Cab or Shuttle to The Mirage
 

My girlfriend and I are going to be flying into LAS Monday September 5 at 4:50PM and will be staying at The Mirage. Which is the best way to get to the hotel. I have seen things online saying a cab is 15-20 dollars or a shuttle that is 7 a person. With this being a Monday holiday what are people's thoughts/experiences?

Thanks!

Cab
 

Well, the shuttle is 'per person' and the cab is total for two (or more.) I'd go with the cab.

Taking the GF to the Mirage and taking the shuttle is like taky Greyhound on your honeymoon to stay at a 5-star resort!

If you're in no rush to get to the hotel and don't mind traveling with others then a shuttle will save you a couple of bucks.

It won't save more than $5, and your GF will hate you. Cab it.

That's a bit presumptuous, isn't? You don't know anything about the couple's circumstances, the nature of the trip, or the GF's financial temperament.

Depends on the day and time, and the luck of the draw, but a shuttle to the strip isn't necessarily a more aggravating option than a cab. There can be long lines for cabs, they get stuck in traffic just like shuttle buses, and you can easily get a cab driver who tries to rip you off by long-hauling you through the tunnel. Someone new to LV travel is especially vulnerable to the latter.

I don't agree. Although there can be a long line for a cab, the line moves VERY fast. They really do have it very well-organized at McCarran Airport. There are something like 25 spots in a row where cabs come to pick up passengers. The dispatcher sends parties to each spot in turn, so that 25 parties will board cabs not quite simultaneously, but close. As the cabs leave, other cabs appear at the 25 spots, one after the other. It is all almost continuous.

It is very easy to avoid the tunnel ripoff mentioned by the previous poster. When you get into the cab, simply say to the driver "The Mirage, by way of Strip please" or more explicitly "The Mirage, but not by tunnel please". (It is sometimes better to avoid the Strip and take Koval Lane or something; the driver will know what to do that is non-tunnel).

So I think I am going to opt to take a taxi cab from what I have read as it is going to be within the same price and I will spend less time waiting around for the shuttle to fill up.

Impress the cab driver!
 

Absolutely that's right. Here's a fun suggestion. A really large fraction of Las Vegas taxicab drivers are immigrants from Ethiopia. Whenever I think that such is the case with my driver, which is often, I love to say to him "I come to Vegas often; are you from Ethiopia?" Invariably the cab driver is hugely impressed and clearly understands that I am not to be given the tunnel ripoff. But anyway it's fun to chat with them.

Not really. If they can't afford the cab, they shouldn't be in Vegas. You hemmorage money here almost as fast as NYC (with credit to Tom Wolfe) :D

True. Which is why savvy FTers should advise a rookie to use the $5 redcap tip trick to bypass the taxi line, and to instruct the taxi driver "don't take the tunnel." ;)

I always taxi to the strip, and would never ever consider a shuttle.

what is the $5 redcap tip trick?

Wirelessly posted (Nokia E71-2: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaE71-2/200.21.118; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

Tip the redcap (I've heard $10 but YMMV), and he will take you and your luggage to the front of the taxi line. Very handy on, say, a busy Friday evening :)

[QUOTE=rynbmw;16991793] I have seen things online saying a cab is 15-20 dollars or a shuttle that is 7 a person. [QUOTE]

You missed the cheapest method: the CAT bus is $2 pp each way.