Date of Trip: Jan 16-19, 2006

People were my wife, Marie and I.

Casino & Cost: South Coast. $79.00 a night with 1 night free.

Airlines & Cost: SouthWest non-stop Spokane-Las Vegas $108.00 each r/t.

(Special Notice: You can see a photographic version of this report, including pics of the rooms in the South Coast by going to www.bingoware.com and clicking on the link for Las Vegas Jan 2006.)

Trip summary:

We had a pretty good time as usual when ever we visit Las Vegas. This trip, we decided to pool our winnings over $50.00 and see where we stood at the end of the
trip. We would cash out of any machine after running up a $50.00 or more win. We are small time slot players, usually sticking to the quarter slots. I have been known to play $1.00 on occasion, and for the heck of it I’ll drop down to nickles as well. When we got home and counted up our haul, we had $2,000 in the booty pool.

Flight Out.

Mostly uneventful. Marie wanted to do some last minute shopping in Spokane so we stopped there before going on to the airport. Before leaving Spokane, we stopped at a Safeway and picked up a couple of big sandwhices for the flight. Got to the airport about noon for our 1:30pm departure. Of course with plenty of time to spare, there was no one in the Southwest check-in line. So that took all of 2 minutes. Security check point was also dead, so we blew through that in 5 minutes.

So of course with plenty of time to spare, the flight gets delayed an additional hour because of high winds in Las Vegas. Even though I logged on to S/W web site just a few minutes past midnight to print our boarding passes, I was still only to get the coveted A pass for myself, and Marie got a B pass. When the flight finally boarded, I was able to save a seat for her so it worked out OK. We arrived in Las Vegas about 4:30 or so and grabbed a cab to the South Coast. Cab ride was about $17.00 without tip.

The Casino:

We decided to stay at the South Coast this trip. We have always been pleased with Coast properties, with the Barbary Coast being our favorite. The South Coast only opened on Dec 22nd, so it was not even a month old when we checked in. I had read where they were having some problems in certain areas, but I’m happy to report we saw none of that during our visit.

The casino is large and bright. Well lit, not dark like some of the downtown places. There are lots of area to walk around, so you don’t feel cramped. Walked in the front door and no one in line, so we walked right up to check in to register……

For some strange reason, this was to be trend that seemed to follow us all over Las Vegas on this trip. No waiting! We hardly had to wait in lines, we didn’t have to wait for buses, the monorail, elevators, nothing. There seemed to be no lines any where, not that I’m complaining. more on this later, but movin on….

We got our fun book (only 1 per check in) and 2 breakfast buffet comps. Our room was 2126, and we were pointed to the elevators. There are 2 banks of elevators serving the hotel. Each bank consists of 6 elevators. One bank handles floors 2-12. The other handles floors 14-25. This was nice because on the ride up, we blew right past the first 12 floors, which made for very quick rides. Now I don’t recall a single time when it took more than like 10 seconds from the time I pushed the call button until an elevator arrived. Sometimes it was less. I would push the button and immediately one of the cars would be there! I loved this.

There was 1 elevator that had an attitude though… For some reason, this particluar car had a tendency to go from Floor 21 to Floor 22 and stop. Than you had to press C to go to the casino. It was only this one particular car though, all the others went where you told them to go one the first shot.

Arrived on the 21st floor and the first thing that struck me was how bright the halls were. Very bright and well lit and it smelled NICE! No old smokey odors, (we asked for a non-smoking room) Got to our room and we were very pleased with it.

We asked for 2 queens, and thats what we got. The room was large, bright, airy, and smelled nice, just like the hallway. The beds were soft and comfortable. I liked the pillows, they were large and fluffy. There was a 6 drawer dresser in the room, along with a small desk for the wireless internet connection. This cost about 10 bucks I believe if you had a lap top.

A BIG plus for the room was the 42″ plasma TV mounted on the wall. Folks, Marie and I are now officially spoiled. We are going to make the purchases of this type TV our next major objective. Now you know what our winning booty pool is going towards….. This thing was awesome. I’ve watched them in stores, but nothing compares to watching your favorite TV shows on one. We are still having trouble readjusting to our measley 25 incher now.

The bathroom was large, with the toilet and shower/tub in a seperate room. A nice touch was the phone next to the toilet. I’ve never actually talked to someone on the phone while “taking care of business” but I can see where it might be convient.

The dressing area was really nice. The vanity must have been about 7 feet long, with a mirror spanning the whole distance so 2 people could use it easily at the same time. The sink was deep, so there was not a lot of water splasing out when when you were using it.

They even had this neat little coffee maker. As I learned after calling housekeeping to ask where they were hiding the coffee pot, (they were’nt) it was a single cup coffee maker. You poured a cup of water in the resevoir and than open a package that has the disposable coffee/filter/tray. Slide it in place and press the brew button and in a few minutes you had a nice hot cup of coffee. It only came with 1 packet each regular and decaf, but a little note and a nice tip the next day corrected that and we had an “abundence” of regular coffee packets for the remainder of our stay.

Hair dryer, iron, ironing board and good supply to shampoo/body wash/conditioner rounded out the room.

Gaming:

The South Coast had some pretty good gaming. We did well on their slots. Marie hit the first win of the trip for $360.00 followed a little later by me for $200.00. I am not a big table game player, but I did notice a lot of $5.00 BJ tables, even during the evening, as well as at least one $1.00 roulette table.

Child Care:

The South Coast has a Child Care Center right on the property. I don’t have any children, so I didn’t check into this too deeply, but heres what I do know. Cost is $6.00 per hour. I don’t know if that is per child or not, but I would think so. Parents must remain on the property while their children are in the Child Care Center, so I assume it is for anyone, not only hotel guests. Also, if the child is taking medication, the parents must be present to administer the meds. Child Care Center staff are prohibited from giving any kind of medicine, even over the counter stuff to any child, period. Also children may not self medicate themselves. A child will only be released to a parent or guardian listed on the child care form and picture ID is required. I did notice the casino has a security guard posted right there at the Child Care Center, which I thought gave a good feeling of safety.

Garden Buffett:

We ate here twice. The first was on Monday evening for Steak night. Cost was like $13.00 per person. I found the filet mignon to be great, but I didn’t care for the other steak types they had. Like any other buffett, there are going to be some foods you like and some you don’t. Our Fun Book came with a coupopn for a Free bottle of wine, so we went with the Merlot. I also liked the sweet/sour chicken and the pizza. But I went up for 3rds on the filet mignon.

The 2nd meal we ate was breakfast. This also was not too bad. The usual breakfast fare, along with some lunch type foods. They had some kind of breakfast special promo going, and on Tuesday and Thursday the line for the buffett was unbelievable. Luckily, I ate there on Wed, and there was only like 3 people ahead of me.

Coronado Cafe:

This is open 24 hours with midnight breakfast specials available. I only ate here once, and had the chicken fried steak breakfast. It was not too bad. On this occasion, our waiter was a young kid named Alex. We ordered coffee and he forgot to bring it. Finally a waitress reminded him and he was falling all over himself apoligizing for this mistake. But from there after, his service was great. Seems like every time I took a drink of coffee, he was there with the pot to replace it. So we gave him a good tip.

Movie Theater

The South Coast has a 16 screen movie theater right there in the building. Prices were very reasonable at $6.25 for tickets sold before 6:00pm. They also have a full snack bar with the normal steep movie theater prices. It makes for a nice deversion from gaming, and we took a few hours off to enjoy the movie “Fun with Dick and Jane” which we laughed our butts off watching. The seats are very comfortable, just like a top of the line theater back home.

Arcade

The arcade seemed like a good place for the kids to hang out. I checked out some of the games, since I’m still a bit of a kid at heart. Most were 50 cent games, so a kid can get a lot of play out of 20-30 bucks worth of quarters.

Fun Book

As I said earlier, we got 1 fun book of value coupons. Some were good, some not so good. An example of a good coupon….. A free Sundae at the Ice Cream parlor with the purchase of a sundae. I ordered a large 4 scoop sundae with whipped cream, nuts and of course hot fudge for like $4.00 and got the 2nd one free. An example of a bad coupon…. A free hot dog with a $20.00 race wager at the sports book. I paid for my hot dog out of my own pocket. Cost? A whopping 75 cents!

Gambling

Besides the 2 jackpots we hit at the South Coast that I mentioned above, we also had some good luck at the MGM where Marie hit another $100.00 jackpot. I put $21.00 into a one dollar Blazing 7’s at the Flamingo and hit a $200.00 pay out. Our best single run of luck happened at the Freemont downtown. While waiting for a seat at Tony Roma’s, there was a bank of Blazing 7’s right outside the door. I put a fiver into this one machine and lined up three mixed 7’s for $50.00. I cashed out that ticket and stuck in another $5.00 and hit three 7’s for $75.00. I cashed out that ticket and ran another $5.00 through and cashed out for I think $84.00. All told I ended up taking about $211.00 out of this machine, all while waiting for dinner……

We continued to have some good luck at the South Coast, hitting for about 6 jackpots there.

Other Stuff

We did make a point of stopping at Mermaids for a deep fried Twinkie. I have to admitt, these things were tasty. Deep fried, covered with chocolate sprinkles and powdered sugar, they were about a gazillion calories, but damn it they were sooooooo good.

Also we stopped for lunch one day at the Studio Cafe at the MGM. I really like the coffee they serve there. We ordered a drink called a Funky Monkey… Made with rum, cream de cocoa (spelling) and some other stuff. Very nice taste. I had a ruben and fries which were great and Marie had the patty melt with cole slaw which she said was some of the best slaw she has had in a long time. For desert we ordered a martini split, which was a banana splt served in a very large martini style glass. Another bazillion calorie treat, but screw it, we were in Vegas we didn’t care.

Dinner at Tony Roma’s was good, if not a little spendy (by our standards). It took about 30 minutes to get a table (one of the few times we actually had to wait) and even though it was still pretty early, this place was a mad house. This was the Tony Roma’s in the Freemont.

Monorail Tickets

As you know, the price of a single ride on the monorail went up to $5.00 the first of the year. In Dec I brought two 10 ride tickets from the monorail web site for $20.00 each. At the time the web site asked if my visit was going to be after Jan 6th, 2006 which I said it was. I still only ended up paying $20.00, which was $30.00 less than I would have paid had I waited. Well I was wondering if I was going to get zapped when I tried to use my tickets and be made to pay more. I’m happy to say that was not the case. Though I heard some grumblings from other riders about having to pay more, Marie and I were able to give each other knowing glances, because we planned ahead. We still ahbe 5 rides each left on the tickets, so we are going to give them to a friend going down next month. It will save her and her husband $50.00 on the monorail.

The Duce bus

I wanted to ride this double decker bus, so on the night we headed downtown, we caught this bus at the Flamingo. Rather than mess around with individual tickets, we just brought two 24 hour passes. The ride downtown we had to wait till like we got to the Strat before we could get a seat up top, but the ride back we got a seat right away.

Shuttle Bus

The South Coast has a shuttle bus that runs between it and the Barbary Coast. It was running about every 30 minutes or so while we were there. It should be noted that the bus only holds 19 passengers. Even though the drivers are told not to depart early, some still do, once the bus is full. This tends to mess up the schedule and though you might show up in plenty of time, you find the bus has already left.

There are signs saying riders must show a room key to ride the bus, however I only saw once case where a driver was actually asking for a room key. Since the casino is still new, they don’t have the long lines of taxi’s waiting outside for passengers like the strips places do. You can ask the Bell Desk to call you a cab, or wait for one to come along and grab that.

The casino is about 7 miles from the Strip, and depending on traffic, it might take 45 minutes to make the trip. However on the trips we took, it timed out to be around 15 minutes. Not too bad.

Would I be willing to stay there again? Yes, I think so. As I said, it is new, clean, and the staff seems to be trying real hard to please the guests. My usual perference is to stay on the strip, and I missed walking outside and being in the heart of the action, but as with most anything else, there is always going to be a little give and take.

Well I hope you enjoyed this report. Please stop by my web site to check out the photographed version of this report.