Written by Kim
We started our day with some pai gow before taking the tram down to the Cosmopolitan for their buffet brunch. We never used the tram before this trip but it is a convenient way to make you way between the MGM properties on the lower end of the strip. Park MGM is right beside NYNY and the TMobile arena so the walk up to Caesar’s / Bellagio area is a trek
The Aria Express is a free tram with just 3 stops – Park MGM, the Crystal Shops, and the Cosmo/Aria. It runs about every 7 minutes.
The walkways between the buildings are pretty. We ate at the Wicked Spoon, in Cosmopolitan. It is a pretty expensive buffet ($47 per person for brunch) that we normally would never do but MGM was offering a BOGO for players card members and locals so we thought we’d give it a try. Despite my size and love of food we don’t really care for buffets because we aren’t huge eaters but enjoyed sampling lots of things here. There are 7 things with anything ranging from traditional breakfast items, sushi and Asian stuff, carving stations with several types of beef and pork, fried chicken, Mexican stuff, fruit, cheeses, cold cuts, salads and of course desserts. I didn’t take food pics – oops! If we paid full price it would have never been worth it for us but food is expensive in Vegas so $50 for 2 meals (breakfast & lunch combined) was ok. We like the Borgata buffet because we pay $10 each in comp so don’t feel bad if we just get something small because it’s cheaper than a bagel.
Our main event today was a group slot pull with Brian Christopher at the Plaza down in Fremont. For those who don’t know, Brian is a You Tube guy who plays slots. Alex has followed him for about 7 years and is part of his fan club called “the Rudie’s”. We’ve been to several of Brian’s events including slot pulls, Rudie’s weekends and even a few cruises (who would have thought😜). Brian is a super nice, down to earth guy who had several thousand subscribers when Alex first started watching him. Now he has over a million on all of his platforms.
Brian has a special room dedicated to him in the Plaza casino which is non smoking. Group slot pulls are fun. Brian videos them for his You Tube channel. This slot pull will be released on his channel on June 22. This was a high level slot pull where everyone put in $500 for 10 spins of $50 each. Obviously, we’d never play at that level but when you pool with 22 people it’s easier to ride the volatility for a win. Each participant got their money back plus $300 in profit. The Frankenstein machine was on fire. It was very cool when Brian first noticed Alex in the crowd and came over in the middle of taping to say hi. Later in the pull he noticed me and paused to give me a hug.
After the slot pulls we walked around Fremont a bit. We had our sights set on Happy Hour at the Cadillac Mexican restaurant in Golden Nugget but when we arrived we were told they stopped doing happy hour. We told them they should take it off their website then. I thought maybe they’d compensate us for our trouble with free chips or sonething but no. We had a margarita each and some chips and queso for $50 bucks which was not what we planned so moved on back to Park MGM after a quick stop to play some pai gow at Golden Nugget. Golden Nugget is pretty smoky and had this weird mandatory $5 bet for a spin of a wheel if you got a flush. I had no luck but Alex’s good luck continued and he spun the wheel a few times for another few hundred dollar profit
Back to the smoke free casino at Park MGM we continued with some good luck. We had a few envy bonus hands at pai gow. I had a 4 of a kind that pays 25:1 for a $5 bet and Alex had a straight flush that pays 50:1 also for $5 bet. It was a good night for us. We know we will probably give back some today but it’s nice to be even or a little up after 2 days in Vegas. We were a little hungry so closed the night with a slice of pizza at Eatly.
One more day left tomorrow in Vegas before we fly home for my nephew, Jesse’s, wedding. Until then…..
