember most about my first Vegas trip is that I didn’t want to go.

Oh the irony…that I would wind up a Vegas fanatic who lives, eats, sleeps Vegas a few years later!
My husband’s work buddies had been regaling him with stories of Vegas and so he wanted to go to to see what it was like.

My reaction was:

• I don’t know how to gamble
• I have no interest in naked showgirls
• What am I going to do in a place like that?

He said he was going, with or without me, so rather than let him fly off to this den of iniquity alone, I acquiesced and agreed to accompany him.

The year was 1991. It was so long ago that after the plane landed you walked down a set of stairs onto the scalding hot asphalt. My first impression, “Jeez it is HOT here!”

We had booked a four-night package deal and the hotel the tour company had selected was the grand old Imperial Palace. Since most of my hotel/motel experiences prior to this trip had been of the Motel 6 variety, the IP seemed just fine to me. I don’t remember a lot about this trip and since it was in pre-internet, pre-trip report times there is no written record to refresh my memory. I will tell you what little I do remember.

The only shows we saw were the Unknown Comic at the Dunes (the guy with the bag on his head).

And, half of Crazy Girls (where, in consideration for my feelings, my husband realized that I was uncomfortable and we walked out). The only buffet we had was some strange thing that was located in a strip mall, up a flight of stairs. It was underwhelming. We were too green to know that we needed to go to one of the major hotels to have a true Vegas buffet experience.

I do remember waking at some ridiculously early time on our first morning and deciding to walk to Circus Circus to see the free acts because it was “Right over there!”

Days later we arrived, starving and exhausted, and we never did locate those darn free circus acts. Instead I had my first slot machine encounter. My husband plopped me at a nickel machine, gave me twenty dollars and wandered off. Oh the thrill of gambling for the first time! I think the fact that I hit a jackpot that day is what turned me into a lifetime gambler. I hit for 500 nickels! I have always been horrible at math so initially, I had no clue what 500 nickels was! I am rich! No, wait! Five hundred nickels is only $25! I wasn’t rich, but I was hooked.

My favorite memory of the trip was a night when my husband and I and the couple we were travelling with decided to see “Folies Bergere” at the TROP. We set off from the IP to walk in that direction but the men decided we needed to stop for a drink before we got there. We headed for Bally’s. Back then Bally’s had this bizarre fountain feature of women holding their breasts and streams of water emitting from their nipples. Somewhere in my old photo albums there exists a picture of Vicky and I duplicating this semi-obscene pose. (And we hadn’t had a drink yet!)

Once inside my husband spotted a bank of Quartermania machines. He was obsessed with them and played them everywhere we went. The four of settled in at those machines to play for a minute and get a “free” drink. To keep us all playing on as little money as possible, we pooled our resources and gave each other coins when we ran out. The waitress was very accommodating and the drinks started coming fast and furious. At some point we came to the illogical conclusion that we would be “luckier” if we all hit the spin button with various body parts in unison. It went like this; one of us would scream “NOSES” and we would all bend over and hit the Spin buttons with our nose. “Elbows!” “Bums!” You get the picture, ridiculous and silly, but so much fun. We forgot all about the show and stayed at Bally’s for hours.

The next trip wasn’t until 1997, and the one after that was 2004.
At this point I decided that the trips were too infrequent and that I needed to take matters into my own hands.

I have been coming twice a year ever since. Vegas has changed so much over the years, but the one thing that never changes is its ability to make you forget all your troubles.

[Images: Steven Damron,  Mikano]

Blonde4ever

Bonnie, aka Blonde4ever, is the admin of one of our favorite Vegas forums: LasVegas4ever. She covers a large spectrum of topics from her personal experiences in Las Vegas.