High Roller Treatment

Last year when we were living in New York City my wife won us a free trip to Las Vegas.

Well it wasn't exactly a free trip.

It was 3 nights of "high roller treatment" at a Strip hotel.

It also turned out that everyone who called in to the 800 number from the radio commercial "won" the prize. The only catch for giving us these 3 free nights was that we had to go visit a time share rental property thing that someone wanted to sell to us.

The really good news was that upon reading the small print we learned that since we were from NY State, we didn't actually have to go see the time share to "win" the hotel prize. Thank you Eliot Spitzer.

Mr. Spitzer definitely saved us some time. But Spitzer couldn't protect us from the free strip hotel they put us up at.

This time share company put us up at The New Frontier.

I should amend that.

We actually had to choose between The New Frontier and Circus Circus which is sort of like the Sophie's Choice of high roller treatment.

Now I had never been to The New Frontier before. I have been to Circus Circus and walking through that place always feels like navigating through a shady flea market.

I'm not sure if it's the screams of the children, the stuffed animals, or the man with his hand in my pocket. But using process of elimination I chose the "Heck I've never been to The New Frontier and they do have a ladies mud wrestling night" over the "Hey didn't I decide NOT to stay at Circus Circus 15 years ago....do you think it's gotten any better since then?"

If this was an SAT question on the quantitative comparison section the answer would have been:

D. None of the above.

The New Frontier makes Harrahs look like the Rio.

The New Frontier turns the Rio into the Bellagio.

I think multiple scenes in the movie the Sixth Sense were shot at the New Frontier.

You know how Halley Joel Osmond saw dead people?

Well so did I. She served me an $8.95 prime rib special.

My room at the New Frontier didn't have internet access. Not even dial up.

I wanted to order room service at the New Frontier and had to use Western Union.

We stopped by the front desk to ask for extra towels and a horse and wagon delivered them to our room.

When we checked out we learned that there was some sort of 5 dollar a day "energy surcharge." I quickly paid it so that we could get back to reality and into the 21st century although to this day I can't confirm that our room was actually wired for electricity.

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was we left on a Tuesday morning and missed the mud wrestling.

At least there's a reason to return to the New Frontier.