Las Vegas!

[quote=12568:@Norman Palardy]Minneapolis is easy to get around - very well organized & easy to negotiate.
JFK I found a bit overwhelming & it’s a very busy airport to fly into & out of.[/quote]

And O’Hare is miserable. I once literally had to run to get to the plane just barely on time.

I fly a lot and game the travel system. The best tool to find cheap fares is ITA Matrix. I’ve heard some good things about hipmunk.com (sp) but have never tried it. Matrix is pretty powerful once you learn all of the syntax. I would suggest playing around with it for awhile instead of treating it like the straight-forward commercial services that have no meaningful flexibility.

For example, you can vary your stay by putting in 4-6 days or even 0-10 days just to see where the cheapest days to arrive and leave might be. I’ve found in many cases staying another night is cheap enough to pay for the hotel and all the daily expenses. So, a FREE day of vacation. Anyway, it’s worth checking out. You can’t book using it but I’d rather book through the airline sites directly. I do that because I also like to see how paying cash for the flight compares to using points. I have a “belief” about how much my points are worth so if I can beat that amount I’ll book it with points.

Oh, one more thing, if you have some days off and have no particular destination in mind you can put in your home airport (or a few nearby ones) then a list of destinations you might want to travel to. I love that feature because I’m looking for frugal travel opportunities. You’d be surprised what pops up if you’re flexible enough.

I could veer off-topic and talk about this stuff for hours. Catch me in Vegas and I’ll talk your ear off. In short, I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.

Thank you for the Matrix link! I fiddle with the alternatives.
From your post, I assume you’re an American and you use this site for domestic flights?

I try from Copenhagen. Cheapest ticket is to fly to London, but it means I have to stay over night and change from Heathrow to Gatwick… That’s why I don’t like cheap tickets because they exclude other expenses!!

But since you don’t purchase from this site, does price really matters that much!? Or… maybe it does…(??)
I’ll research more alternatives! Thank you!

Google bought ITA Software and have a rather nice interface at google.com/flights. Real time tweaks.

I made heavy use looking for a cheap fare at short notice across the pond and was able to save $450 by tweaking the sliders/nights/stops.

Unclick “Allow airport changes”

Price always matters to me. The problem with finding cheap tickets to something like the Xojo conference is that it breaks the two biggest rules for finding frugal travel deals which are 1. be flexible on destination 2. be flexible on the time. But you never know and really I was promoting it for deciding how long you should plan your stay as that was mentioned earlier in this thread. It might save someone some money to stay extra days (arrive a day earlier or stay a day or two later). What I’ve found is that departing and arriving on a tuesday or wednesday is often cheaper. Not always, but often enough to call it a guideline to consider when checking options. There are no hard and fast rules in the travel game. Especially when you get into fuel dumps, currency devaluations, and using stopovers to create a free ticket.

They can, but not always. I wasn’t suggesting blindly taking the least expensive ticket but ticket pricing on airlines is rather complicated. They have things called “fare buckets” (the letters for you fare that most people ignore) and those buckets have limited numbers of seats on each flight. So it’s possible to have a lower priced ticket on a better flight. The permutations are endlessly complex which is why you can find crazy low fares at times.

http://www.flyhere.com/Las-Vegas-McCarran-Airport-LAS
While doing this research, here is a good map of the US and all direct flights to Las Vegas.
I tried really hard to find a Air Canada ticket direct from Copenhagen to Toronto and then continue to LAS and I can say that Air Canada has a really fancy but very un-userfriendly web page for checking these things…

They don’t fly daily and I never could figure out what day they fly. Oh, yes, March 26… sort of late to arrive!


Flying from Copenhagen, it will be 14 hrs in the plane to Washington while as Toronto is for 12 hrs, total time, that is. God, this was tricky!!

Seems as if I have finally found the perfect flight! It’s a one hour stop on London Heathrow in both directions. I think it will be good enough… But going back means I enter EU and need to go through customs…(??) Or, maybe not.

Oh, well! I found this specific flight at Kayak.com selecting 1 stop and I can buy the ticket at British Airways but it will be in Danish krona, for some reason… The price shown in the image in Swedish krona is the equivalent of 1.180 dollars. I like to know what kind of expenses I have to look forward to!

Next will be, what to do while in Vegas…!! Any suggestions!?

I’d be nervous of a one hour stop at LHR, hopefully you arrive and leave from the same terminal. I went through T5 last year and it took 50 mins for me to clear transfer and be re-screened by security. That was when it was quietish!

“What do in Las Vegas?”, there is plenty to do, let the brain explode with all the casinos and sheer tackiness and imaginative ways they use to extract money from you subtly and not so subtle! Actually sight seeing with the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon just a few hours away!

I’ve been way too many times, some pleasure, some business and always enjoy it. I’m thinking about the conf next year but won’t make any decisions until I know if I will or won’t be going to the NAB show that is about 2 weeks later! Two trips in three weeks will not work well!

Cheers, Richard

Yes! You’re right. One hour seem really tight… I’ve found the same flight but now from Stockholm. The airport stop is much more generouse. 2:50 going away and 2 hrs comming back. I think at least two hours because of various delays…

As far as I know, both Stockholm and Copenhagen are famous for bing on time. But of-course, it can always change this specific day!

The price is about the same, slightly less. Some 15 bucks or so… I found these flights at TripAdvisor. It would be interesting to see a view of late flights for a specific day…


I looked closer at the hotel. There are some 20 restaurants and/or bars in the hotel…!! Seems HUGE to me! How many people can the hotel host!? And how many people usually attend these RealBasic/Xojo Conferences?

Be prepared for a “size shock”. The two biggest conventions in Vegas, CES and NAB have 100,000+ people visit, so that’s a lot of Hotel rooms. I remember the MGM Grand has over 5,000 rooms. Not sure how many Monte Carlo has, but probably over 3,000.

Go to Google Maps, and zoom in on the strip. Then look at the scale. It’s beyond Huge!

The first & last time I was there we thought we’d go for a walk down the strip and have a look at “that” hotel. It seemed really close - but it was really big - very sad feet after that one.

We stayed recently right next door to the Monte Carlo at NY NY and all the hotels around there are insanely huge NY NY , Monte Carlo, MGM Grand, Treasure Island, Mandalay Bay, Paris, Ballys … you name it)
Monte Carlo is about 3000 rooms and a 100,000+ sq foot casino (large enough to get seriously lost in)

And the nice thing is if its nice you can easily walk the strip in an afternoon & enjoy a lot of free shows etc.

We stayed at Circus Circus (which after a week at Disneyland did not even interest our children) - wrong end of town - at least too far away from the big one’s that Norman is talking about. And he’s right once we got there it was worth it.

Oh…!! So it’s larger than HUGE!? Or even larger than INSANE HUGE!!
I get the picture. Walking a longer distance, to the hotel next door, is not an option.
How much is a cab? What’s the fare, about, in the United States…?
Let’s say for a 15 minute ride…

Please remember, I’m a metric kind of guy… I try to get a grip on Fahrenheit and Feet and I will get there… eventually!!
Do you need to pay to enter the casino at Monte Carlo?
I’m not a gambler, I sort of NEVER gamble… But it would be really silly going all the way to this Mecca and not spend even a dime or a nickel on a slot machine…

There are free shows!?

Well, the Monte Carlo is something like 330m long. From pool to front door you can easily walk over 400m. And no, there are probably no indoor cabs.
Well, to the Paris hotel with the Eiffel Tower replica, it’s about 1 kilometer.
So you can walk it, but for some far away things, you may want to use cabs.

Every evening there are a few shows like the water fontaine show at the Bellagio.

[quote=14016:@Jakob Krabbe]Oh…!! So it’s larger than HUGE!? Or even larger than INSANE HUGE!!
I get the picture. Walking a longer distance, to the hotel next door, is not an option.
[/quote]
Oh you can walk it’s not that far

No

Often free shows on the street side - magicians painters etc
Street performers
Some are VERY good

BUT we REALLY need to arrange a trip to fremont street
There are TONS of free shows there - bands, individual musicians, you name it - but it’s a little more “rough” so you have to watch your wallet. :stuck_out_tongue:

The last time we were in Vegas, my wife and I walked the strip and visited most of the hotels. It took the whole day, but was a lot of fun.

Us too
We measured our progress in “beers per mile”
Took 2x24 packs to go down & back (and it was really me & 1 other guy drinking them but we did share with a few street folks) :stuck_out_tongue:

Plenty of films on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=monte+carlo+las+vegas

There are 2.992 rooms, to be exact!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_Las_Vegas

“The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately 4.2-mile (6.8 km) …” It’s not endless!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Strip

[quote=14398:@Jakob Krabbe]
“The Las Vegas Strip is an approximately 4.2-mile (6.8 km) …” It’s not endless!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Strip[/quote]

After 10 or so beers it FEELS endless :slight_smile: