Surviving Las Vegas on New Years | Vegas and Grand Canyon Travel Blog

I had been to Vegas once, back in 2010 and was only there for a day and a half. It was in the middle of summer and to say that it was bloody hot was an understatement. You almost didn't want to wander along the strip because the dry heat would have you sweltering in seconds.

When we were planning our US trip, we knew we wanted to go to Vegas and because we were heading over at the start of January, I thought we should time our Vegas stay to line up to New Years. I mean, other than Times Square (which would be chaos) where else do you picture ringing in the New Year in style?

Our flight from San Fran wasn't long at all, only about an hour and a half, so we got into Vegas around lunchtime of New Years Eve. Our travel agent booked us into the Flamingo Hotel and Casino which had it's pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it is in a great spot on the strip, has heaps of dining options in and around it and the room we stayed in, even though it wasn't high end, was super spacious and nice. On the minus side, we had to wait until 4pm to get into our room (check-in is normally 2pm for most hotels), we had to pay around $50 per night as a resort fee and didn't even get to use the 'amenities' due to the pool being closed and not having a car. Then there was the luggage guy...

Now I realise that in America you are expected to tip and I came over fully prepared to do so. But I don't want to have to pay someone to do something that I'm perfectly capable of doing myself. Because we had to wait so long to check into our room, we were able to drop our luggage off to be stored. Once we had checked in, rather than paying someone to bring up our belongings, we decided to go down and get it ourselves. We gave the man our ticket, he went and fetched our bags and wheeled them a couple of meters out to us. My sister replied with "cheers" and as we were about to walk off, this bloke said in a loud and sarcastic way "cheers, great tip!". Not only did this dickhead expect us to give him a tip for wheeling our bags not even ten meters, but then we were going to have to drag them up escalators and elevators by ourselves. NO WAY MATE! I'm shocked that this dude had the audacity to say this out loud to guests but I'm even more pissed that I didn't realise what he said in time for me to say "here's your tip" and flip him the bird. Thankfully, this was the only shitty tipping experience during our trip, but it was enough to0 make me thoroughly pissed off and to form an even more negative opinion of this tipping custom.

For our New Year festivities, I booked us tickets to watch Christina Aguilera in her residency at Planet Hollywood. The concert itself was amazing and she has such an epic voice, but when the show is meant to start at 10pm and doesn't get underway till almost 11pm, it made for very unhappy campers. And we weren't the only ones who thought so. These tickets were only $40US which I thought was pretty reasonable, especially considering the prices of anything else on this evening. The only bad thing about going to the show was that we missed the fireworks. But we weren't tucked away for long enough to miss the absolute bedlam that was the strip. In my Vegas Vlog on YouTube, my sisters and I cover some of our tips for making the most of Vegas on New Years, so make sure you check it out!

If you are looking for some things to do during the day that don't involve spending copious amounts of money, taking a wander down to the Vegas sign and booking a tour out to Hoover Dam and The Grand Canyon are great ideas.

Unfortunately, I was pretty sick in one way or another during our Vegas stay, so I feel like I didn't get to make the absolute most out of the experience. While we did walk PAST many of the casinos, other than The Flamingo and Planet Hollywood, we didn't go inside any of them. I wish we had of selected an extra couple to take a look around, particularly The Venetian, The Cosmopolitan and Caesars.

What are some of your favourite things to do in Las Vegas?

Carly x

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