Vegas Casino Delayed, Strip Strike Averted, High Limit Drink Hack & F1 Prices Plummet!

Hello, and welcome to the MTM Vegas podcast. I'm Sean Coomer. Your host Mark Ostriman is here with me. We have a great show for you this week. As a reminder, you can watch this whole show, along with all the visuals that go with it at youtube.com forward slash MTM Vegas. We also have our Patreon. If you want to get more content from us, we do our weekly after show. You can watch it on patreon or listen to it as a podcast patreon.com forward slash MTM Vegas. Five dollars a month gets you the weekly after show and all of the community that we're building there. We really appreciate the support. On this week's show, we talk about the strike. It's not going to happen. The culinary union has settled with the casinos. F1 tickets are plummeting both for the race and hotels. As the day gets closer, prices keep falling more and more. We also discuss cutbacks at Cosmo. What's the best casino for super high rollers? A hack for getting cheap drinks in high limit rooms and the delay of Durango. One of the new Vegas casinos is not opening on time. All of that coming up and more. As a reminder, you can find all of our Vegas content that's post podcast videos at MTMVagus.com. Hit us up with a five star review on Spotify or Apple podcasts if you like to show. Thanks so much for listening. Let's hit it. So, Mark, did you see that incredible parenting video? How to on how to parent in Vegas? All you do, hit the casino, leave your kid at the food court at Resorts World and they'll just babysit you. They'll just sit there with their screen and do it. Make fun of this, but this is sort of the way I was raised in Las Vegas. Not a way to treat kids. Oh, come on. Your parents were nowhere near you. So this would have been a huge improvement compared to how it was back in the 90s. But I feel like they put those tables there just for this to happen. There's no other reason that you would line those tables along the playing area. Like nobody's like, oh, you know what? I want to sit like right on top of the casino while I eat dinner. It's the only thing that makes sense to me. And for those mad at us for making fun of this or making light of it, it's the only way you can do it when you experience it as a kid is to make fun of it as an adult because it does suck really bad. I mean, what's worse, this or taking your kids on pretty much throughout midnight? This for sure. So on to happier news, Mark and Rio, we know that they have their new Rio rewards and dreamscape is in charge and slowly they're renovating the rooms. But we finally got confirmation on the buffet of food hall transition. Previously, they had said the buffet was going away and a food hall was coming. Now we know the name canteen food hall. And we got one piece of concept art. I think it looks really nice for that space. I mean, I'm sad to lose the carnival world buffet, but it does seem like they're putting a little money. And I like the vibe of the decor. Yeah, it looks nice inside. It feels more vibrant and it's good better to have something than nothing there. But it is sad to see all these buffets go away one by one. And that was like the mainstay of Vegas was always, you know, getting these like meal deals that off menu meals and going to buffets and getting value there. And you know, another thing from the past that's going away slowly. One interesting thing is the location of this where the buffet was very easy to park outside on the surface lotter and one of the garage isn't just pop in there. So maybe they'll be able to draw kind of locals stopping in for meal where sometimes it's difficult to get into these casinos. But yeah, they'll have several venues, including I think the most famous one is Tony Luke's from Philly. This is one of the famous sort of Philly cheese steak places and they're famous for their broccoli rob. I forget how I don't know how to say that. I've had the sandwich in Philadelphia. It's like a beef sandwich with like broccoli florets on it. Very good. There's gonna be ramen burritos, all the other stuff that you would expect as well. Yep, in this food court. Yeah, in the food court at the Rio. So did you see this video on I saw this YouTube shorts, but I'm sure it's on other social media. It's just an interview with Dana White talking about all the casinos he's banned in. He's one of the more famous high rollers in town spends a lot of money and there are casinos that just don't want to take his action because he gambles too much. But he was saying palms, Mirage, even when have all kicked him out. And then he said he likes to play at Caesars, Belagio, and Venetian. And then he said Caesars Palace is the best casino in the world. That wasn't expecting that. Yeah, I don't maybe if you have a lot of money and they let you do whatever. I don't know. But in all other respects, it is definitely not the best in the world. Not even the best like within a mile of it. So that's kind of blows my mind a bit. But I've never really understood this. I know he's like a better player and advantaged type player, but isn't the whole cold to get more money in the door and big gambling. Like you're still going to lose sometimes. And the theory is always overtime. The house has that edge. So he should get that money back. So I don't know why they would kick him out. Like what's the goal if not to get the biggest gamblers in there? But Caesars does seem to be, you know, we talk about mattress Mac. They always take his big bets and stuff. So they seem to be more okay with gambling, which kind of is weird to me. Like I would think that would be win doing something like that. Yeah, you would expect that win would take the action. I don't know. I mean, he's known, been known to win crazy amounts of money because he's betting so big. So maybe it's just a matter of protecting themselves. Maybe they have more of a relationship. He's well known in town. So maybe they just don't like him and they like him more other places. But yeah, if you're a high roller, I guess Caesars Palace is the place to be according to Dana White, who he would know. I mean, that guy is known to be a prolific gambler, has tons of money. I mean, 250k of bet is what I've heard isn't, isn't a lot of drop, which a hand, which is just insane. Yeah. So from the higher rollers to the low rollers, we actually talked about this on a Patreon video a few weeks ago, the high limit hack. And this is a great way to get drink service. So I've noticed this doesn't work as well, especially on the strip, because the high limit machines are getting higher and higher limit, meaning you can't find a low bet. But if you can go into a high limit machine, especially like in locals, casinos or ones that are not on the strip, find a machine that doesn't have a high bet, you'll get better cocktail service, you'll get better overall drinks, everything else. And sometimes the bets on the lowest machines in high limit are less than what you would find out on the casino floor. Yeah. And what is it? Palazzo is the tip. There's a Kino machine in there that's a quarter Kino machine. So you can play that and get your high end $30 drink and get the service quickly. It's not as busy, which is kind of amazing. So I'm sure there's more of these out there that people know about. They probably want to keep them under under wraps. But yeah, always like dip in there and just check it out when you're walking by. I don't think Dana White approves of this cheap method of getting free drinks. But yeah, for everybody else out there, I think it's great. And we've done that several times. Allianne, we used to have a favorite machine in the high limits. That was only like a dollar bet. And we'd go in there and the cocktail service was there within a minute. And you know, you're getting full cocktails. The bar is right there. So yeah, take advantage of that. Try to find different ways that you can get free drinks, good drinks, especially as they cut down this stuff, which we'll talk about later. So the strike is over, I guess, the strike that never happened. Good old Papa Giorgio wins. I'd say his whole strategy of threatening the strike right before Formula One seems to have paid off. As we record this, both Caesars and MGM have come to a tentative agreement with the culinary union. Win is meeting today. So that will be a done deal. And there's no way win is not going to settle for the same terms. So it just took basically a game of chicken. The culinary union hasn't said exactly what they got until they vote on it, but they said it's a historic wage increases. And they seem happy that they got pretty much everything they wanted. Yeah, it sounds like they were in there for 20 hours, like locked in a room, you know, hammering this out, but it just goes to show how stupid all this is. Like you did this for seven months. And then all of a sudden, you're like, oh crap, we have a race next week. We need to get this thing hammered down. And then they put in the time and the effort and get it done. And without seeing the terms, it sounds like it's, you know, going to be a big pay raise, which I'm glad to hear with all these, you know, the record profits they're making a year over year and stuff like that. They definitely deserve a chunk of it. But, you know, as we're going to talk in a bit, they're probably looking for other ways to cut back and add more stuff to people. And it's still going to be like, you know, yeah, you're getting paid more, but you're going to have to do more. We're going to cut staff hours, all that stuff. I'm still not sure how we'll play out, but hopefully it works out well. One thing that will happen is prices will go up, right? It's going to be more expensive to operate these venues. And that means that prices will go up. The casinos have largely been benefiting from the fact that they were working under old contracts with lower wages for these last couple of years. And now it costs going up and the cost of living has gone up. So expect your hotel rooms and everything else to cost just a little bit more, which is a downside. But we need the people to get paid. And they deserve it. And like I said, Papa Georgio, the guy who runs the culinary union, his whole strategy from all these months of PR releases and protests and finally setting a date and taking the votes. I mean, it was a long-term strategy that paid off. Finally, the casinos just couldn't they couldn't bear the brunt of having a strike going on during the Formula One race. So well played. As a reminder, our Patreon is now going live. We do a weekly after show. You can either watch or listen to it. Patreon.com forward slash MTM Vegas. Hope to see you there. And thanks to everybody who supports the channel. So back to bartending and Cosmo, we talked what a few weeks ago when I was there about how those drink service was just terrible there, really downgraded. And then a lot of people in the comments that they've experienced similar things. Well, Vegas Starfish has an anonymous source that basically said MGM has changed the entire way that they're doing cocktails there. They're putting in these automated machines. They're not allowing people to like pour cans of like, let's say red bowl to mix it. So they'll just bring you a can of red bowl on the side. A lot of like downgrades to the service and the quality of the drinks there. So yeah, sad to see that with Cosmo being so special before, but not surprised to give her my recent experiences. Well, not surprised because MGM took over, but yeah, you know, these auto robot machine bartender things. The drinks aren't going to be as good. They won't be a specialty cocktail. And then it puts more, you know, a strain on the servers that they have to go and mess with all the stuff because there's not somebody back there taking care of it. So that's going to make the drinks service even slower. They're doing like double the job. They probably won't get paid. You know, I'm sure this is going to be some type of fight or lawsuit or something. So hopefully it works this way back as Cosmo was always known for having some of the best drinks while gambling. So it's sad to see that and just all the waste that you're having, like, you order a baleys and coffee and they give you a little bottle of baleys instead of pouring baleys into the coffee and taking it from a big bottle. You know, you're trying to like walk over a dollar to pick up a dime. It seems like which is so stupid. Yeah, you're in a Vegas casino. That's a high end casino. You want a drink. That's a drink. And it's sad when like somebody incorporate identifies a way to save a few pennies and doesn't understand how it affects the guest experience. So much of what the Cosmo brand was was the service and the experience there. And if they lose that, I feel like they're going to have some troubles ahead, especially with more and more competition opening up and just the overall distaste for MGM by some people because there's a lot of people out there that hate MGM, especially after all their recent troubles with the cyber attack, bring back the real cocktails that Cosmo come on. It's not going to cost you that much. You know, pour the drinks for the people. Nobody wants to get like they're drinking three parts that they have to mix together. Exactly. So back to formula one, we talked a little bit on the last show about how ticket prices are falling. And they continue to fall like a few days ago. I think the cheapest tickets for the race on Saturday was $1,000 a today, even less than the 700s. Oh, tell rates have plummeted. And you know, this was inspired by a tweet by Joe Pumpliano. And basically just talking about the different rates and how things have fallen. So I went and looked, Caesars, MGM, both their lower end properties, especially are in the two low 200s for race weekend. So things continue to go down. I've heard there's a lot of customers who are upset, who booked early, who want refunds or pro-rations because they're paying rates significantly higher than what somebody who could book today would pay. That's the first thing I thought about when we saw this is in a lot of those were like non-refundable, non-cancelation. They were locking you in and people just jumped all over. And that's whenever there's an event, just wait. Like usually it's going to get cheaper. Unless it's a Taylor Swift concert. You know, you wait and see out plays out, especially on hotels and lodging and stuff like that. And feel bad for them. I doubt they're going to do anything because could you imagine if they price matched all the people that booked early to now, it would be like a regular weekend in terms of maybe even less. I mean, when's the last time you saw $200 on a busy weekend for a concert, much less something, you know, aspectable like this. So it would just lose money and overfist. I think if they did that. Yeah, and maybe that's how they're profitable. And they got all this early money from people who pay thousands of dollars a night for rooms. And it does seem like the high in rooms are doing well like places like Bellagio and when room rates are sky high, make sense with the clientele coming in. It's really those lower mid-tier rooms that are struggling to get filled. We also learned just now a week out from the race how employees were going to get to some of these casinos. They didn't have a plan in place and they've been talking about various plans. And it really depends on which casino you work at. But basically they're giving everybody a monorail pass so they can take the monorail and they're also having most people park at the convention center and then there will be shuttles to the various casinos. So more inconvenience for these workers. We talked about how Caesars is going to hand out prizes for people working. Hopefully the other casinos step up and do that as well because this is a headache for the entire weekend for them. Yeah, just give them like double pay, you know, for this weekend. That's what should be because you're going to have pain getting to work, pain leaving work. That's like an extra several hours, probably the drive, all that stuff, add it up. It's going to be pretty awful and, you know, shout out to the monorail, saving the day that they can park their hop on the monorail, get around too bad they didn't, you know, add more stuff to make it better. But it is still a useful tool, especially with stuff like this going on. I feel bad for everybody that has to work through this. It's going to be a rough weekend. And then I noticed that they're like, oh, we're not going to do special things when the race isn't hot, even though all the same obstacles are up. It's mainly like while the race is going on, it blows my mind. Yeah, this is a huge headache for everybody. And, you know, they've been dealing with this for months. And I'm sure they'll happy to see it all over again. It's just another example of how we didn't plan, right? I mean, why are they only coming up with this plan a week out? No, you know, real understanding. I'm glad that they're giving a monorail passes. I'm sure that they'll have a way for everybody to get there. But it just shows you there was a lot of lessons to learn with this race. Let's hope that they're learned for the next year race if that happens, which I do think it's going to happen. So I'm not going to try to put that out there. People think in that, you know, this is a 10-year race. There's no 10-year contract. There is a three-year contract. There is an out after one year. That's how it is. So it possibly couldn't happen next year. But it probably will. It's 99.9% going to happen. Yeah. And then we just need Tesla's and tunnels. And then, oh, I'll be cured. So speaking of Tesla's and tunnels, let's go across the street to Fountain Blue. And dining reservations have now opened up. So you can reserve all of the restaurants for the opening of Fountain Blue, which is supposed to happen on time. It looks like it's happening. We're getting more and more looks inside. I think they just did team member orientation this week. So the employees are getting started there as well. So make those reservations. We also got bad news that Fountain Blue is charging for parking going against what Resorts World did when they opened with completely free parking. And then it's still free if you have a players card. So parking at Fountain Blue is going to be 15 to 23 dollars per day. So I don't know if it's going to vary on weekends or weekdays. Valley parking 35 to 40 hours a day. If you're not a hotel guest, you have up to one hour free, hotel guests are free and Nevada locals three hours for free. So kind of similar to other places, but that base parking charge, they're going for it. Yeah, I don't think it's as bad as it could have been. You know, 15 bucks doesn't seem astronomically high for Vegas. And I love that the gas get it free. I find it so annoying that hotels will charge for parking for when you're paying for a room. That should just be a part of it. Like if you want to charge people that just want to drive up and park their fine, I like that they're giving the locals three hours. That's enough to to get some stuff done. But you know, if you really want to hang out, probably not good enough. You know, at least it's something you can you can get in, get out, check it out, head out after three hours and not pay anything. So I like that. I do wish they did something more. If you have a players card, you get it, you know, longer for the day for free, whatever. But this is kind of like middle ground. Yeah, I don't like it. I don't think it's a smart move when you're new. I think what resource world was did was smart. Open it up for free to everybody in the beginning. And then you can change it right now. You could just go to resource world park there for free if you have a players card and then walk across at least an hour is very short. It almost seems like a gotcha. It's like we want to get you in the door. But we want to make sure you pay something instead of, you know, getting you in the door to see stuff. I don't know. But it's not a huge deal. Everybody else is doing it. Win also implemented their paid parking with free parking for hotel guests. So I think that's good. I'm locals three hours is pretty standard. The one hour thing is the key. Do you think people would avoid going there because of the parking charge or go across the street? I think for the first visit, and this is probably what they're counting on, people are just going to pay. Yeah, I mean, $15 is kind of like right at that pain point where it's okay, whatever. $15 bucks, that's like one drink, not a big deal. You know, if it was like $30, $35, something along those lines, then I think people would say, you know what? Either I'm not going to go there, I'm going to park somewhere else. So I think they kind of, if you're picking a price, they kind of hit it on the head where people will pay, especially going to the first time. It's kind of like an added expense of the experience. And I'd probably pay it. I don't want to walk any more than I have to. It already takes long enough to get to the parking garage to the casino. Much less going from a different resort all the way across the street. No thanks. Yeah, I think it just depends if you're going to multiple places. I'd probably park somewhere else. If I'm only going to fountain blue, I would just park and deal with it. And thankfully, as a local, I get three hours. That'll be enough for me. So from one new casino to the other, the bad news came this week that Durango was delayed. Now it's good news for you because it was only delayed to December 5th from the previous opening in November 20th, meaning you're not going to miss it for your upcoming trip. But yeah, good 15-day delay. No real news. It's just, I guess it's behind and they need a little bit more time. I'm okay with that. We saw that they didn't book the hotel for the last couple weeks of December anyway. So it seems like they kind of knew some things weren't going to be ready. But yeah, they're still going to beat fountain blue. I guess that's important. Yeah, I mean, you get a little bit, it would have been nicer to space them out a bit more. You get a little more fanfare for a couple weeks versus, you know, as soon as fountain blue launches, that's all they're going to talk about. So they won't get as much play as maybe they could have. But for me, selfishly, I'm very excited that I still get to check it out. And, you know, that's on the list of things to do that weekend that I'm there. And, you know, sometimes when you see one delay turns into two or three delays, but hopefully not. And they stick to that. Yeah, I don't expect fountain blue to delay. And the main reason is that these casinos are never done when they open. I've talked about going to Luxor when it opened in 1993. And they were still putting in landscaping. I was at Resorts World the morning that it opened after the big party the night before. And they were putting in landscaping. There was so much construction going on. So the fact that they had a delay, it tells you that there was some key areas not done. But I expect that they'll get it done one way or the other, even if they have to block off stuff. Because as you say, the media, they need to get that thing open before fountain blue. Once fountain blue opens, nobody's going to be talking about Durango. Yeah, exactly. And you forgot to mention Virgin that they opened without a pool. Yeah, they opened, they had a pool. They tore it out and then opened without one. So they could. What a mistake that was. Yeah, I still don't understand that decision. Let's spend some money, you know, ruining the best thing that we had at the property instead of just, you know, updating it a bit. Well, Virgin, be virgin. And that's why we love them and appreciate them. It wouldn't all be fun if they just made great decisions and didn't upset anybody. But let us know what you guys think about anything we talked about today, fountain blue opening, the parking charges, Durango's delay. There's no strike. Are you happy about that? Hit us up in the comments. We do two shows a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. And we'll be back in a couple days with another show. Hit us up on Patreon as well. Thanks so much for watching. Talk to you next time. Have a good week and everybody.