Too many Vegas Casino Players Cards

I think I've gone nuts on the casino membership cards.

Grand total: 15 cards (although trying to fan out the cards for the camera only exposed 14 of them).

Now, can I get my free hotel room?

A Wild 4 Days in Vegas

Las Vegas, home to gambling, tons of hotel rooms, comped alcoholic drinks, and cheap priced food.

So, I fly in on Father's day with a comped hotel room at Bally's as long as my father played in the slot tournament. Basically, I only paid the airfare of about $188, but it would be cheaper if I flew on a Monday, but oh well.

So on the first night we arrive, I had to treat my dad to a good meal, so we go to our favorite BBQ restaurant in town at the Ellis Island Brewery and Casino, just behind Bally's. For just under $10, you get a whole rack of ribs coated with BBQ sauce with all the fixins'. A full rack of tender ribs for dinner is yummy! Plus, their home made root beer is one of the best in town.

On other days, I also chomped on a $1.25 huge hot dog, a one pound slice of prime rib (whoa, $35 bucks), and other snacks here and there.

I also paid for a Las Vegas Monorail day pass that is on sale for the entire summer for $8 and I stopped at multiple casinos to join their club programs that track your play. So by the end of my vacation, I got seven new cards, to add to my existing eight for a grand total of 15 cards. Oomph, it started getting heavy.

Here's the list of cards I have:
Total Rewards (Harrahs Resorts: Paris, Bally's, Caesars, Harrahs, Rio, etc.)
The A-List (Planet Hollywood/Aladdin)
MGM Mirage Players Club
Wynn
Casino Royale
Club Sahara
Las Vegas Hilton
The One Club (Circus Circus and Slots-A-Fun)
Club Coast (Coast Casinos)
Ultimate Rewards (Stratosphere)
Player's Club (California Hotel)
Bill's Gamblin' Hall
Imperial Palace
Venetian
Ellis Island

Although I got my butt whipped in gambling I did have some fun adventures:
$15 in free play money at Sahara. I fried it immediately and took back $46.00
$10 in free play money at Wynn. Used it and took back $5 (thanks Steve Wynn for money for a few hot dogs)
Sweating to death in the heat.
Suffering with an air conditioner in my hotel room that would not go below 70 degrees.
Some random joe and his wife giving my dad and I free monorail passes for the rest of the day.
Eating the best ribs in town.
Had to get away from those guys trying to sell you a "good time."

Oh well, I guess I'll save up again and go back some other day. But maybe not in the summer again.

The Unfortunate World of Airline Miles

I can't believe I did this, I bought plane tickets to Las Vegas on Monday for $200 each, and then two days later, I get a huge chunk of airline miles posted in my account when my United Airlines Credit Card posted me 21,000 miles available to use.

21,000 miles is the equivalent of $210 in money to pay a plane ticket, or just an additional 4,000 miles to get a "saver" ticket to fly almost anywhere in the USA (regardless of the price of fare).

Now I regret it because the airline I picked has a "no refund" policy, damn! I could have used my 21,000 in free air miles to buy a flight to Vegas and used that extra cash to feed it down the mouth of a rip-off slot machine or a shot a roulette.

But I must say that it is totally worth getting a credit card or a check card with some type of rewards program because you use your cards to pay for your daily and big ticket item purchases, and why not get about 1% back? Say you spend $1,000 on your credit card, 1% of $1,000 is $10, which typically means you can claim a gift card for a retail store for that amount.

Credit cards with rewards is a good option, but check cards with rewards typically only return 0.25% of every dollar you invest. The only thing that would make the rewards program worthless is that if you do use it, it's usually a higher APR than a non-rewards program, and if you are paying interest on your credit card bills (instead of paying your bill completely every month for 0% interest), it aint worth it.

Let's summarize my rants:
Rats, I could have flown for free!
No refund?? What a joke!
Can't I get my money back so I can gamble and try to get double?
Try a credit card with rewards, it's worth getting free crap.