I went to Las Vegas with my lovely wife Kim, my daughter Alexis, son Jordan and Alexis boyfriend, Jeff. It has been about 10 years since I was in LV and wow has it changed. I remember when you could go to the casinos downtown and get a huge shrimp bowl for two dollars and snag a buffet breakfast, lunch or dinner for $5 bucks. Not any more. We stayed at Treasurer Island and had their buffet for one night. It cost $29 each. Now every hotel charges a resort fee of about $25 a night. It is for internet, use of the gym and discounts for their buffets. The internet never worked the the $25 resort fee was a waste of money.
We ventured out to the Venetian for their $60 buffet. It was better but it didn’t measure up to the old $5 buffets 10 years ago. I am a big time gambler.
After dinner one night I went down stairs to the casino and was delighted when I noticed my favorite gambling device – the penny slots. I thought wow! Some things don’t change. I planted myself in front of a machine that I just knew was going to make me penny rich. I couldn’t find the handle to pull. Now they are electronic. I also noticed there was no tray at the bottom of the machine to catch my winnings. Again, the are now all electronic. Okay, I felt I could live with that although I used to love the sound of all those coins falling in the tray when you got all “7’s”. I slid my $20 dollar bill into the electronic slot and a few electronic bells and whistles went off to make me feel good. I started to play a penny but found the least I could bet was 40 cents. Although there are still penny slots in LV their minimum bets are 40 cents. Well it took the machine about ten minutes to take my entire gambling stake of $20.
We did see a really cool trained animal show “Popovich’s Animal Comedy Show.” Just like my high stakes gambling we reached for the top shelf when we picked the show we wanted to see.
We did see one of the coolest buildings I have ever seen when we drove downtown. It was called the Cleveland Brain Center.
After spending three days in LV we took the 5 hour drive home. First thing I did was take a shower to wash the LV coating off my body.
Although I did not particularly enjoy LV, I totally enjoyed the time spent with my family.
Darrell Griffin 