Trippin it to LAX and then Vegas

The mightly A380..
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The aim of today was to get ourselves to Las Vegas.  After departing Brisbane at 7.45am to Sydney, we had a couple of hours to enjoy the Qantas First club. Here we ate a second breakfast (well, we are on holidays!), and then both availed ourselves of a treatment in the day spa. I got way too much elbow in my back massage but it felt great at the time. Joe went for the hot towel facial with neck and shoulder massage and came out well rested.

Joe in the Qantas First Lounge
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At 3:10pm we boarded the huge A380 for the trip to LA. The trip across was a bit bumpy, but we both had some great food and managed to get a little sleep.  Touchdown at around 9:50am local time – and here our adventure started. While walking from the plane to the lines at immigration, we were pulled aside by a customs officer. He asked if one of us would help with testing/training a new drug sniffing dog by carrying a bag for him a short distance. He handed Joe a bag and asked him to walk around the corner, past the sniffer dog that was sniffing all passengers in a single-file walking line. He said to keep walking and not stop if the dog didn’t react, but that he would come running quickly after us if the dog did not react. We assume this was because he didn’t want us keeping his drug-laden bag!! Well Fido went psycho as required, and our loot was grabbed back quickly. Our surrounding passengers had some shocked looks on their faces, but after thank-you’s from the officer and a rewarding pat for fido, everyone was happy to move on.

Drugs???? What drugs??? get that dog away from me!!!

Champagne anyone....
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The queues through immigration were not too bad, and after the full-hand and thumb scan of both hands and a smile for the camera we were into baggage claim. We were buoyed by the fact that my suitcase appeared quickly and that we were making good time for our connecting flight. Thirty minutes later Joe’s bag still hadn’t sailed by on the carousel and we began to fret. Eventually the bag appeared late on the economy carousel and now the race was on to meet our plane. Our next flight was from the next terminal over, where we had to re-check-in and drop-off our bags. After finding the self-check-in not working for our e-tickets, we were faced with a wait in the ticket queue.  We hit the counter with no seconds to spare, and found that there was a problem with Joe’s ticket – there wasn’t one. The time spent trying to fix this problem saw the flight closed and us still standing at the counter. 

Las Vegas Airport - slots everywhere
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And this is where the fun started. Guess what – all remaining flights to Vegas via American Airlines today and tomorrow – fully-booked!! We could go on stand-by, but she didn’t like our chances. The Consumer Electronics Show(CES) that we were going to Vegas for had seen all flights booked. They suggested we trudge back over to Qantas and see if they would agree to fund a flight through another carrier, given their luggage stuff-up was to blame. Once at Qantas, they could not find two seats from LAX via any carrier for 6-Jan, and neither from a number of nearby airports. They even tried to get us there via San-Francisco or San Diego, but all these flights were also booked.  The Qantas stuff suggested we could drive out there in 5hrs, but neither of us had organised an international driver’s licence nor did we feel capable after nearly 14hrs on plane.

The gods must have been looking down on us, as out of the blue, two seats became available on a 6pm Delta airlines flight that was not there when checked earlier. We grabbed these confirmed tickets, and with $100 in lunch/dinner vouchers from QANTAS, headed off on our trek over four terminals to terminal 7. We now had 5 hrs to spare, which we did walking around, sitting in a lounge and sharing a huge salad and pizza at Wolfgang Pucks. This of course utilised nowhere near our allotted $100, but our only other option was McDonalds. As it was, we were told we would not be given change from the $50 voucher that we used, so we just kept picking things like crisps, iced coffee drinks, a brownie and a muffin until we used as much as we could of that voucher.

Just when we thought we were on our way at 6pm, another 40min delay at the gate – giving me time for blogging!!  The flight finally boarded and at 8pm we finally touched down in Las Vegas – where as soon as you get off the plane you can put a dime in the pokies!! The airport was full of geeky looking computer nerds – anyone would think there was a conference in town!! We took a shuttle to the Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino where we are staying for two nights. It was time to find a quick bite to eat, and after checking out the options in the hotel, decided to share a plate of chinese from the foodcourt. With our eyes nearly falling out of our heads, we bought the dreaded Starbucks hot beverage and headed back to the room where we shared the LAX jumbo muffin and then collapsed into bed.