Magic Spirit

The Venetian had given free Alaska cruises to 50 of their slot players, myself included, so Hunnybear and I booked what was hopefully not our final National Airlines flight to Vegas and went to the Venetian’s Pizza ballroom to attend the Alaskan Adventure party the night before. We waited listening to the recorded foghorn and watching the zestfully adorned shmata-industry representatives parade out of the “MAGIC” convention. “MAGIC” formerly stood for “Men’s Apparel Guild in California” but since relocated to the more convention-friendly Las Vegas so now it didn’t really stand for anything. Hunnybear expected to see men in black capes with magic wands wandering around but the real thing was even weirder.

At 6:30 the ballroom doors opened. We received our gifts of lovely gray anoraks to wear on the cruise and envelopes containing drawing tickets, liability waivers, and a 1099 form so I could pay taxes on the free cruise. Ritchie, who had been a cruise director on Princess for years prior to coming to Venetian to do special events, gave a briefing and told us the itinerary for the next day. We would meet by 8 a.m. in the VIP lounge, take a charter flight to Bellingham, WA, and a bus to Vancouver where we would board the Carnival Spirit at Canada Place. We flew to Bellingham to avoid lengthy (and costly, although he didn’t say that) customs at YVR.

As usual the Venetian put out a nice spread with enormous shrimp, crab legs, salads, carved beef, and a tasty assortment of Italian desserts that as a rule I don’t eat. An enormous ice carving of a cruise ship stood in the center of the buffet. Waiters dressed as stevedores handed out champagne and it was easy to get in the cruise spirit.

We had to decide how to allocate our drawing tickets between the two drums. One drum was for three suite upgrades and the other was for a single prize of $10,000. I waited till the last minute and figured there were two to three times as many tickets in the $10,000 drum as the suite upgrade drum, but the suite upgrades weren’t really worth that much since we already had a very nice room with a private balcony. I decided three of my 51 tickets were enough for the suite upgrades but Hunnybear declared four tickets would be better so I put in an extra and dumped the remaining ones in the drum for the cash. We didn’t get picked.

We picked up our cruise documents and noticed we got First Class seating on the charter, which just meant bigger seats since the food service would all be first class. We went up to our Pizza suite to relax, pack, and retire early. We checked our cabin number and discovered we had the very highest category cabin before the suites so we were happy. Our bags were to be picked up tomorrow morning at six so we put them by the door and retired in preparation for the big week.

Lion thoughts:
· These Vegas drawings tend to be hostage-taking events where they make you sit through a two-hour party just to see if you get picked. Hunnybear said this one wasn’t too bad because there was no entertainment.
· As a rule I don’t eat dessert but I’ve somehow managed to put on a couple pounds since I met Hunnybear. The wake-up call came when I read the shore-excursion brochure and found that if I weighed just eight pounds more I’d have to pay for one and one-half seats on the helicopter ride.
· For the first time in ages I saw a yellow “caution: wet floor” pyramid without the Spanish translation on it. They were just begging to get sued by some shyster avogado. I always liked the sound of the warning and thought it would be fun to walk into a Mexican restaurant and order a couple Piso Mojados.


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