Friday 10th Feb – What happens in Vegas….

Our morning plans were set – we had our timeshare appointment at the Grand View.  We met with the rest of our group at 10am, were loaded onto a plush bus to the resort where there were hundreds of others like us.  Surely, everyone was just there for the free stuff, right?!  But this was a new one for us.  Simon and I had agreed a strategy – not to be rude but stay just as long as we had to, to get our free stuff… and remember to say no at the end!  We were introduced to our rep, Leonard, who happened to be married to a woman from Liverpool where he had lived for a few years.  He showed us where we could get our complimentary breakfast and coffee and we were taken into a presentation room.  The lady doing the presentation was good at her job, no doubt about that, she gave out free chocolates and fake cash and made the timeshare resorts look too good to turn down.  She also told us that, despite our probable expectations, this would not be a high pressure selling exercise.  Hmmmm, remember that for later on!

We then went upstairs where we had ANOTHER presentation, this time from Leonard.  There was a rep for every couple, the place was rammed.  We were shown lots of certificates on the wall of awards the company had received, photos of resorts around the world… it kept coming.  All I wanted to do was have a nose around the exhibition suites… so I said so.  Enough of the chit-chat Leonard, show us the product! I just wanted to move the show along as we had been there for two hours by then (having agreed between 2-3 hours of our time).  We then had to talk money, despite telling Leonard that timeshare was not for us (yay, us).  We had two different ‘Managers’ shipped over to our table to draw lines through figures and offer us better and better deals to try and reel us in.  They ended up offering us a deal for half of the original price we had been quoted – wow, I hope no one agrees to the first offer! Eventually, they accepted our repeated ‘no’s’ and Leonard reluctantly showed us downstairs, his work had failed.  We relaxed, waiting for the free stuff to appear.  But no, we were wheeled into the ‘last chance saloon’ for the timeshare executives – another serious looking man in a pin-stripe suit who tried to sell us a repossessed unit for even less!  By now, I was not amused, he started trying to explain elements we hadn’t heard of at all that morning.  Shock, horror – the promise of ‘no high-pressure techniques’ had been a LIE!!  We calmly but firmly told him that we were done there and got shown to yet another area, unsure if we had reached the end of our human conveyor belt.  But thankfully, we finally received our ‘gifts’ – all of them, and the ordeal was over.  I looked around at the other couples who had made it – everyone looked drained and annoyed! We went outside to catch a courtesy bus back to the hotel to get back to the tourism… and drinking.  Funnily enough, the courtesy buses were suddenly scarce.  Enough of our time wasted, we got an Uber back to the hotel instead.  So, we reflected on our experience, along with our driver who has collected some enraged holidaymakers from the location before!  We agreed that it had been exhausting and time-consuming.  I wouldn’t rush back to repeat the experience, but then again, we now had heaps of FREE STUFF!  As long as the vouchers got us access to what we wanted this evening, we would be satisfied we had played the game and won.

Back at the hotel, I had another issue to resolve.  Microsoft (in the same league of hatred as Apple, according to me) had taken away my access to their office software after a trial period meaning that I could no longer access my highly important blog drafts.  I had tried to rectify this but hit a wall when I was unable to access their UK website but the US version wouldn’t let me put my card’s UK Postcode in to be able to check-out.  Frustrating!  They didn’t respond to my email request for help regarding this, choosing instead to bar me from my own documents – it shouldn’t be allowed.  As I had already lost a few hours of the day today, how pleasant to spend another hour of my life on the phone to Microsoft!  But, the man helping me was very patient, to be fair, and the issue was resolved – ie I parted with some more cash to Mr Microsoft and the blog is back in action!

Enough admin – what are we thinking? We’re in VEGAS... time to hit the town!  Having popped another $20 parking on the RV (and to be honest, checking it was still okay), we Uber’d it to New York, New York where our vouchers came good and we secured tickets for the 930pm Zumanity showing.  To celebrate we rode the infamous rooftop Roller coaster.

It was great fun, and extremely high up!  We walked to the Luxor where we treated ourselves to a steak and seafood dinner and a bottle of wine with our $100 vouchers.  The food was great quality.  We finished in perfect time walk back to NY, NY in time for the show.  I’d need to give this blog an 18 certificate to put any pictures up but the acts were amazing.  For example, the twin oriental sisters in the giant fishbowl (check the internet).  The show finished at 11pm and we spent another couple of hours walking back along the strip, stopping for a pricey cocktail in the Paris street front bar opposite the Bellagio to watch the water-fountains:

 Who says we can’t party on this trip?  Back to the hotel for about 2am after a long day – hooray!