Las Vegas

How to go to Las Vegas on the Cheap

May 10, 2016 By Amanda Blankenship 3 Comments

Sin City, the City of Lights, Glitter Gulch, the Entertainment Capital of the world, or whatever you may call Las Vegas, it is an item on many bucket lists. In 2015, over 42 million people visited the city. Groups of bachelor and bachelorette parties flood the city’s streets as well as people seeking to better their life in same way, whether it be through travel or winning money. Some people travel to Las Vegas to seek riches, while others may have traveled there to perform a last-minute wedding.

Whatever your reason for visiting Sin City is, it can be a costly venture. However, it doesn’t have to be. There are ways that you can save and make the most out of your trip to Las Vegas.

Go during the slow season. July, August, and mid-December are the best times of the year to go to Las Vegas. If your schedule allows for it, come mid-week. You will avoid the crowds and will be able to save a ton of money on hotels and clubs by coming on a Tuesday or Wednesday versus arriving on the weekend.
Don’t buy alcohol. It’s free. If you are gambling in a casino, cocktails, beer and wine are free. Just be sure to tip your waitress and she will continue to come back and make sure you have booze. The best advice for tipping is to start with a $5 bill then for every drink after that tip the server $1 to $2. You can also carry alcohol out on the street, so if you order a drink and don’t have time to finish it, get a to-go cup.
Drive if you can. If you are on the West Coast, driving to Las Vegas is the cheapest way to travel. However, flying does not have to be expensive either. Many local airlines have flights to Las Vegas for fairly cheap. For instance, Spirit Airlines has a road-trip flight from Myrtle Beach, S.C. to Las Vegas for $300 (an extremely cheap ticket for a coast-to-coast flight). Check your local airlines for good deals.
If you live near Los Angeles you can take a bus to Vegas. Round-trip bus tickets run between $50 and $100.
If you can, avoid cabs. They are expensive! Save some money by riding the public transportation in Vegas.
Compare! Always compare your options when you are planning a trip to Vegas. Compare your airfare, compare your hotel prices and compare prices at restaurants. It will help you save a bit of money. Smarter Vegas is a great place to check for promo codes before you make a final decision on hotel rooms, etc.
Staying in a suite with a large group of people can be beneficial to your wallet. If you split the price with friends, a fancy suite can be pretty affordable.
If want to see a show, stop by the Tix4Tonight booth to get major discounts.You can get the best ticket prices if you go to the booth the morning of the show. You can also watch some of the free shows in Vegas like the fountain show at the Bellagio, the Sirens of TI and the dueling piano bar at Harrah’s.
Go sightseeing in Vegas. You will feel like you are going around the world. You can spend some time walking from casino to casino and stop in “Paris” and “New York” while you are visiting.
Instead of heading out for an expensive dinner buffet (what many people look forward to in Vegas), try a brunch buffet. Brunch buffets are generally much cheaper and they tend to include an alcoholic beverage of some kind.
You can also check Restaurant.com, Living Social and Groupon before you go for deals on food while you are in Vegas. These sites can allow you to eat great food and still stick to your budget. Also, check out a happy hour list before you go out for the night. You may be able to score half-priced drinks and appetizers.
Keep your trip short. Las Vegas can be exhausting and overwhelming. If you are flying in from far away, make time to go to other nearby destinations like the Grand Canyon.
Make sure you bring good people. Your trip’s success will rely on the people you bring, so bring your favorite people. Also, make sure the expectations of the trip are known and go with people that want to do and see the things you do.
Finally, if you’re gambling, bring out only what you want to spend for the day. There is no bigger mistake than bringing your credit card or ATM card into the casino with you and not having a set amount you want to spend.
Most importantly, have fun.

Photo: Flickr: ConstantinAB

Cat Smart Collar Detects Vulnerable WiFi Networks

August 10, 2014 By Jeffrey Strain 10 Comments

Cat used to detect vulnerable home wifi networks

The next time you see your neighbor’s cat walking along your fence line, there might be more going on than the annoyance of the cat coming into your yard. That cat could be checking your WiFi for vulnerabilities sent out by nefarious people who want access to your WiFi network. OK, that’s not likely going on, but security expert Gene Bransfield has shown that if someone wanted to do it, they could easily do so.

Bransfield demonstrated the possibility by fitting a borrowed cat from a relative with about $100 worth of electronic equipment onto the collar. The cat, Coco, then roamed the streets for three hours with the device hidden as a collar. In that short period of time, Coco managed to identify four WiFi routers which had no encryption at all, and another four using the outdated WEP encryption which could easily be accessed by anyone with a bit of know-how.

The self-made collar was customized with a Spark Core chip with firmware which Bransfield custom coded for the test, a GPS tracker, a WiFi card and a battery. He presented the results of his experiment at the Las Vegas DEF CON hacker conference. While he has no intention of personally using pets as a hacking tool, he has demonstrated how easily it can be done, and in a way that would likely not arouse any suspicion of what was going on. He also hopes that the inventive way of looking for insecure WiFI networks will raise public awareness on the importance of securing home WiFi networks.

As Bransfield notes, “My intent was not to show people where to get free WiFi. I put some technology on a cat and let it roam around because the idea amused me, but the result of this cat research was that there were a lot more open and WEP-encrypted hotspots out there than there should be in 2014. Cats are more interesting to people than information security. If people realize that a cat can pick up on their open WiFi hotspot, maybe that’s a good thing.”

Open WiFi networks or those with outdated encryption can give hackers access to the network to use for nefarious means, or to spy on what those on the network are doing to access information which can be used to do such things as steal an identity. This should be a wake-up call to all those who have never considered an open WiFi network as a major threat to their person information.

(Photo courtesy of Joseph Sardin)

Hotel Tipping: Day 140

June 1, 2013 By Jeffrey Strain 5 Comments

The vacation guide gig started and today we left Las Vegas to drive to Utah where we will be spending most of this trip. On our way out, I suggested we make a stop at Valley of Fire state park (Nevada) which is someplace I think that anyone visiting the Las Vegas area should take a day to visit.

We also passed through Zion National Park on our way to our destination in Kanab, Utah. We didn’t have a whole lot of time with the previous stop at Valley of Fire, but one of my favorite short hikes there made sense since it was on our route and was only a couple of miles round trip. We decided to do the Canyon Overlook trail:

Canyon Overlook trail Zion national park

Some proof that I was actually there.

I also took a very short video of a section of the trail where a bridge needed to be constructed due to the steep cliff walls:

As we left the park, we also came across a herd of buffalo:

Overall it was a great first day even with all the driving and we went to a couple of places that I think that most people miss when visiting the Las Vegas area and in Zion national park.

So what did this cost me? As mentioned in my last post, I am a vacation guide on this trip so my hotels, travel and meals are being covered. That didn’t mean that the day was no-cost, and one of the costs might be a bit controversial as I am assuming it’s one that most people wouldn’t have paid. I know that there’s a possibility that I’m going to get some flack for this, especially while trying to live on a minimum wage since this is money that I didn’t have to spend. I will try to explain my reasoning and then anyone who wants to chime in to challenge me on it is free to do so.

I tip. I tip fairly well compared to most people I know. This is something that has evolved over time and it’s simply the way I feel on the subject. Truth be told, I hate tipping. Having lived 10+ years in Japan where tipping isn’t customary and service is usually superb, I could very easily rationalize that tipping is absolutely not necessary. I have come to believe, however, it’s the people who do the manual labor that work far harder physically than the vast majority of people for what ends up being the bare minimum of wages. I have always felt that no matter what your job, it’s vitally important and those who work hard should be rewarded for their work no matter what that work might be. Over the years for this reason, there are certain jobs that I tip. One of those are hotel maids.

I always tip $5 per night to the maids who clean up my room. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the cheapest hotel or a five-star hotel. I don’t do this because I’m messy (in fact, I would guess that I leave my room neater than 99% of people), but because the maids are probably one of the hardest working employees at any hotel and as explained above, don’t get paid a whole lot for their work. I’ve also seen how some people leave rooms, and no person deserves to have to clean up messes like that. By leaving my room as clean as possible and leaving a tip, I try to show that their job is appreciated by me.

I’ve had a lot of internal debates how I was going to handle this when it came to this challenge. Thus far, I have only stayed at hotels a couple of times so it really hasn’t been an issue, but with this week-long trip, it will be more of one. Not leaving a tip would be an easy way to save money as it isn’t a required payment, but in good consciousness I don’t feel right not paying it as I have come to regard the tip as a part of the bill when staying at a hotel. While I might change this stance if it looks like I may not succeed with the challenge, for now I am keeping this in place since that is what I usually do. Do you tip each day for maid service when staying at a hotel?

My spending for the day was $5.00 for the tip at the Las Vegas hotel and then another $4.27 for 4 two-little bottles of soda. I will be doing a lot of driving on this trip and although I have cut out soda in my everyday life, I do still drink it when I’m driving long distances. It made sense for me to buy the 4 two-liter bottles which were on sale for $0.99 each (but had to be purchased in a group of four) since these should last me the entire trip (if not longer). if I were to buy cups of soda at gas stations along the way, the cost would end up being much more. Since one two-liter bottle gets me 4 to 6 cups depending on size, and each cup at a gas station (or other convenience stop) costs over $1, I end up getting 12 – 16 free cups buying it this way. Yes, it would be better if I didn’t spend it at all, but since I know I will be doing so, it made sense to get the best value that I could.

Lastly, I purchased 3 postcards for my nieces, something that I refuse to stop doing even with this challenge. The cost of the postcards was $1.50 plus $0.99 in stamps to send them for a total cost of $2.49. That made my spending for the day come to $11.76.

Today’s Spending

Food: $4.27
Car: $0.00
Lodging: $5.00
Travel: $0.00
Health: $0.00
Misc: $2.49

Total: $11.76

Total Spending

Food: $305.93
Car: $597.00
Lodging: $151.31
Travel: $408.26
Health: $2042.65
Misc: $72.59

Total: $3577.94

$1000 Slot Machine

December 23, 2011 By Jeffrey Strain 7 Comments

I was in Las Vegas this past week and wandered into the Wynn Hotel and Casino I was just in time for them to open their new “high roller” slot machine section, apparently the week before Christmas is one of the slowest weeks in Las Vegas so a lot of the casinos use this time to change out their gambling floors and repair and upgrade their shows — the pirate show at Treasure Island was also being repaired and you could see numerous other repair projects going on. The positive to this is that there are incredible deals to be had in Las Vegas since all the places are trying to get as much business as they can. As I wandered around the room filled mainly with $10 slot machines, but also $25, $100 and even $500 slot machines, there sat a Triple Diamond $1000 slot machine.

My first thought was, “are there really people that would play a $1000 slot machine?” While I am sure there are some people out there who are willing to put at risk the cost of a good used car with a few pulls of the handle, I’m sure that these people are few and far between. As I thought about it a bit more, my guess is that the $1000 slot machine was placed there more for psychological reasons than for hopes that it will constantly be played.

By placing a $1000 slot machine among the mix of other high denominations slot machines, the casino was playing on the psychological effect of “arbitrary coherence.” Studies have shown that although an initial price may seem “arbitrary,” once that price has been established in a consumer’s mind, that supposedly arbitrary number will shape the the thinking of the prices of other things as well (the consumer is making the prices “coherent”). In this case, the $1000 of the slot machine seems to be an arbitrary number, but once players see that $1000, it becomes an anchor for that room. Those that are playing slots see it and all of a sudden those $10 slot machines seem downright cheap, while the $25 and $100 slot machines aren’t really that expensive as well (it’s also why the high roller room is separated in it’s own space away from the $0.25, $1 and $5 slots.)

A perfect example of arbitrary coherence that most people can relate to is restaurant menu prices. Often you will see a few items on a restaurant menu that seem outrageously priced. Those items aren’t there in hopes that many customers will purchase them, but because they make all the other items on the menu seem much more reasonable in comparison. Stores do the same thing. They will often have a very expensive product next to similar products that are still expensive, but much less than the very expensive product. In comparison, these expensive products seem reasonable.

My guess is that even though the $1000 Triple Diamond slot machine gets very little pay time in the high roller slot machine room, it ends up serving its true purpose of getting people to play the other machines in the room quite well.