http://blonde4ever.yuku.com/topic/32185/master/1/?page=1
I wrote this up on blonde's thread.
I'll copy some of what I wrote here just in case that gets closed and gone.
TO PLUTO:
First call this number and check their availability calendar with one of the operators. It is not visible on line. They have it and deal with your requests verbally. You can check the other Stations as well if Red Rock seems not practical. I have 3 nights at Palace Station. Those were much cheaper than Red Rock.
Here is the number 844-266-0048
Then go back to MyVegas and buy the reward and call back to book. You go to the main page and in the upper right hand corner it says "info" and just skim to Red Rock and you can see if the reward is available and buy that on line. You get a confirmation number and then you call back the clerk for booking.
Technically, you need your boarding pass number, but once my player's card was not handy and they really had that information in front of them. However, a call to the Player's Club will give you your number over the phone.
They take a credit card just to secure the room for "incidentals." Rooms are free midweek. No resort fee. At Palace Station they did say that for the 50% off weekends the resort fee was required as well. Palace Station was just not a good deal for the weekend. I could go to Eastside Cannery for the same money and not waste LP points.
Now, perhaps that calling is a bit of a hassle for you over on the other side of the pond. If you want, you can give me a sense of when you might like to book, and I'll make the first call from here and check the dates for you. Give me a few ifs and whatevers because your first choice might not work.
I am reading on many boards that offerings are fast tightening up because the pressure is now on Stations as it is the only way to get a few nights in a row using MyVegas and for some calendars the only way to get a room, period. Theoretically, you can get 3 nights in a row midweek at all Stations, but actually that is pretty hard to do. In my case it did not matter at Red Rock because Nov 1-2 were all that was available until sometime around November 15, and I had booked that up already. The good thing is that a short easy phone call can get all questions answered as to availability.
Unlike booking with MLife these calls do not require a huge waiting time. I was on hold looking for one Excalibur available room for 4 and a half hours and when I reached a person, half way through the booking, she disconnected.
I called back and picked from the menu the Aria booking agent(number 1) who has little to no work. She answered right away and was willing to book the Excalibur for me. At Stations a few rings and a very helpful person can figure out a strategy, but you will want to book soon after calling and not wait to decide because the calendar will change as other folks book.
The prediction in my first conversation was that the rooms would be released into the fall in June, maybe by the end of May. So the release of offers this week is an early release and not everyone will know to try calling now for September/October/November. I suspect that rooms will just go away.
The cool thing about these midweek nights is that they are free. No resort fee. That fee alone at Red Rock is $28 a night. Oh, they also have a pool that is heated in winter to 70 plus degrees so folks swim in November.
I loved the buffet last year. It was absolutely the best for not spiking my blood sugar (I control all on diet) and most helpful and tasty was four kinds of roasted veggies and four sugar free desserts.
There is an airport shuttle for hotel guests. I suspect that you could get it even if you arrived at the airport by WAX and not by air. It picks up in Terminal 1 at ground zero.
http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/siteimages/citymaps/redrock.pdf
I decided to rent a car for a week. They are sure more expensive than when I used to rent years ago. What that did was insure that I could go to Red Rock Canyon from the casino. I expect I'll spend time there most of my stay. I love it there. Renting a car for a few days is comparatively expensive, so I decided to make a road trip of it. I have not been in Laughlin in quite a few years and now there is not even a one day free bus. I booked 3 nights at the Pioneer in Laughlin for under $90 total and after 2 nights in Red Rock I'll nip (nice use of that word, don't you think?) out for 3 days and then settle back downtown and return the car the next day. I rented at the Golden Nugget Budget so it is convenient as I am booked 3 nights at the El Cortez just before the road trip, so I just nip down to the Golden Nugget, drive to Red Rock for 2 days, drive to Laughlin for 3 days and probably see Oatman, Kingman and the newly remodeled stuff at the Hoover Dam. And then I come home after dark, check in hopefully at the Four Queens on comp and return the car the next morning.
I'm taking two 20 plus day trips this year, one in September for my son's birthday, and one in November just before I fly to Denver for a family Thanksgiving there. So, I'm planning on reducing my gambling quite a bit and just focusing my bankroll on the places where I get free rooms mailed based on my play. I am going to seed Palace Station a bit, but I don't really think they will satisfy me as a low roller. The Four Queens is very good to me and I was confused by the new comp policies, but I called for September 25-26-27-28 when the weekend rack rate is $169 and they gave me casino rate, some of it to be adjusted by my mailing when it comes. The Four Queens covers my weekends in a way I don't think Palace Station will.
Let me know if I can help in any way and tell us how it all turns out.
******************************
RE: "How do get around booking for September and November when it says you have to purchase your reward no more than 90 days before you redeem it? "
The 90 day period for rooms (and I think for shows as well) refers to the time you have from purchasing the reward to booking the date. You have 90 days to book the time you wills stay in the hotel, but the time may be much later.
The available times are determined by a calendar. Mlife prints the calendars. Go to any room offer, click on it, look in the bottom right, click on "click for available dates" and you will see what you can book today. In fact, the menu you get after clicking will let you see all the available dates for all the room awards for that property.
Some suggest that these calendars are updated with nights added, but I have not seen that happen. What I see is that Bonus dates are added as a separate reward with their own calendars. So, if you are playing along and thinking that a reward does not get sold out very often and you are hopeful, check the dates. Mirage weekend rewards, for example, have just 2 nights on the calendar and those are in November. So the reward does not get sold out, but it is not really there for most people. It just looks like it is there.
Booking can be a bit of work. I booked two Mlife nights, one in September and one in November, both at Excalibur. For the first I was on hold for one and a half hours. For the second I was on hold for four and a half hours with three disconnects. On the last one, I finally got smart and picked from the operator menu number 1, the operators that book Aria, where there are no room offers so they don't have much work. I don't suppose the operator was supposed to book me at Excalibur, but I knew she could at least return my points to me. She booked me.
Ironically, the bait and switch aspect of Mlife is coming just at the time when they had softened me. Their marketing had worked. I actually am staying a week at Excalibur in November and never stay on the strip. But I can see how the program could just get too expensive for all of us to hop on the freebies just by playing a game.
So don't think about Mlife as a place to earn room rewards. Think of it as a way to bet a lottery ticket for room rewards where once you have earned enough points, you get to elbow in with the millions of other players and compete to see who can buy a reward the fastest, who can book it the earliest, who can find an operator the quickest.
Station is much easier. You get an operator right away who will help you plan. At Palace Station that same operator gave me a few dollars off any rooms I'd like to buy to extend my stay just because I had a Boarding Pass card. Then offering midweek nights with no resort fee means that the nights are actually free. Mlife started that way with some properties then they saw the error of their give a ways.
Of course, the Catch 22 is that you have to have booked a room with Mlife to use ANY of their rewards. No more nipping in for a quick free lunch at Aria while staying at the El Cortez. That being said, in the future my strategy will be to book one night and capture two Aria buffets and some other reward with my paid night at perhaps Circus Circus, or at Excalibur when the rates are the low $22 plus $22RF. $44 for a room, two buffets, and a show is a good frugal deal. And then the rest of my points I'll use up at Stations.
I wrote this up on blonde's thread.
I'll copy some of what I wrote here just in case that gets closed and gone.
TO PLUTO:
First call this number and check their availability calendar with one of the operators. It is not visible on line. They have it and deal with your requests verbally. You can check the other Stations as well if Red Rock seems not practical. I have 3 nights at Palace Station. Those were much cheaper than Red Rock.
Here is the number 844-266-0048
Then go back to MyVegas and buy the reward and call back to book. You go to the main page and in the upper right hand corner it says "info" and just skim to Red Rock and you can see if the reward is available and buy that on line. You get a confirmation number and then you call back the clerk for booking.
Technically, you need your boarding pass number, but once my player's card was not handy and they really had that information in front of them. However, a call to the Player's Club will give you your number over the phone.
They take a credit card just to secure the room for "incidentals." Rooms are free midweek. No resort fee. At Palace Station they did say that for the 50% off weekends the resort fee was required as well. Palace Station was just not a good deal for the weekend. I could go to Eastside Cannery for the same money and not waste LP points.
Now, perhaps that calling is a bit of a hassle for you over on the other side of the pond. If you want, you can give me a sense of when you might like to book, and I'll make the first call from here and check the dates for you. Give me a few ifs and whatevers because your first choice might not work.
I am reading on many boards that offerings are fast tightening up because the pressure is now on Stations as it is the only way to get a few nights in a row using MyVegas and for some calendars the only way to get a room, period. Theoretically, you can get 3 nights in a row midweek at all Stations, but actually that is pretty hard to do. In my case it did not matter at Red Rock because Nov 1-2 were all that was available until sometime around November 15, and I had booked that up already. The good thing is that a short easy phone call can get all questions answered as to availability.
Unlike booking with MLife these calls do not require a huge waiting time. I was on hold looking for one Excalibur available room for 4 and a half hours and when I reached a person, half way through the booking, she disconnected.
I called back and picked from the menu the Aria booking agent(number 1) who has little to no work. She answered right away and was willing to book the Excalibur for me. At Stations a few rings and a very helpful person can figure out a strategy, but you will want to book soon after calling and not wait to decide because the calendar will change as other folks book.
The prediction in my first conversation was that the rooms would be released into the fall in June, maybe by the end of May. So the release of offers this week is an early release and not everyone will know to try calling now for September/October/November. I suspect that rooms will just go away.
The cool thing about these midweek nights is that they are free. No resort fee. That fee alone at Red Rock is $28 a night. Oh, they also have a pool that is heated in winter to 70 plus degrees so folks swim in November.
I loved the buffet last year. It was absolutely the best for not spiking my blood sugar (I control all on diet) and most helpful and tasty was four kinds of roasted veggies and four sugar free desserts.
There is an airport shuttle for hotel guests. I suspect that you could get it even if you arrived at the airport by WAX and not by air. It picks up in Terminal 1 at ground zero.
http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/siteimages/citymaps/redrock.pdf
I decided to rent a car for a week. They are sure more expensive than when I used to rent years ago. What that did was insure that I could go to Red Rock Canyon from the casino. I expect I'll spend time there most of my stay. I love it there. Renting a car for a few days is comparatively expensive, so I decided to make a road trip of it. I have not been in Laughlin in quite a few years and now there is not even a one day free bus. I booked 3 nights at the Pioneer in Laughlin for under $90 total and after 2 nights in Red Rock I'll nip (nice use of that word, don't you think?) out for 3 days and then settle back downtown and return the car the next day. I rented at the Golden Nugget Budget so it is convenient as I am booked 3 nights at the El Cortez just before the road trip, so I just nip down to the Golden Nugget, drive to Red Rock for 2 days, drive to Laughlin for 3 days and probably see Oatman, Kingman and the newly remodeled stuff at the Hoover Dam. And then I come home after dark, check in hopefully at the Four Queens on comp and return the car the next morning.
I'm taking two 20 plus day trips this year, one in September for my son's birthday, and one in November just before I fly to Denver for a family Thanksgiving there. So, I'm planning on reducing my gambling quite a bit and just focusing my bankroll on the places where I get free rooms mailed based on my play. I am going to seed Palace Station a bit, but I don't really think they will satisfy me as a low roller. The Four Queens is very good to me and I was confused by the new comp policies, but I called for September 25-26-27-28 when the weekend rack rate is $169 and they gave me casino rate, some of it to be adjusted by my mailing when it comes. The Four Queens covers my weekends in a way I don't think Palace Station will.
Let me know if I can help in any way and tell us how it all turns out.
******************************
RE: "How do get around booking for September and November when it says you have to purchase your reward no more than 90 days before you redeem it? "
The 90 day period for rooms (and I think for shows as well) refers to the time you have from purchasing the reward to booking the date. You have 90 days to book the time you wills stay in the hotel, but the time may be much later.
The available times are determined by a calendar. Mlife prints the calendars. Go to any room offer, click on it, look in the bottom right, click on "click for available dates" and you will see what you can book today. In fact, the menu you get after clicking will let you see all the available dates for all the room awards for that property.
Some suggest that these calendars are updated with nights added, but I have not seen that happen. What I see is that Bonus dates are added as a separate reward with their own calendars. So, if you are playing along and thinking that a reward does not get sold out very often and you are hopeful, check the dates. Mirage weekend rewards, for example, have just 2 nights on the calendar and those are in November. So the reward does not get sold out, but it is not really there for most people. It just looks like it is there.
Booking can be a bit of work. I booked two Mlife nights, one in September and one in November, both at Excalibur. For the first I was on hold for one and a half hours. For the second I was on hold for four and a half hours with three disconnects. On the last one, I finally got smart and picked from the operator menu number 1, the operators that book Aria, where there are no room offers so they don't have much work. I don't suppose the operator was supposed to book me at Excalibur, but I knew she could at least return my points to me. She booked me.
Ironically, the bait and switch aspect of Mlife is coming just at the time when they had softened me. Their marketing had worked. I actually am staying a week at Excalibur in November and never stay on the strip. But I can see how the program could just get too expensive for all of us to hop on the freebies just by playing a game.
So don't think about Mlife as a place to earn room rewards. Think of it as a way to bet a lottery ticket for room rewards where once you have earned enough points, you get to elbow in with the millions of other players and compete to see who can buy a reward the fastest, who can book it the earliest, who can find an operator the quickest.
Station is much easier. You get an operator right away who will help you plan. At Palace Station that same operator gave me a few dollars off any rooms I'd like to buy to extend my stay just because I had a Boarding Pass card. Then offering midweek nights with no resort fee means that the nights are actually free. Mlife started that way with some properties then they saw the error of their give a ways.
Of course, the Catch 22 is that you have to have booked a room with Mlife to use ANY of their rewards. No more nipping in for a quick free lunch at Aria while staying at the El Cortez. That being said, in the future my strategy will be to book one night and capture two Aria buffets and some other reward with my paid night at perhaps Circus Circus, or at Excalibur when the rates are the low $22 plus $22RF. $44 for a room, two buffets, and a show is a good frugal deal. And then the rest of my points I'll use up at Stations.
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