When I found out that AECT and DevLearn were in Las Vegas this year, I knew I could get some smokin’ deals. And smokin’ deals I found. For the entire trip (Sunday-Saturday) I was able to get my hotel rooms comped. Here is how I did it:
There are four apps I recommend (please know there are others these are just the ones I use) MyVEGAS Rewards, Konami slots, Pop slots, and Wynn slots. The first three (MyVEGAS, Konami, and Pop) allow you to earn credits to use at MGM properties. These credits include food vouchers for buffets, spa passes, and of course the coveted comped room. The properties included are Circus Circus, Luxor, MGM Grand, Park MGM, Mandalay Bay, Excalibur, Aria, and Mirage.
The Wynn Slots game is for Wynn Las Vegas only. Also the rewards are only for hotel accommodations and it says coming soon buffet voucher (I’m bummed this didn’t get unlocked while I was in Vegas) All of these games are virtual slots that do have the option for microtransactions but they provide progressive rewards, meaning if you sign in each day you can get free credits. With tenacity and patience, I am proof you can use $0 of your hard-earned money to earn free accommodations. I’m not going to sugar coat it though, it took me about 9 months to do this. My friend Josh Risser did his in record time though (about a month) but he bets YOLO and I’m very conservative with my betting on the virtual slots.
Here are the pros and cons of the MGM games and the Wynn game:
MGM:
- Hotels have a TON of blackout slots. There was a 3-day complimentary stay at The Mirage open but I couldn’t select it for DevLearn. To be honest, I’d say there may be a total of 60 days throughout the year there are opportunities to book a complimentary room with the MGM games.
- Each time you wanted to use a voucher, I had to stand in line at the MGM player club line at the casino. I cashed in a $25 of free play for the Mirage and stood in line to redeem it to be told I can’t use it since I wasn’t staying there. Also it’s annoying you can’t mass load these on your MGM Players card. You have to do it individually and at each property you want to use the voucher at. This added time to my dinners but the free buffet and buy one get one frees really helped me and my friends out :).
- The reward offers are extremely inconsistent. I found the best offers to be accessed via MyVEGAS rewards on Facebook. The mobile apps rarely had hotel options.
- Credits are fairly quickly earned, you earn in increments of 10 after about 15 spins. That might not sound good, but put a pin in this for when I talk about the Wynn.
- The credits needed for rewards were consistent. About 50,000-80,000 would get you at least<br> one complimentary night in a MGM property hotel and it is usually about 25,000-40,000 for free buffets or buy one get one offers.
- There are SO MANY pop-ups begging for your micro transactions. Often it would be 2-3 screens before you could actually play. Be careful, it’s easy as you are tapping to accidentally purchase a credit package.
- Hotel complimentary nights are always Sunday-Thursday only. No Fri/Sat accomodations available for comp.
Wynn:
- The offers for rewards were not as robust as the MGM games. You can really only use your gems for hotel accommodations. Wynn slots take forever to earn gems. I estimate (depending on how much you wager) that it takes anywhere between 100-250 spins to earn 1 gem. If you decide to be a high roller like Josh Risser (bet more than 1 million credits per spin), you will earn gems much quicker.
- Wynn slots are not friendly. It is hard to win on them and you have to be careful (in my own experience)
- There are literally NO blackout dates for Wynn accommodations and the max you can comp out at a time are 4 nights. Instead there is a calendar that tells you the gem count needed to book that room.You’ll notice weekends are more expensive. To book my Friday night at the Wynn, I burned through 5300 gems but my Thursday night was only 2300 gems.
- The Wynn treated us like straight up VIPs. Check in was so easy, everything was ready for us and my experience was amazing.
So if you want to try this the next time you come to Vegas for a conference or pleasure, here are some of my last tidbits:
- To get the most value out of these games, you need to be ok with hotel hopping. I was at the Excalibur Sunday-Wednesday and the Wynn from Thursday-Saturday.If you see something that looks like a good value, get it.
- On MyVEGAS you can refund/cancel up to 5 reward purchases within a 30 day period. Plan out your week carefully. For MyVEGAS add in time for standing in the MLife desk line. One time at the Excalibur I waited 30 minutes + to add a buffet voucher to my card.
If you decide to try this for the future, let me know! I hope it helps and fellow economically efficient people, rise up!
I ended up with two free nights at the Wynn and one big discount at Park MGM! Listen to this lady, she knows what she is talking about!