Day 11 - Las Vegas
Trip Start
Aug 16, 2008
1
7
18
Trip End
Sep 01, 2008
Las Vegas,
Nevada,
United States
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Then, we went on the time-share tour. We took a shuttle bus to their office where we were assigned our own personal sales woman. She chatted us up about where we were from and what we did, and seemed impressed by our level of education.
After explaining all of the benefits of "owning" a time share as opposed to staying in regular hotels when you're on a vacation, and having an address on Las Vegas Boulevard as opposed to some obscure Canadian lake, we took a quick look at their "5 star" resort suites. The rooms were nicely decorated and about the same size, if not slightly smaller, than a one-bedroom condominium at Crystal Mountain. There were many small swimming pools throughout the resort complex and they were filled with families who obviously desired to appear high-class at least one week out of the year. Gary asked our sales lady how long it took to sell out each building of the complex, and she replied with a very vague: "That building sold out before it was even finished." Yes, but how long did it take? Months? Weeks?
After our brief tour of the facilities, we returned to the sales office where we finally discussed pricing. She asked us to estimate how much we would spend on hotels for the next 30 years of vacationing and then told us that we were making other people rich while we got nothing in return.
Studio 54
"Why do you think 6 million people own time-shares?" she asked us. We each thought silently to ourselves, "there's a sucker born every minute." After telling us the price of a two-bedroom suite ($41,990) and the yearly maintenance fees ($590) that "almost never increased," and the transfer fees for staying somewhere other than Las Vegas ($164-199/week), and seeing our lack of interest, she brought in the "closer." He showed us the prices for other packages, progressively getting smaller and cheaper as he failed to spark our interest. Finally, he got down to a package for every other year for $10,990 and a $295 maintenance fee. We simply told them that this type of vacationing didn't really appeal to us and that we preferred seeing multiple cities in a single vacation, rather than staying in one place, however luxurious it seemed. They admitted that, for an additional and unnamed fee, we could do so with their program, though, we were still obligated to use their resorts. We informed them that we really weren't ready to make such a financial obligation, mostly because we were almost out from under the last of our debts. He then stated in a very matter-of-fact way that we "would always have debt." Needless to say, we were very put off by this rude assumption. He asked us about our last vacation, and when we told him that we had stayed at our parents' house in Florida, he told us that that "didn't count." Again, we were very offended by his rude manner and his asinine assumptions. We informed them again that a time-share really did not fit our lifestyle and that we were not the type of people who made rash and uninformed decisions. Then, his manner immediately changed from rude and forceful to "fine, I don't give a shit about you, take your shit and leave." He asked about the gifts we were promised - one last attempt to guilt us into an impulse buy - gave us a handshake that a Southern debutante would give, and showed us to the door.
All in all, they lied about how much of our time they were going to waste and where we could use the dining voucher, but, we won the battle of wits and walked away with more of their money than they did of ours.
We picked up our tickets at the Luxor box office as soon as we got back to the strip, fearing that the people from the time-share were going to pull a fast one on us. But, we had no problems and got seats in the second row. We also had no problem cashing in our gaming vouchers for cold, hard cash.
After a quick bite to eat at Quiznos, we went to the show. It was really a fun time, though, most of the girls in the audience looked like they had been dragged there against their wills.
After that, we went to Studio 54 for a few drinks at $10 each. It sounds worse than it was, since the pour was proportionate to the tips. That is to say, large. The atmosphere was well worth the trip and we stayed out pretty late drinking it in.
