Meanwhile...
Top Ten Reason's to Avoid the Brand New Mandalay Bay Casino
10. The Coke Machine on Floor 32 is "Out of Product."
I don't mean to be the type of guy who might complain,
(cough)
but I don't like paying $279 for a night in a hotel room just
to see a "Sorry" sign on the Coke machine when it's party time.
For $279, this hotel should provide me with oral sex.
09. It wouldn't hurt to have coathangers in the closets, Mandalay.
If I was a member of the Christian Coalition I might travel with coathangers,
but I'm not so I don't.
08. The elevators should go DOWN, as well as up.
(We had a private floor, but we saw those in steerage.
These poor people were trapped on their floors instead of
being free to roam around and gamble, which is why they came.
Let me ask, Mandalay Resort and Casino:
Do you make more money when the people are gambling,
or do you make more money when thousands of them are
waiting for an elevator, cursing your time-wasting ass?
07. Mandalay Bay is the southern-most attraction on the strip,
so they built a tram
to the northern casinos because parking in Las Vegas is worse than
parking in Washington DC.
The tram wasn't working. Gee, I'm always suspicious when the exits
are blocked.
06. Once you spend a billion, yes, a BILLION DOLLARS to open
a resort,
why not spend another eleven dollars for two more busboys to clean
tables
so the people waiting a goddamn hour at the buffet could get back to
gambling?
Let me ask, Mandalay Resort and Casino:
Do you make more money when the people are gambling,
or do you make more money when thousands of them are
standing in the buffet line cursing your time-wasting ass?
05. Have the expensive rooms face the attraction.
Jesus Heche Christ, am I the only one left with a brain?
All casinos are the same, by law.
They odds are the same, the machines are the same,
everything is the same but the theme of the park.
We had the Executive Suite in this brand-new, billion dollar casino,
and we couldn't see
their fancy man-made bay, so I call the desk and say, "What is this
bullshit?" and she says,
"Sorry. None of the Exec Suites face the Mandalay Bay."
So, why call it "Mandalay Bay?"
Why not call it "View of the Strip?"
04. Koresh as my witness, to close the bathroom door in the
Executive Suite you have to straddle the toilet to make room.
Hey, I admit my degree isn't in architecture, but I've been in bigger
outhouses than this.
If you've only got 27 inches of bathroom width, you better be Callista
Flockheart
if you're going to enjoy your stay.
03. The hot tub never got very hot,
the A/C never got very cold.
This is Las Vegas, and I'm spending the Republican's money.
Money is nolo objecto ejaculato.
At $279 per night, it should be so goddamn cold in my room,
I should wake up next to Walt fucking Disney.
02. Little things... the refrig in our room froze the 7-Up,
the phone had directions to everything but long distance, etc.
In 1983, when Mrs. BartCop and I were poor, we stayed at the "Tam O'Shanter"
in Las Vegas
and we had fewer complaints. At least the Tam O'Shanter let you
escape your room.
...and the Number One Reason to avoid the Mandalay Bay Casino,
01. We heard soooooooo much about Mandalay's "Moscow Bar."
This was an "Ice Bar," with vodka on tap.
They had a 12-foot headless statue of Lenin, swear to Koresh, it was
really from Red Square,
they paid $2,000,000 for it, (with no head, and no explanation why
we had a headless Lenin)
and they also had a "Wall of Fire" that did something - I forget.
The bar was imbedded with a longways-running, six-inch band of ice.
Since I'm from Oklahoma, I have no goddamn idea what an "Ice bar" is,
but if expensive vodka is involved, so am I.
They boasted they had "hundreds" of kinds of vodka.
You know what I was really looking for?
Somebody sells ice cubes cut from 20,000,000 year old glaciers.
Absolutely perfectly clean and pure ice cubes, frozen before pollution
was invented.
This Uber-Vodka bar should have the world's finest vodka over absolutely
clean ice.
I was looking for the drink of a lifetime.
So, me and Mrs. BartCop wandered in and what did we see?
I couldn't believe it:
Of all people, we saw Dr. Laura and Betty Ford getting drunk with two
cowboys.
I thought Betty Ford was supposed to be sober?
And Dr. Laura had on some terribly-short skirt, which didn't look
very good on her 55-year old chicken legs, I must say.
Dr. Laura was all over her cowboy, too.
The bartender had to tell her to "knock it off," twice!
And this wasn't Spread 'Ems first time "riding the bull."
I heard one cowboy tell the other, "She bangs like a truck."
So, we pony up to the bar and I whip out my $100 bill and said,
"Two shots of your finest on the good ice, Cubby,"
hoping his finest wouldn't cost more than $100 for two shots.
The bartender looks at me and says, "We're closing."
Huh?
I'm in a Las Vegas casino bar with a hundred dollar bill and I can't buy a drink?
Were we invaded?
Did we lose a war?
Bartender says, "The tile people have to finish the floor,
so we're closing early tonite, if you don't mind."
Mind?
Why would I fucking mind?
Hey, Cubby!
I got a hundred dollar bill stuck to my forehead and I want vodka.
...and you think I might mind if Las Vegas shuts down early?
Mrs. BartCop later told me Cubby was in distress at my outburst.
This is where my Buddhist training came in handy...
I was going to let Cubby have it, but there was no point.
It wasn't Cubby's fault.
This casino just wasn't ready to open.
They charged "ready-to-open" prices, but they weren't, so we bailed.
I went to the front desk the next morning and said,
"I'm not happy, I want out and I don't want to pay some damn penalty
for checking out early."
The lady said, "OK."
Funny, she didn't want to know what my problem was?
I'l bet she's seen LOTS of angry people storm out.
So, if you go to Las Vegas this year, skip the Bay.
More next issue.