Las Vegas & Wyndham Grand Desert

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

First impressions:

Las Vegas

First impression: The strip is much smaller in scale than I envisioned it from TV shows. Everything is so close together.

Traffic on Las Vegas Blvd from Mandalay Bay up the strip is as advertised. Very slow.

Weather is hot, but a dry heat. Saw in the paper that because of the lack of humidity (ok, 5%), that 108 degrees actually feel like 93 degrees.


Wyndham Grand Desert:

Very very nice. About 4 blocks from the strip. I ended up with a 2BR for myself. My room is 881 in the Bella Tower, overlooking the swimming pools and interior garden area.

Has cafe, small store, and other amenities on site. Will probably try to do some of their on site activities.



Stuff I'm doing:

Booked Mama Mia for Wednesday night; Booked Love Cirque de Soliel for Thursday night; hope to hook up with a couple of friends on Friday night.

Doing a Hoover Dam run tomorrow morning and back by noon, I think.

For Boca and Bluegreen owners:

Saw a Bluegreen Resorts sales office on Las Vegas Blvd. It's in a crummy strip center. Not very impressive to prospects in my opinion. I hope they move to a better location if they are going to build in Vegas.

Will keep in touch. Stay cool, literally.

[kapish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close kapish]

Thanks --- some questions about LV resorts and pools...

Thanks Mike, for the quick review. I have stayed at the WorldMark on Las Vegas Blvd. and loved the lazy river etc.

What kind of amenities are available at the Grand Desert? Do they have a lazy river?

We toured the Polo Towers Villas (new tower) and loved the units, but hated the little excuse of a pool on the roof.

We would really love to stay at a resort closer to (or ON) the Strip with a really nice pool. Would we be happy with the Wyndham GD, or should we try the HGVC Flamingo? Others?

[blr666 Member Find all posts View Profile Close blr666]

The Flamingo is great, but the main hotel pool can get crowded. There is a timeshare pool that's not as crowded. They serve food and drinks there too so it was nice to just hang out under the mister and drink margaritas.

[dvcforus Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dvcforus]

We stayed at the Grand Desert last summer and really loved it. We were in the building off by itself with the smaller pool and ended up loving the location. The pools were great (no lazy river), the staff was friendly, the room was in great shape (2BR Deluxe), and we loved the non-casino atmosphere, and the fact we could park right outside of our building. Quite a change for us from 10 years previously of staying in the big casino hotels! We are going to Vegas in 2 weeks but booked Tahiti Village because we couldn't get Grand Desert, so I hope we like it as well.

[shaggy Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close shaggy]

Mike, we loved Mama Mia!!! Don't forget to have breakfast / and the prime rib at Ellis Island. Have a great time. shaggy

[kapish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close kapish]

Mike, we loved Mama Mia!!! Don't forget to have breakfast / and the prime rib at Ellis Island. Have a great time. shaggy

Thanks for the reminder Shaggy. I wanted to checked out Ellis Island Casino & Brewery after watching Chris Cognac's show "The Hungry Detective"

[Fern Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fern]

If you like Root Beer, order it when you go to Ellis Island. They brew their own, and its pretty fantastic.

Fern

Thanks for the reminder Shaggy. I wanted to checked out Ellis Island Casino & Brewery after watching Chris Cognac's show "The Hungry Detective"

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Have a good time Mike and win back some of my money I lost there. BTW If you like fine dining try out Emirals. Be sure to go to see the Freemont Street experiance. And email Fern to see if she is available for Lunch, She knows better than anyone about where to eat good and where the locals go to.

[Fern Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fern]

Thank you, Frank! Did I ever mention that Village Pub (the place I took you to) is actually related to Ellis Island (only much nicer!)?

Tonight we went with a group to PT's Pub (there is one near the Walmart Neighborhood Store on Silverado Ranch for those staying on South Strip). Jerry had a Monte Cristo Sandwich with homemade potato chips and an iced tea. I had two sliders. It was "happy hour." The whole thing was $12. Their happy hour menu includes $1. sliders, small quesadillas and meatball sandwiches, and pizzas at half price (thin crust), about $5. Pretty good deal, and the food is tasty. Only problem, most PT's have Casino licenses rather than tavern licenses (having 21 machines rather than 15) and so are exempt from the smoking law.

Fern

And email Fern to see if she is available for Lunch, She knows better than anyone about where to eat good and where the locals go to.

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Well, good news or bad, depending on your point of view, I'm back!

Had a great time in Vegas. Sorry Fern, I didn't have time to try to email you.

Saw 2 great shows, Mama Mia and Love. Highly recommend both. If you like the Beatles, don't miss Love. Magical.

Got to gamble only one evening, won enough to cover my dinner and show tickets in about 15 minutes and quit!

The Wyndham Grand Desert was great. They had lots of activities for guests, onsite deli and market stores. I used their shuttle to the Harrah a couple of times to play on the strip. The waits for the shuttle were generally not very long. About every 30 minutes. The accommodations were top notch to me.

The TS tours they had at Wyndham were constant from about 9 to 3 every day. There were herds of prospects everywhere.

Last impressions of Vegas:

Except for the strip, there is no color in this city, just like Phoenix and Sedona. Everything is earth tones.

The population growth in Vegas is unbelievable. Everything outside of the strip and downtown is brand new. I was able to drive around the highways there and go into the residential areas. It would not be good to be too drunk going home to the suburbs because you might end up at the wrong house.

I was really impressed with the new Polo Towers.

The first day I arrived, about 1/2 of everthing worked. 1/2 of the automatic doors at the airport didn't work, 1/2 of the escalators didn't work, 1/2 of the trams from Terminal D didn't work. Fortunately, when leaving, all were in working order.

Lots of very friendly folks in Vegas, both guests and residents. Met lots of nice people.

If you have never been to the Hoover Dam, you have to go. Do a 1/2 day tour and learn about Boulder City, Lake Mead. The neatest thing I saw there was a machine gun pill box overlooking the dam, the only one of 9 that remains from WW II. The most interesting thing I learned was the heighten state of security that remains there since 9/11 and that every car and tour bus gets inspected. I am very appreciative of the fact that any disruption of the dam's electricity generation would directly impact millions of people in 3 states.

It was fun to do a TS drive by to learn where all of the different timeshare resorts are located.

Las Vegas will be a destination that I want to return to.

[ArtsieAng Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close ArtsieAng]

Mike.....Welcome back!!!!

I'm glad that you had a great time, and I have to say that I'm impressed by your will-power. You were able to walk away after 15 minutes, a winner. I have to remember to do that, next time.

Hoover Dam sounds great. Another place that I haven't been to. I'm adding it to my never ending list. Good to have you back.

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

Welcome back home Mike!

At least the AC worked....

We enjoyed visiting Vegas too, way back when. We'll return someday when in-house encumberance is gone

What willpower to walk out a winner. Good going.

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Mike.....Welcome back!!!!

I'm glad that you had a great time, and I have to say that I'm impressed by your will-power. You were able to walk away after 15 minutes, a winner. I have to remember to do that, next time.

Hoover Dam sounds great. Another place that I haven't been to. I'm adding it to my never ending list. Good to have you back.

I did get some funny looks from the rest of the table but I gave a nice tip to the workers at the craps table. They did ok for 15 minutes.

One of these days you will need to share your list so that we don't have to keep one. I know all of the places you want to go is where we all would like to go.

Mike H

[Fern Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fern]

Glad you enjoyed your visit, Mike. Maybe next time we'll meet.

Its nice to hear you got out away from The Strip and into the neighborhoods. Earthtones are very popular here cause its the desert. It'd look awfully funny with desert landscaping in front of a lavender or blue house now, wouldn't it? I've never come home drunk, but I think I'd still know my house.

Did you take the I-215 Beltway to 93/95/I-515 to go to the Dam? If you did, you passed within about five or six miles of where I live (and less than a mile from where Bigfrank and I had lunch). Remember passing Green Valley Ranch Casino? That's about six miles from me.

You had some nice weather, didn't you? Sunshine every day. And *dry* heat.

Fern

[gophish Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close gophish]

Mike, Welcome back and glad that you had a good time.
We stayed at the Grand Desert last year and had a really good time.
We walked to the strip several times and took the shuttle a few times which worked out good for us. We had our two sons with us (younger one had just turned 21 and older one 28 came down from Oregon to join us for Jesse's birthday. Anyway the way it worked out a lot of nights we would all have dinner together and then later the guys would be getting ready to go out about the time my wife and I would be coming in. (lol)
We agree the Grand Desert is pretty nice and has a fairly good location. Also agree about Hover Dam it was pretty impressive.
Again welcome home.