Outta Luck

What a difference a decade makes, especially the 1990s in a place called Las Vegas.

I knew it had changed, of course, since I last visited about eight years ago. After all, my last trip there was pre-Luxor, pre-Mandalay Bay and pre-Bellagio, not to mention the rest of the new resorts and casinos that have opened. It was even pre-celebrity chef invasion, before Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Louis Palladin and Charlie Palmer, among others, decided to put on some suntan lotion, settle in on the Strip and open Vegas branches of their expensive hometown restaurants.

So when two recent events coincided--the Sept. 1 opening of the Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino and a special introductory rate at the newly opened Regent Grand Spa at Summerlin--how could my wife and I not spend a couple of nights in Vegas?

After all, we wanted to get in on the excitement of Bugsy’s desert burg, immortalized by the King. We wanted to experience what we had been missing--the glitz, the glam, the excitement, the gambling . . . the stealthy drunken cabdriver?

There he was, is his Hawaiian shirt and two-day growth, whisking us away from Spot No. 2 on the taxi queue at McCarran International Airport just after the arrival of our Southwest flight.

As I slammed the taxi door, I thought how marvelous it was going to be at the deluxe Regent Grand Spa at Summerlin, 25 minutes outside town, our destination for the first night. And I inwardly smiled at the thought of donning a tux to attend the opening of Paris Las Vegas the following evening, where we would spend the second night of our trip in a hotel room that had never been slept in by another person.

My reverie continued with the thought of eating Charlie Palmer’s notable food that evening at Aureole Las Vegas, home of the world’s only four-story glass wine tower, containing about 9,000 bottles.

It’s great to be on vacation! And Viva Las Vegas!

Great, that is, until your wife tells you that her seat belt doesn’t work, you’re going 75 mph in the fast lane and the driver turns out to be so drunk he can’t stay awake, much less control the car. We weaved in and out of our lane, onto the shoulder and back again. Snake eyes on the first roll of cabbie craps.

“I’m hungry. Let’s stop,� feigns my wife, Barbara. This, followed by a really long moment of white-knuckle fear, causes the cab to suddenly cross four lanes with Lady Luck on our side. “Smash� goes the taxi as it runs afoul of the offramp, catching the cab’s undercarriage on a raised lip of concrete. “Thud� goes my heart and the luggage when we arrive at the Main Street Station near downtown, not our final destination, but glad to be alive.

Long story short, I immediately called the cab company trying to get someone to corral the drunken driver. The company said no one fitting his description drove for them. Then I phoned the cops; no luck with them either. Finally I phoned the taxi authority and was told that the guy indeed had been busted on Civic Center Drive about an hour after he dropped us off.

Armed with that bit of good news, we hopped into another cab to take us to Summerlin. Little did we know we were about to play a spirited round of resort roulette.

During check-in, we learned that the 10,000-square-foot spa, presumably one reason the Regent Grand Spa is so named, wasn’t open yet. Oh, and neither was the pool. And, by the way, the phone in the room always dialed two lines at once, which resulted in an audio condition kind of like an electronic echo chamber.

But, hey, we live in Los Angeles. We have learned how to cope with adversity. Despite our early misfortunes we remained full of hope while waiting late that afternoon outside the resort for the car that I knew would drive us to better things. We could see it glittering in the distance, a throbbing electric pulsar of late 20th century naughty possibilities: the Strip, home of Mandalay Bay Resort and the Aureole Las Vegas restaurant.

I love to eat. So when confronted with the “Celebration Menu of Great American Food,� a six-course, five-wine gustatory extravaganza, what could I do but order the works? Eighty dollars apiece for a wine dinner did seem a bit much--but what a way to chase away the blues. Viva Las Vegas! Royal flush at last!

Dinner was terrific. But, alas, when the bill came I’d been dunned an extra $90, a “supplement� for 10 glasses of wine. Apparently I had failed to scrutinize the fine print in parentheses toward the bottom of the menu, which revealed a $45 charge for “select wines paired with each course.� With tip and tax, that’s about 3 1/2 C-notes for two people. My fault entirely. But this town is definitely no longer the capital of the $1.99 prime rib dinner.

The next day, in yet another taxi, we whizzed by the Eiffel Tower replica, past the Arc de Triomphe replica, past the waiting faux gendarmes and into the check-in line at Paris Las Vegas.

“Bonjour,� the clerk said with a Nevada accent, promptly asking me to sign the registration card three times and initial it twice.

True, that evening, as thousands waited to get into the casino of the $800-million hotel, Barbara did win 500 quarters in a matter of 10 minutes from two of the 2,800 slot machines in the place. And it was kind of fun to stroll the boulevard under a replica of a partly cloudy blue sky looking for a baguette and a glass of vin ordinaire. But when our winnings were entered into the account ledger against air fare, room fees, food, drinks, taxi fares, the empty swimming pool, the near-death experience, the half-a-plastic-glass-of-champagne-apiece Paris opening party . . . well, I think you see where I’m going with this. My total tab for two days was $1,232.91. Any way you add it up, that’s a pocketbook ouch.

To end my tale, I have one final Vegas vignette.

If you haven’t been to Vegas lately you may not realize that the Strip has traffic to equal that of rush-hour Manhattan, enough to create that grinding, authentic city-dweller angst in the pit of your stomach as you race to catch your plane. Hey, buddy, New York, New York, means New York, New York!

Snarled in the harsh afternoon traffic going to the airport, our cabbie, a longtime resident (and, hopefully, teetotaler), said: “You know, the old-timers say it was better here when it was run by the Mafia. They cared about you. Health insurance and all that. The corporations that run it today, all they care about is money.� Hmmm, this from a man who works 12-hour shifts beginning at 4 a.m. for 30% of the meter.

And so, with 10 minutes until takeoff, we faced a line at Southwest of about 100 people all waiting for their own version of escape from Las Vegas. What would the King say? What would Bugsy do?

Barbara and I actually did make the plane, which was late (more good fortune from Lady Luck), by running through the airport, dodging arriving passengers. But in closing, let me just wish future Vegas travelers the same thing they tell you at the Paris hotel:

Bonne chance, mon ami. Good luck, my friend.