gpapadop

Is this a good deal from Detroit?
The hotel is the Harrahs at Laughlin

8/18 depart
8/24 return

airfare is about $750 & hotel $170

I tried to find cheaper fare & then Priceline the hotel but no luck (if good fare, the dates would not work and vice versa).

What do you do for vacation packages, any tips to share?

We do get actual miles plus 500 each.

Do elites get upgraded like a regular NW flight? ]I should probably post this in the Northwest Miles section or just get my fingers off the keyboard and dial the number in my phone ]

Feedback appreciated

George

MIKESILV

I assume you will be flying into Vegas and driving to Laughlin (about 1 1/2 hr drive)
Harrahs is OK from what I could see ( did not stay there) bear in mind that Laughlin is not Vegas but is less expensive.
The town is down in a valley on the Colorado river in Aug it promises to be very hot( the last time I was there it was 118 degrees)if you can be believe it, hotter than Vegas.
The casinos there are further apart so you may need to do a lot of walking. There is a bus/tram which does the circle of the major places and also you can take the water taxi to get from one casino to the other.

If you have been to Vegas and seen all the sights, then I suppose the place might be for you. Not sure what would make me go back there.
Incidentally the price quoted for three seems pretty good.
Mike

gpapadop

thanks for your reply.

Actually, I thought Laughlin was in Las Vegas...I just saved that itinerary in the NW Vacations website and started heavy research, one of the first things I did was pop a question or two here...

I know something was fishy because it just seemed too good to be true. The Harrahs in Las Vegas actually was being quoted at $410 instead of $170 for 6 nights, so me the cheap o jumped on the $170 rate, oh boy..and I almost booked it, I can see myself now trying to explain this to my wife

tev9999

The airfare seems high. The NWA website is showing fares for these days at $250 to $285 per person. I assume the package price is for two people.

I have never done NWA vacations, but I have used Funjet (www.funjet.com) once out of DTW and once out of Flint, MI. Check prices on all cities - FNT was about $150 cheaper than DTW for one flight, plus the airport is so much easier to deal with than DTW. Both times I found you could get a better deal by booking air-only through Funjet and going directly to the hotels website or other las vegas hotel websites. Check out www.cheapovegas.com

This is about the best (and funniest) Las Vegas site I have found. They have profiles of every strip and downtown hotel. The trip reports are hilarious. You also may want to go to deja.com and search the alt.vacation.las-vegas group.

If you go funjet, beware of the Sun Country DC-10's they charter. They manage to get 10 seats accross instead of the normal 9, plus they rip out all of the first class to cram in as many seats as possible. They also use ATA, which I understand does the same thing on their widebody L1011. I'm guessing that all of the charter airlines do this. ATA 727s were not too bad, but still cramped.


I'm heading out to LAS in Sept. using NW miles to avoid the cramped coach charters. I'm planning on staying at the Flamingo because I can get a reduced casino rate for some play last year. Also great location right at the center of the strip. I have also stayed at the LV Hilton - which is nice but too far to walk to the strip. Last place was the Day's Inn Town Hall Casino - last minute reservation and cheap. Clean & quiet, but somewhat run down. Good luck on your searches.

Tom

gpapadop

The airfare on NWVacations was for 3 people.

Thank you so much for your suggestions, I did not know of funjet, I will check them out.

I found cheaponvegas.com from an earlier FT post, I agree, great website!

Thanks again

George

tev9999

One more thing about funjet - make sure you check both the web and the 800 number. The prices they quote may be different. I believe the web was cheaper both times.

Tom