CorgiMom: The Trip That Gave Me The Vegas Fever -1993

As a follow-up to her First Vegas Trip, Corgimom shares the trip that solidified her love for Vegas…

My first trip to Vegas was a working trip – I spent three days with my head buried in the racing forms at the Hilton. It wasn’t a great introduction to Vegas, and I didn’t have a craving to go back.

In 1993, I was a newlywed, and my husband’s boss gave each of his employees a FunJet package that included airfare, three nights at the Excalibur, and a couple of buffets. We didn’t have a gambling bankroll, in fact, we took less than $400 for three days. We played mainly nickels, and I was overjoyed to win the top jackpot on a Lucky 7s machine – a huge sum of 777 nickels ($38). The strip was hot and congested that summer. The Dunes was closed but not yet demolished. MGM, NYNY, and Luxor were all under construction. It was a great trip, but still didn’t leave me wanting more.

So, when the boss offered again to send us to Vegas late that year, I was just lukewarm about the trip. My Mom and Dad (Vegas veterans) heard we were going, so they decided also to plan a trip. This time, the package deal was called “The Texas Special” – three nights at Sam’s Town, daily breakfast and airfare – all for $149 per person.

My sweet hubby planned a surprise for me! When we came down the escalator into baggage claim at McCarran, I turned around and told him “hey, look – someone has a sign with our name on it.” He calmly pulled me over to the limo driver, who handed me a rose. What a great way to start our trip.

Sam’s Town was nothing fancy, but we really liked it there. I don’t remember anything about the room, except it had a small window that overlooked the atrium of the hotel, not the outside. You could hear the wolf from the animated show howling every hour. While hubby was waiting to check in, I dropped a ten into a quarter Double BlackJack slot and won 360 quarters. I was sure I had won my gambling bankroll for the trip – ha!

Mom and Dad didn’t fly in until Day 2, so we hung around the hotel that evening, taking in an excellent steak dinner at Billy Bob’s Steakhouse and playing more slots. Double Diamond Deluxe and Triple Diamond had just come out, but Wild Cherry was my favorite.

Our money seemed to last a long time. I think it may have to do less with the percentage hold and more with the whole process that came along with playing slots back then.

Playing slots ala 1993:

• Find a change attendant (they rolled little carts around the slot floor).
• Get rolls of quarters, break the roll into the coin tray at the bottom of the machine.
• Scoop up two or three quarters and drop them into the slot.
• Pull the handle or punch the button.
• Wait for the winnings to drop into the tray.
• Repeat.

If you hit a big one (over $400), the machine would lock up and start to play music, and the slot attendants would pay you in cash. If you hit enough small wins to fill up your coin tray, you filled up slot buckets with your quarters and took them to the cashier. I love every minute of it.

The next day, my Mom and Dad arrived and came over to Sam’s Town in a rental car (they stayed at Bally’s).

We all hit the little cappuccino cart in the atrium and watched the animated Mystic Falls light and water show a few times. They asked me to get a few extra player’s cards so they could stock up some points for me. We spent the next four or five hours playing the slots. Mom and Dad liked the dollar slots best, and they were soon racking up dollar coins (and points!) on Lucky Sevens, Red, White and Blue, and the new Haywire machines.

At the end of the session, they told me to go to the Player’s Club booth to see what we could get in comps. The cashier took one look at my points and said, “Girl, look at you go!” I had 29,000 points on my player’s card! I got a comp for a dinner for four, all our room charges were taken off, over $50 in cash back, and she gave me a Sam’s Town windbreaker for my husband (it quickly became his favorite jacket for years, and he still has it).

We drove my parents back to Bally’s and played there for the evening. This was before Paris had been built, and Bally’s had a lot more slot machines then. We watched my parents play the Bally’s Wild and Bally’s Gold machines for a while ($3 a pull – you had to play max to win the bigger jackpots). Every once in a while, one of them would hand us some money to put in a nearby machine. I wandered a bit away from the group and put some money in a Hot Peppers machine. After a few pulls, I hit what I thought was mixed 7s (a $400 win). The machine locked up and started playing a jackpot song. I was overjoyed but confused when the slot attendant wanted to see my ID. Then she asked me “do you know what you won?” It was actually a red, white and green sevens hit – the highest payout at $1200. My first official taxable hand pay!

I tried to get my group’s attention by waving at them, but every time I did, they just waved back and went back to their machines! Finally, I got the money and rushed over to them to show it off. As it turns out, they were waiting for a $3200 hand pay on a $2 Double Diamond hit. My husband and Dad had split the win. It was an amazing evening, and I remember thinking that I had never held that much cash in my hand before.

My parents let us keep the rental car to shuttle back and forth to Sam’s Town. It is an easy drive from Bally’s – just head east on Flamingo all the way to Boulder Hwy. We redeemed one of our free breakfast coupons the next morning at Smokey Joe’s Café. I remember ordering the ham and eggs breakfast. The ham steak was so big that it took up the entire plate. You had to lift up the ham and look underneath to find your eggs and hash browns.

We played mostly at Bally’s that day, and I learned the new process of playing at the dollar slots. The best machines – 97 and 98% payback slots – were placed in an oblong pattern, like a racetrack. A slot attendant manned the raised platform in the middle of the machines. They made change for you – you handed them a $100 and they gave you a rack of gold dollar coins. Bally’s gave me a little glove for my right hand to help with the coin grime. I (proudly) walked around the casino like Michael Jackson for this trip.

The Luxor had only been open for days, so we took a break from the slots to explore the newest Vegas attraction. The inside of the hotel, a pyramid-shaped atrium, was fascinating. At the entrance, there was a display with mother and baby talking animated camels. Cleopatra and her bronzed male attendants walked around the casino, greeting guests. People waited for hours for a gondola ride on the “Nile” River. There was a Motion Ride upstairs and a King Tut museum/gift shop. One thing we didn’t like – the Luxor had tried to make all their slot machines Egyptian-themed and took away any branding like Triple Diamond or Haywire. I think they quietly changed them out after a few months. We still played slots for a few hours and had some luck. Seeing my mom and dad have so much fun winning was the absolute best.

I loved driving the strip that trip. The MGM had not yet opened but the green glass was in place, and there was scaffolding around the Lion’s Mouth entrance in preparation for their grand opening, just a few days away. The Excalibur had the most magnificent exterior, and the Mirage Volcano stacked up the strip traffic all the way back to Caesars. We walked out to the strip from Bally’s through that wonderful moving sidewalk lit up with neon. There were no pedestrian bridges, so you had to dodge taxis and buses at the stoplights to get across the street.

Our last day, we packed up and drove back to Bally’s to play before our 3 pm flight. We ate breakfast with my parents at the Sidewalk Café, starting my adoration of that little coffee shop which lasted the next 22 years (they closed in 2015). The hostess had a huge blond beehive, and she remembered us from trip to trip. She was still there the last time I ate there in 2014. We learned how to play keno in The Sidewalk Café – what a fun thing to do while waiting on your omelet.

At the airport, I won $50 in quarters on a Deuces Wild machine. I took my winnings on the plane in a plastic sack! We were tired and happy on the plane ride home. I believe we started planning our next Vegas trip as soon as we got home. This wasn’t our luckiest trip, but 23 years and 50+ trips later, I still remember this trip as the “one that started it all.”

[Photos: GraphiChris Cover: Ken Lund]

Corgimom

Sometimes blogger, frequent traveler. Always up for a trip to Vegas.