My Slippery Slope to Entitled Asshole: Turning 40 at The Villas at The Mirage

The number of original Roger Thomas interiors commercially available in Las Vegas currently sits at just 23. Now retired from decades of creating Steve Wynn’s most extraordinary spaces, Thomas’s rooms are an increasingly endangered accommodation requiring travel to Macau or Boston to readily stay in one. In Vegas, eighteen of them are locked down for Wynn’s most premium players and the other five are for people obsessed enough to justify paying several thousands per night. I fall among the latter.

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Exclusive: Fuck Villas, Crockfords Got “Palaces”

The most outrageous accommodations are always tucked away and inaccessible, practically kept secret from the vast majority of guests. At Crockfords, there’s no indication anywhere on property that such rooms even exist. The Villas and “Palaces”—a marketing term for their extra-large villas—are on the same floor as the pool. Their secret, key access-only corridor is easily missed.

I had every intention of going swimming, but I was drunk and in an exploratory mood. I approached the door that I suspected lead to the Villas and Palaces and slowly turned the door knob fully expecting it to be locked. Fortunately, with all the ongoing construction, key access had yet to be engaged.

*Click*

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Wynn Las Vegas Room Remodel: First Look

Sunday, 8:34pm, enjoying a nightcap with a friend outdoors during an unseasonably warm California evening. They say you’re not supposed to check your phone in social settings because, you know, you might receive an email that says…

Just finished a trip to Wynn this weekend and took some photos of the new room renovations… Would love to share them.

Instantly, my company that evening was worthless.

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The Two-Bedroom Skyloft at MGM Grand: Not Some Fuckass Marquee Suite

$1352. That was the nightly rate for a two-bedroom, 3000 square foot Skyloft at MGM Grand… for a weekend… my birthday weekend. Taxes, fees, everything. You usually can’t score that on weekdays, weekends hover closer to $2500, and even recessionary rates of ten years ago never got this good. And so, some ten months prior to my arrival, I kindly let MGM withdraw the first night’s deposit and locked something in.

But I also knew it wouldn’t be that easy…

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Nick Papa2.0: The Renovated Lanai at The Villas at The Mirage

This review is dedicated to the memory of my friend, Alan Reed, an even bigger Vegas fan than I. The Mirage was his favorite property and I would learn at his memorial that he spent his final night in his favorite city in one of these suites.

In the late 90s, my family and I would take a two-car caravan to Las Vegas once or twice per year. We’d almost exclusively stay crammed between a couple rooms at Luxor and Dad would occasionally splurge upgrading one to a Pyramid Corner suite. At 590 square feet, teenaged me felt like a king luxuriating under the slanted windows in a hot tub that—perhaps thankfully—always smelled overwhelmingly of bleach. At home, early stages of the internet meant that I could peruse tiny gifs of fancy suites before a landline call interrupted my hotel fantasies loading at dial-up speeds. Read More