And we haven't even mentioned all of the fees......
News from Mark Metzer that Giada (the Cromwell based vanity project of the incredibly large-headed Giada DeLaurentis) is Now charging $9 for her bread plate where it used to be free, and it's now sans the dried capers that everyone seemed to like.
$9. For a bread plate. You can feed two people for that eating fast food, or at a taco truck in Houston. ($1 street tacos are where it's at y'all)
For me, the Strip has been much a no-go for a while now. Sure, I'll drop by the Bellagio to watch the fountains and see the Conservatory, possibly drop into The Cosmopolitan to eat at Lardo and maybe play some VP at their sports book bar, but outside of that?
IF I'm gambling there it's just throwing $40 bucks into a quarter VP machine with some friends, or maybe the same amount of money on a slot or three. I NEVER play table games there because the odds are putrid, and I tend to steer my gambling budget away from days that I'm going to be on the Strip. My daily gambling budget for a day on the Strip is a full quarter of what it would be for a day off Strip, probably not even a fifth of my budget for locals casinos.
All that said, one of the primary reasons that I visit Vegas is to gamble. Although it's becoming less about that as the trips go on. On my upcoming August trip I plan to gamble less in a week than I just gambled over 2.5 days at River Spirit in Tulsa, and about the same as I gamble in 2 days at my local.
Why is this?
Well, for one, the odds are better away from Vegas for the most part. The once "Gambling Capitol of the World" is now the "Shitty Gambling Capitol of the World" putting in things that would not fly at any other casino. So far, due to a lack of give a shit by a drunken public just happy to be back out in the world, they are getting away with it to the tune of a record $1.23 Billion gambling haul in May, the highest single-month win in the State's history.
By all appearances, they are accomplishing this IN SPITE of themselves.
Between some of the worst posted odds in the world, "innovations" that are continually player unfriendly, and an ever-growing laundry list of fees, Las Vegas today is living up to it's new "Only Vegas" marketing line.
Only Las Vegas has shit odds and as many fees as you'll find in the world. And it's coming at the expense of value.
The issue is that the casino resorts really believe that they are something special in this world today, that Vegas as a draw is going to continue no matter how much they gouge the customers. That the demand that they've witnessed post-COVID, which was a perfect storm of people being tired of lock downs and stimulus money, is going to continue unabated.
In short, they are doing this because they think that they CAN. There seems to be no one on the executive floors of these corporations asking if they SHOULD.
And that's going to be a problem.
Already signs are there that the post-lockdown boom is rapidly coming to a close. Not only are COVID-19 cases again on the rise, due in large part to casinos rapidly abandoning the safety protocols that kept them contained in the first place, but people are just starting to find other things to do.
Gambling and losing is expected, sitting down to a blackjack table, after paying for your flight, room, resort fee, parking and some extremely high taxes partly to pay for the Raider's Stadium, waiting an hour for a cab/Uber/Lyft, waiting in long lines for check-in to a room that's shoddy at best, only to find the odds are 2 times worse than you can find at your local casino is downright discouraging.
People come to Vegas hopeful for a good time, they leave bemoaning $2000 bottle service in a night club that's packed beyond capacity and a possible Delta Variant to boot. If they did not go to a night club, they paid way too much for a cabana at a pool that's apparently increasingly under-chlorinated and choked with too many people.
Then your gambling sucks, because the odds are so depleted winning is impossible, and now you're being charged $9 for a few tiny slices of bread.
At some point, people are going to say "enough" and just decide the city is not worth it any more.
That day may be closer in coming than many think.
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