Spring Fling 2020

Quote: SOOPOO

Sadly, organizer SOOPOO is out. Will be in Richmond, Va, that weekend. You have to make compromises in life.....

NO! I will not allow it!

Well if SOOPOO is out, no reason for the rest of us to go.

Sorry to hear that SOOPOO won't make it, but it seems likely that the Mrs. and I will be there, even if the Spring Fling is cancelled. I booked/bought our plane tickets on February 4 and made our room reservations this morning. We'll be staying at Main Street Station this year, influenced somewhat by the suggestion that there might be some Fling activities downtown. I had planned to give a nudge to this thread myself, but I just hadn't gotten around to it.

I will definitely be there, I’m going to Minneapolis with my dad for our yearly Red Sox at Twins series April 24-26 and then I’m sending him home on a plane and driving to Vegas. Romes and Bruce are coming (I hope cause they are my path to not being homeless in Vegas lol) and I’m sure many others are coming like RDW.

Quote: Wizard

I thought the idea of having a group suite was a pretty good idea. However, I have no pull this year, at least not at this time. What do you think of the idea of getting a large suite at a low-end downtown property and all chipping in for it?

This suggestion from the Wizard (almost a month ago) does not seem to have generated any public discussion at all, so I thought I would raise the topic again.

I have no idea what a downtown suite costs. The only Vegas suites I have ever stayed in have been at the Rio, where every room is described as a suite, and one time years ago at the Cosmopolitan, when the check-in clerk quoted me an acceptable price for an upgrade on what started out as a mid-week, comped room. Obviously, considering my level of action, they were desperate for clientele.

Does anyone have an idea of what such a venture would cost our group? While I am widely recognized by friends, acquaintances, and casino management as a cheapskate, I think I would be willing to contribute toward a reasonably-priced gathering spot for the Fling.

Has anyone developed plans for such things as dinner, gaming, entertainment, and such? Has anyone come up with a tentative list of activities for early arrivers and late departers? For example, the wife and I will be arriving on 4/29 and flying back out on 5/5. That leaves plenty of time for activities beyond the usual Spring Fling main event interactions.

Quote: PokerGrinder

Romes and Bruce are coming (I hope cause they are my path to being homo in Vegas lol)

🤣

Quote: AxelWolf

🤣

Real original lol

Quote: Doc

This suggestion from the Wizard (almost a month ago) does not seem to have generated any public discussion at all, so I thought I would raise the topic again.

I'm still on for the Fling. However, I think there isn't enough interest to get a room.

Quote: Wizard

I'm still on for the Fling. However, I think there isn't enough interest to get a room.

I wouldn't count that aspect out just yet. How many people would you think was enough to consider a room? I might be able to do some magic. What's the count so far? I might be able to add 10+ more to that, unless it's just a bad time.

Quote: AxelWolf

I wouldn't count that aspect out just yet. How many people would you think was enough to consider a room? I might be able to do some magic. What's the count so far? I might be able to add 10+ more to that, unless it's just a bad time.

That would be very nice if you could do some magic. 12 people voted for May 2. I think many more will actually show up. Around 20 would be my estimate.

Quote: Wizard

T I think many more will actually show up.

Well ya, now that SooPoo is out. 😋

I haven't disappointed yet, have I?

May 3rd?

Room, poker, games snacks etc?

Quote: AxelWolf

Well ya, now that SooPoo is out. 😋

I haven't disappointed yet, have I?

May 3rd?

Room, poker, games snacks etc?

Be honest Axel..... you are just upset you don't get to see my wife again....

Quote: AxelWolf

May 3rd?

That would be Sunday. Is that what you had in mind?

If for whatever reason that plan doesn't work out, I'd be happy to chip in a bit for the collective good of the Fling!

Quote: Doc

That would be Sunday. Is that what you had in mind?

My flight out is in the early afternoon on the 3rd. So I really, really hope he meant the 2nd. Unless Axel doesn't want to see me either. OMG, am I in Soopoo-land? Are there t-shirts? Do I have to play Asia Poker now?

Quote: Doc

That would be Sunday. Is that what you had in mind?

No, that was a question asking if the date was set.

Quote: AxelWolf

No, that was a question asking if the date was set.

Date was set for Saturday May 2

Quote: PokerGrinder

Date was set for Saturday May 2

Noted, thanks.

With the way the Coronavirus is spreading I’m seriously wondering if we have a spring fling this year.

Quote: PokerGrinder

With the way the Coronavirus is spreading ......

The Virus or the hysteria?

If airfares and room rates keep plummeting, I might just show up and buy everyone a Corona beer.

Quote: PokerGrinder

With the way the Coronavirus is spreading I’m seriously wondering if we have a spring fling this year.

What type of gambler doesn't gamble with his life?

Quote: FleaStiff

The Virus or the hysteria?

If airfares and room rates keep plummeting, I might just show up and buy everyone a Corona beer.

Yes lol

Quote: darkoz

What type of gambler doesn't gamble with his life?

One who wants to keep gambling?

Even if the Spring Fling 2020 were to vanish from the calendar, my wife and I plan to be in Las Vegas having some fun from the evening of April 29 until the afternoon of May 5. And we hope to see a few WoV friends during that period.

Of course, all of that depends upon our surviving our next trip, which begins a week from today and extends to March 31. More adventures!

Yes, no matter what Bruce and I will be in town... pondering whether or not to let PG go homeless so he can investigate the sewer lifestyle and report back. Meh, we'll see!

Quote: Romes

Yes, no matter what Bruce and I will be in town... pondering whether or not to let PG go homeless so he can investigate the sewer lifestyle and report back. Meh, we'll see!

😢

Guess we'll just have to sewer it goes? Ehh? Ehh?

I would not be counting on any Spring Fling unless it's a Weekend at Bernie's kind of get together.

I'm continually amazed at American optimism, although there are other words for it, like arrogance, hubris, out-and-out dumb-and-dumberness.

Despite the advantages of relatively low population densities, the U.S. has got to be the worst population on the planet to abide by "self-quarantines." I'd say "self-quarantine" is kind of an oxymoron, anyway.

Quote: redietz

I would not be counting on any Spring Fling unless it's a Weekend at Bernie's kind of get together.

I'm continually amazed at American optimism, although there are other words for it, like arrogance, hubris, out-and-out dumb-and-dumberness.

Despite the advantages of relatively low population densities, the U.S. has got to be the worst population on the planet to abide by "self-quarantines." I'd say "self-quarantine" is kind of an oxymoron, anyway.

Cuomo spent part of his press conference yesterday yelling at people who are supposed to be self-quarantined, instead going out shopping and dining and visiting, just not going to work.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Cuomo spent part of his press conference yesterday yelling at people who are supposed to be self-quarantined, instead going out shopping and dining and visiting, just not going to work.

I didn't know that. That does sound about right.

Well, at least at the moment, I am feeling healthy and (as you will see) have no plans for self quarantine, and I am still looking forward to Spring Fling. I did mention in my previous post:

Quote: Doc

... all of that depends upon our surviving our next trip ....

So here's what's planned for that "next trip." This coming Saturday, we will board an Air Canada flight in Charlotte bound for Toronto. After a 90-minute layover, we will board the connecting flight (10 hours overnight) to Santiago, Chile, followed by a 2-hour bus ride to San Antonio on the Pacific coast. There we will board the Celebrity Eclipse for a 15-night cruise northbound, stopping at ports in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, 3 stops in Mexico, and debarkation in San Diego, CA for the flight back to Charlotte, arriving there in the very-wee hours on March 31.

Nope, no self quarantine, just airline flights, bus rides, cruise ship sailing, tourist group outings, and hopefully a lot of fun without serious illness. We will have roughly 4 weeks to recover from any problems before heading to Vegas.

You’re flying to Toronto to then fly to Chile? That is about as indirect as it gets Doc.

I agree. I'm not sure whether it is totally bizarre or just really strange. I think it has something to do with booking flights on Air Canada. ;-) I don't think I have ever flown that line before, but it is the one selected by Celebrity Air (affiliated with the cruise line) to provide flights from Charlotte to Santiago.

Quote: Doc

I agree. I'm not sure whether it is totally bizarre or just really strange. I think it has something to do with booking flights on Air Canada. ;-) I don't think I have ever flown that line before, but it is the one selected by Celebrity Air (affiliated with the cruise line) to provide flights from Charlotte to Santiago.

Even with the Air Canada banner, they could book code shared flights through Miami or Houston. Unless AC really has to be the operating carrier for some reason. I guess, at any rate, AC is a great airline and Pearson is a good airport.

So far, I just have the rental car booked for the fling. I keep hoping airfares will soften a little if I wait, and I need to wait for offers for the room. But I'm in for the event.

Air Canada is a great airline??? Are you smoking the hasheesh again?

Air Canada is an airline end of sentence lol

Quote: PokerGrinder

Air Canada is a great airline??? Are you smoking the hasheesh again?

Air Canada is an airline end of sentence lol

Air Canada is a great airline relative to many of the US-based carriers that could have been used. Better? :-)

That says a lot about US airlines then lol. I avoid Air Canada like the plague or I guess the Coronavirus (too soon?).

I really have no idea how the cruise lines establish what airlines they select for booking passengers who are heading out to or home from their cruises. I think I used the wrong name in a previous post, but "Choice Air" (at http://www.cruisingpower.com/choiceair) is affiliated with Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, and Azamara. I suspect that for recurring cruises (such as a ship that sails a repeating 7 or 14-day route around the Caribbean for months on end), they have something set up with the airlines to book blocks of seats at a discount from major hubs.

Our particular cruise is a bit different, because this is a repositioning cruise, where the ship is headed to a different geographic area because of a season change. I suspect there may be only one day a year in which they need to get a shipload of passengers down to southern Chile to give them revenue passengers while moving the ship back to the northern hemisphere. Re-positioning cruises offer passengers great rates per day of cruising, but you sacrifice flexibility as to when you get to sail on your cruise. There is also the disadvantage that if you book your flights on your own, you can't get the pricing advantages of round-trip tickets -- we are flying from home to Santiago, Chile but back home from San Diego. Booking such a route on our own would likely be much more expensive than through Choice Air. It is possible to declare to Choice Air what airline you want to fly on or that you want to make the outbound flight on an earlier day or a later day for the return flight, but those specialty requests add a fair amount to the price.

For the moment, though, we are just blithely going with the assumptions that airlines will still be flying the routes for the tickets we have bought and that nobody will declare that we are not allowed to make the trip that we have purchased. I think it helps our mental state to ignore the news reports, however foolish such behavior may be.

Well, I guess I have to reverse myself on that previous post's comment about ignoring the news reports. And reverse myself on some other topics, too. At this point, Medicare, the CDC, and the World Health Organization have all advised seniors against getting aboard cruise ships. Maybe such advice doesn't apply to me, since I am only 74 years old. Nevertheless, the constant bombardment of info about the Covid-19 pandemic has been stressing my wife in regard to our cruise. As a result, this afternoon I was a compliant husband and cancelled our trip. Such a cancellation was not only a disappointment, it was very difficult to implement. It took almost all day to get in touch with a human at our travel agency. Their employees were overwhelmed with people calling in to cancel/change, and their automated systems were failing, too. And now there is a thread predicting that the Las Vegas casinos will close because of this virus. Maybe I'll see WoV folks in late April and maybe not.

Looks like we'll be forced to have the Spring Fling party on Second Life. I know there's some underground casinos there. I'm pretty sure they have some strange version of skilled gaming as well.

My posts in this thread have been rather inconsistent. After being enticed to make plans and reservations for a Spring Fling 2020, I began to detect some possible "difficulties" that were beyond my control. Just 16 days ago, I posted my thoughts that in late April, "Even if the Spring Fling 2020 were to vanish from the calendar, my wife and I plan to be in Las Vegas having some fun...."

Then, just five days after that, the world had changed so much that I had cancelled a 16-night trip including an inter-continental cruise that was supposed to have started just two days later. If I had not cancelled, we would have been aboard an overnight flight to Chile when the cruise line cancelled their cruises world wide. We would have landed with no ship to board and no transportation home. When I reported (just a couple of posts before this one) that I had cancelled that trip, I said of the Spring Fling, "Maybe I'll see WoV folks in late April and maybe not."

Right after that, Las Vegas closed, and I really have no idea when to expect it to open again. I have not (yet) cancelled my Spring Fling travel reservations, but my confidence that we will be in Las Vegas in late April is now right about turf level. As of this morning, there is a new and active poll thread in the forum, discussing "When will this be over?" I haven't voted, because I really have no clue at all. Things have just been changing too quickly and too dramatically.

However, I thought I would raise a related point to discuss in this thread....

On the string of assumptions that Spring Fling 2020 cannot reasonably be held in late April as planned earlier in this thread, but eventually sanity returns to the cosmos, a significant portion of us survive, and we are still interested in such things as casinos, gambling, and social gatherings like a Spring Fling, I am wondering whether there might be some value in suggesting/discussing a rain date. Of course, it would be useful if we had a definite answer to the question of when this will all be over, but is there value in considering a temporary rain date until we have a clearer answer?

I raise this issue, because it appears that the way the airlines are adjusting their rules on changing/cancelling reservations, it might be financially beneficial if I were to change the dates of my "Spring Fling" airline flights rather than cancelling them completely. This is related to my having purchased my wife's plane ticket with a companion certificate, and how that is addressed with the revised rules. Of course, the airlines could revise their policies again some months from now, but I am thinking in terms of what actions I should take in the next four or five weeks.

Any thoughts on this? Anyone want to make plans for this fall, or should we cancel everything and wait for a possible Spring Fling 2021?

Looks like I can't book rooms for Apr20 at all (so, no 29th or 30th - making a wednesday arrival tricky). tickets on Delta are less than half the already reasonable price from before the world went nuts. $200/seat for comfort+ on any of the direct flights any time around the weekend of the 1st. But that doesn't matter if I can't sleep anywhere.

I think our options are:

1. keep the original dates & hope for the best
2. move to a low traffic time like mid-summer and keep this as a distinct event
3. combine with the usual G2E related get together in the Fall
4. skip a year

1 is risky, and 4 is no fun. So 2 and 3 seem the most viable. I'm good either way there, with the added statement that I've never been to G2E so I may try to go to Vegas in the fall in either case.

Quote: rdw4potus

Looks like I can't book rooms for Apr20 at all (so, no 29th or 30th - making a wednesday arrival tricky). tickets on Delta are less than half the already reasonable price from before the world went nuts. $200/seat for comfort+ on any of the direct flights any time around the weekend of the 1st. But that doesn't matter if I can't sleep anywhere.

I think our options are:

1. keep the original dates & hope for the best
2. move to a low traffic time like mid-summer and keep this as a distinct event
3. combine with the usual G2E related get together in the Fall
4. skip a year

1 is risky, and 4 is no fun. So 2 and 3 seem the most viable. I'm good either way there, with the added statement that I've never been to G2E so I may try to go to Vegas in the fall in either case.

If using only integers, I'd go with either 1 or 0% chance that Vegas is open for business before the date of the Spring Fling. Your sickness curve has barely even started. And once it does it will take at least a few months to cycle through.

Until there is somewhat more clarity I wouldn't even throw out an dates seriously. If here is normalcy by G2E, since many already show up for that, that wold seem to be a good alternative.

I'll bet anyone $20 that no MGM or Caesars casinos are open in Clark County from now until May 31 at the earliest. (Since they are not really in Las Vegas, right?)

(Limit to first 3 who respond!)

Quote: SOOPOO

I'll bet anyone $20 that no MGM or Caesars casinos are open in Clark County from now until May 31 at the earliest. (Since they are not really in Las Vegas, right?)

(Limit to first 3 who respond!)

I will take that bet for $20. I may just be optimistic because Las Vegas is too greedy to remain closed that long.

Quote: DRich

I will take that bet for $20.

Booked. I'll let you decide what a 'casino open' means. I take it to mean people are there gambling! If not by midnight on May 31 you awe me $20.

I'm a fan of the option of moving the "spring fling" to a "fall fling" as a one time thing due to the current circumstances. I've ALWAYS found personally that flights and rooms are pretty dirt cheap at end of September and beginning of October. That used to be one of the main reasons we ALWAYS went out there in that time frame. Weather is always still sunny and like 75 (warm for a midwest boy like me).

But yeah, I don't think any of us are going to make the spring fling as it sits now. We're at the tip of the iceberg and can expect this for another month, or two.

Quote: Romes

I'm a fan of the option of moving the "spring fling" to a "fall fling" as a one time thing due to the current circumstances.

I'm going to take the initiative and declare the 2020 Spring Fling officially cancelled and support the idea of a Fall Fling. I will start a separate thread for that.

Quote: Wizard

I'm going to take the initiative and declare the 2020 Spring Fling officially cancelled . . . ..

Yes. Sensible move. Even if it rained Clorox for ten days, it wouldn't be enough to wash the experience out of our psyches.

Quote: Doc

....Then, just five days after that, the world had changed so much that I had cancelled a 16-night trip including an inter-continental cruise that was supposed to have started just two days later. If I had not cancelled, we would have been aboard an overnight flight to Chile when the cruise line cancelled their cruises world wide. We would have landed with no ship to board and no transportation home. When I reported (just a couple of posts before this one) that I had cancelled that trip, I said of the Spring Fling, "Maybe I'll see WoV folks in late April and maybe not." ....

Is it possible the ship you would have boarded in Chile was the Zaandam? [Holland lines]

"The ship departed Buenos Aires on March 7 and was supposed to end in San Antonio, Chile, on March 21. No person has been off the ship since March 14 when it was in Punta Arenas, Chile."

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/holland-america-zaandam-ship-four-people-dead/67-fe9bb5c4-1275-48ea-9f3c-66944a7e179e

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-surfaces-17-days-cruise-ships-cdc/67-aa10cf0f-6ba2-4c0e-96bc-d3266b9da4ad

He posted earlier it was the Celebrity Eclipse.

Found these:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/henderson/cruise-ship-with-henderson-residents-bound-for-california-1984243/
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/story/2020-03-23/more-cruise-ships-headed-to-san-diego-including-some-with-passengers
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-several-cruise-ships-scramble-to-find-welcoming-port/