So I expect to (hope to) be hitting Vegas sometime between midnight and 1am Friday night. I'm thinking I'd be much better off leaving I-15 at Tropicana, then shooting up Koval to Flamingo and the Ramada that try to deal with the mid-strip mess that is the Flamingo-Las Vegas Blvd. intersection at that hour. Am I thinking rightly about this?

_________________
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That "something" would be the "RECON 2012 Convention" 30,000 estimated to attend from 5/20-22 at the Las vegas convention center!!

If I were to offer a suggestion (or 2) for this weekend to someone who has a car it would be

#1 - to look at hotels away from the Las vegas Convention center.

with that thought in mind, might I offer the following...

A- Sante Fe Casino (Northwest Vegas) Fri-$80 Sat $92 and Sun $32 (avg 67 per night). I have stayed here twice..no complaints!!! Simple and clean and great table limts and VP! PLUS..
They have an all you can eat buffet breakfast (with Stations casino players card) that is $4.99 (increases avg cost per night to 72 per night)

or

B-Texas Station (Northwest Vegas)- Fri- 76, Sat 76 and Sun 24 (avg 58.39) add buffet breakfast (avg.$63.38 per night)!

or

C- Fiesta Rancho ( Northwest vegas) Fri-60 sat 60 and sun 30 (avg night 49.85*) add breakfast (avg. $54.85 per night)!!

and if you just need to be near the strip then I would add...

D - The Palace Station (1 mile from strip on Sahara) Fri 83, Sat 105 and Sun 22. I have also stayed there and they have a free shuttle to from the strip that runs hourly (if you must hit the strip and decide you don't want to rent a car).

I realize your budget is around 160, which the Fiesta meets/exceeds*. I also sense a desire, on your part, to be located in an area where you don't have to look over your shoulder when you return to your hotel loaded with all your winnings from a day in Vegas!

Heck I even know a host at the Palace Station that might be able to reduce your rate a little bit! ( If you need help on that just P.M. me)

Hopefully these suggestions help.

I'm leaving for vegas in 92 days!!

I'm probably not the best one to answer this since I don't do it every day, but since nobody else has I'll tell you how I'd roll for whatever that's worth...

I would be likely to get off the freeway and across the Strip to the local access roads at the soonest, so if coming from the north on southbound I-15 I'd usually use either Desert Inn (which is designed as a "super-arterial" that tunnels under the Strip entirely) or Spring Mountain to pick up Koval, or if coming from the south I'd be more likely to use Tropicana than Flamingo. Of course it can vary hour to hour day to day, and unfortunately local real-time traffic info is not as good as it is in some other major urban areas. I have satellite radio which tends to be a little better at this, or at least more consistent, than local stations.

I tend to want to avoid as much of I-15 during peak hours as possible, since carnage and tie-ups have been routine for many months now with ongoing construction and lanes that suddenly shift causing sudden braking and multi-car pileups at some spots daily - local media and NHP and State and local transportation people keep putting out blizzards of dire warnings and press releases asking people to avoid going through it complete with gory pictures and video of the problem - and these are of course widely ignored or not heard. But if I had no real-time "read" on what was up, and if it is anytime from mid-afternoon to mid-evening, I'd do DI or Spring Mtn from the north end or Trop from the south like you were thinking. Construction behind IP has been causing some off and on traffic problems near there, but I think using Koval is still often a better bet than some alternatives.

I've been around there on Trop-Koval-Harmon often lately, mostly sailing pretty smooth, but it has been a different time of day and your mileage will probably vary. When it gets as late as midnightish as you think it might be when you hit town, I'm not much concerned about any of the routes and I'm likely to do whatever I feel like at the moment. Local commuter traffic (yes oddly enough some people do go to actual normal type jobs in Las Vegas) has a big effect and it is long done and gone then, unless I'm really unlucky and hit the wrong spot right exactly at a megaresort's shift change.
That is the commercial real-estate (shopping center) thing. 30,000 probably sounds really big, and I'm sure it would be all of that for hotels in Cincinnati or Charlotte, but it is really a medium sort of event at the LV Convention Center and would have been baked into the cake as a blip in the rates for that week quite a few months ago.

This comes up a lot every year about this time when folks coming to a site like AVP naturally tend to think the WSOP must be something that will affect the rates. But with single digit thousands at any one time it doesn't do that at all; it is way, way too small for that. It affects poker rooms, but isn't very noticeable to hotels, even the ones on the streetcorner right where it is held. I have even stayed at Rio (partly due to low rates) during WSOP without even knowing it until later, since I don't follow those events closely or play poker there.

There is a similar sized convention to the "RECON" event the week before (now), and a larger one the week after, and prevailing rates for both those weeks are much lower. There is something else, not on the convention calendar, and apparently not booked so far in advance as convention business which gets scheduled and factored into hotel's occupancy forecasting 1yr+ out. A major sports (and betting) type event? Just guessing, I don't know.

_________________
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-Damon Runyon

It depends on whether you're closer to 1 a.m. or midnight. From midnight to 12:30 a.m. or so, traffic can still be bad. Closer to 1 a.m., it is remarkably clear. At midnight, there is the "triple threat" of people getting out of the late shows, kids headed to nightclubs, and casino employees getting off swing (a surprising number take or cross the Strip). But better safe than sorry, it's a good idea to go with Trop->Koval->Flamingo to the Ramada. I wouldn't bother with DI or Spring Mountain -- too much extra distance for not enough time saved or traffic avoided.

About I-15, yes, it's a mess because of all the lane shifts and construction work. The worst part of I-15 has traditionally been northbound between Spring Mountain and Sahara. On average, there are four accidents a day on just that stretch of I-15, probably because the on-ramp traffic merging west while the freeway is curving east. Unfortunately it's true, with all the craziness, there are accidents everywhere lately.

Also, watch your speed and make note of speed limit signs. Because of all the construction and lane switcheroos, the speed limit changes constantly on I-15. The most likely speed trap is between the M Resort and South Point exits, both directions. The speed limit for that stretch is 55 mph. Driving southbound a few weeks ago, I saw at least ten cars pulled over on the northbound side and another three or four on the southbound.

^I believe him. And I've seen that speed trap in action.

_________________
Life is six to five against.
-Damon Runyon

Thanks to both of you. I will definitely remember that last tip on my drive out this afternoon.

Trop > Koval > Flamingo worked great.

_________________
- Low-limit limit poker @ Artichoke Joe's ($6/$12) & 101 Casino ($4/$8 w/ 1/2 kill)
- Poker blog, good writing, OK poker: http://chuck.martin.name/poker/
- Tweets from the felt: twitter.com/chuckspoker

You're welcome, of course; hope it was actually worth more than it cost.

But.


Duh.

People are playing some kind of game that involves bouncing an orange sphere on the floor and tossing it into a thing with a net at the bottom. They say it is something about "playoffs." I just now learned this. And one of the tribes of people dressed in their colorful underwear which happens to be doing this at this time is apparently associated with a quaint little seaside fishing village over the hill named Los Angeles.

Layer that over the convention business, and that'll do it. Duh. I understand what it may also sometimes do is provoke a spree of breaking stuff and setting fire to things to express grief over losing. Unless they win, in which case their victory will usually be celebrated by joyfully breaking things and setting fire to stuff, instead. But either way, it will now be obvious that I am idiot, and have just this minute emerged from a windowless cave, at least where following sports happenings is concerned.

_________________
Life is six to five against.
-Damon Runyon

Emc booked most of the hotel for their employees during EMC World these days to send the rates to the moon.