Vegas 2021

[sanaxe1]

Hello all, I'm looking at using some of my Mlife rewards and British Airways vouchers and go to Vegas in October 2021 with my girlfriend. Providing all this covid malarkey has died down.

I'm thinking :

4 nights in Vegas
6 nights out of Vegas, somewhere scenic ( any ideas)
4 nights in Vegas

The hotels have to be the following.

The Bellagio
MGM Grand
Manderlay Bay
New York New York.

I want to stay in 2 separate hotels for each of the 4 days. I was thinking The Bellagio and Manderlay Bay. Would you say these are the best out of the list? How would you rate them? Finally for the 6 days when we are not in vegas I was thinking of hiring a car and driving to sequoia national park and then on to Yosemite. Is this doable google says it takes 6 hours from Vegas to sequoia and then about 3 hours onwards to Yosemite. Does anyone know any nice places to stay at either?

Thanks in advance

 

[sanaxe1]

So a little more information. Me and my girlfriend currently have Myvegas / Mlife Rewards. We have around 650,000 between us. These can only be used Sunday - Thursday.

The hotel rewards are constantly changing so I will be waiting to until the hotel I want comes up and then booking it. For example last week all of the list of hotels below were available and this week its Borgata , MGM Grand and The Mirage. The other rule is there needs to be at least a 5 day gap between using a free room reward hence why we want to leave vegas and do some exploring and then getting our next 4 days for free.

The current cost of hotel in points are :

The Bellagio for 4 nights = 400,000 points
Manderlay Bay 4 nights = 220,000 points
MGM Grand 4 nights = 190,0000 points
New York New York 4 nights = 120,000 points

Other options are :

The Mirage 4 nights = 200,000 points
Aria 4 nights = 400,000 points

We would only have enough points to do the Bellagio for the 4 nights and then a "lesser" hotel for the last 4 nights. The manderlay Bay looked good to me as the pool looks nice and we wouldn't mind a few days just chilling after doing all the touristy stuff. I did wonder if the other hotels were good enough and then that way i could use the rest of my rewards on things like free shows and food but if the Bellagio is head and shoulders above the rest i would prefer to stay there.

 

[sanaxe1]

PS. What are myvegas rewards?

Its the official app for MGM Resorts on Android and/ iOS, Its basically slots which is free to play with "fake money" but you build up real world rewards such as hotel stays etc. They make their money with microtransactions which you can buy extra credits with but this is optional and you don't need to pay a penny to build up your rewards. In fact on the phone apps you don't even have to play at all, if you leave the app running it builds up your rewards by its self. I've built enough rewards for 8 free nights in 2 weeks spending about a hour a day playing. I have personally spent about $9 on each of my 2 accounts as it gave me enough credits to leave the slots on Auto over night to build up my rewards, but many people don't spend a penny. Plenty of tutorials online.


There are a number of apps which all have the rewards which link together to maximise rewards :

Myvegas
Pop Slots
Mykonami
My Vegas Blackjack

And then Myvegas facebook game.

 

[sanaxe1]

So its sounding like 8 nights might be too long then. I might lower it to a 4 night stay and then a 2 night stay with my remaining rewards spent on food and shows. This leaves me 8 days to fill on the trip and it seems yosemite might be off the table due to the time of year as i don't fancy driving in any snow!

 

[sanaxe1]

This sounds great! So you have got 8 free nights for an hour of playing each night for a fortnight? I probably waste 30 minutes a day playing phone games so definitely going to look at this.

Any drawbacks I need to know about? This sounds too good to be true...

1. There are limitations on the rewards. For example you can only have a max of 2 nights free at anyone time. However if you have a 2nd account in your partners name you can combine them to make 4 nights. You then have to wait 5 days after you have used them before you can book the next free night's. Free nights Can only be used Sunday - Thursday. Once you have enough reward points you will need to keep an eye out for the best rewards as there are limits on how many they have before they are sold out. The accounts connect to a Mlife account which must match your passport so you can't make multiple fake accounts to build rewards and your partner will have to be with you to use the reward which was won in their account.

2. Some tips with myVegas, mykonami and myVegas blackjack you can just let it run and you will see the rewards going up. I think it's about 100 every 30 seconds - minute. There is no need to actually play slots but does help the time go by. There are limits on the amount of reward points you can get per app per day. You will see this with either a green tick or it will be blacked out. Once this happens just close the app as you will just be wasting your time without gaining any extra points.

3. With popslots you do need to play slots to increase your reward counter. The same for the Facebook game and this one is based on the amount you bet to a certain degree. For example betting 5k might take 20 spins until you get 10 reward points but bet 50k and it might only take 4. Betting more than that will not increase your reward points any faster. I just set it to 50k and put it to auto and leave it running on my laptop in the background for hours. Usually chrome running my account and edge running my girlfriends account.

4. You can get millions of free coins every day for all of the apps here : https://myvegasadvisor.com so there is no need to buy any coins.

5. Make sure you connect all of the apps to your Facebook and your partner connects all of her apps to their Facebook. So there are 2 separate accounts and all the games are linked.

6. That's about it really. Make sure you play all of the apps and you should earn about 20,000 reward points a day per account. If you have a spare phone put your partners account on that one. That way you can run both accounts at the same time which saves a lot of time.

 

[sanaxe1]

Yes. It. Is.

Felt like an eternity driving across hundreds of miles of sod all.

Can definitely vouch for SD though, truly awesome city.

Did you go to the zoo there?

 

[sanaxe1]

There we go... I wondered why the Mirage and Aria weren't on the previous list.

I reckon the Aria might be a better bet than the Bellagio simply because it's newer, those are basically the two high end properties

Technically the MGM Grand does have two additional hotels within it that are super high end - their skylofts on the roof and the Mansion... these are rather $$$ (the mansion couldn't even be booked until recently but was a perk for legit whales via their personal casino hosts only).

For your cheaper - mid range hotel day (these aren't "low end" btws... the low end strip hotels are owned by Caesars (formerly Harrahs) and there are even lower end options north of the strip - they had the worst one on the strip: Imperial Palace (now refurbished and rebranded as the Linq and other budget options)). I'd consider the Mirage, it used to the the high end MGM property before the Bellagio and Aria were built (like the Bellagio it was built under Steve Wynn... who then went on to open his own hotel... the Wynn) as it has a nice location.

Can you get the Vdara - it's basically right next to the Aria and is a condo hotel (as in some of the rooms are privately owned and let out by the owners via MGM) - IIRC you can use the Aria pool etc.. (best check this though) as well as Vdara. It's potentially a useful option as it doesn't have a Casino and all the other stuff to faff about with - you should have an easier time just checking in and going to your room.

Also perhaps worth a look - the MGM Grand also has a "condo hotel" on the property, which for similar reasons to Vdara might be of interest - it's called MGM Signature.

In both of those cases, as they're condo hotels, you'll either have a studio type room or a separate bedroom and living area/kitchen... so you'll have a proper fridge (not just a hotel room fridge with overpriced drinks in it etc..). I'm not suggesting you need cook for yourself on holiday etc.. but it's sometimes nice to have say some milk. breakfast cereal etc.. and just a bigger room/lounge area etc... Hotels in vegas are massive so popping down to breakfast isn't exactly just popping down...

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Also just a random Vegas fact to point out to anyone else - not relevant to MLife rewards as not an MGM property but there is a little known condo hotel right next to the Bellagio... it's old and is owned by the condo owners... thus they couldn't sell it knock it down without agreeemnt... so when the Cosmo was built they literally built it around this hotel (including taking over the parking lock)... Why mention it - well just because it's quite a random little hotel and quite quirky - because of this arrangemnet with the Cosmo if you stay there then you actually get access to the pools at the Cosmo itself... there is a lift from this little hotel that takes you to the Cosmo... also because it is right next to the Bellagio you can get a room with a fountain view! It's also codnos so you get a kitchen etc.. It is not however high end - it's just the budget/location/unknown aspect that is cool.



^^^^ It's like the hotel version of one of those old folkes who holds out and refuses to sell to a devloper despite being offered huge sums of money.... so they end up building around it.

Thanks for all of the info. I will look into the Aria as it seems to be getting a lot of recommendations on here!