Las Vegas… Mystère

Posted on July 10, 2013 by borysSNORC

Wow, what a night! We went down to one of the restaurants in the hotel, the Monte Carlo, for a light dinner before heading down to see Mystere at the Treasure Island Casino. Aunty Mary ordered a panini and I ordered a burger thinking that’s simple enough and shouldn’t take too long. Twenty-five minutes later and our meals hadn’t appeared and we were starting to watch the clock.. it was now 8:15pm, the ticket office to collect our tickets opens at 8:30pm and the show starts at 9:30pm… and the Treasure Island is about half a dozen blocks away. Now that doesn’t sound far, but the blocks here have about two casinos on them each, and each casino appears to be about the size of Carindale Shopping Centre, so by the time our dinner arrived, any thought of walking down to the Treasure Island was out the window and we were racing for the taxi rank.

The cabbie raced us through some Secret Squirrel back streets and some how magically dumped us out front of the Treasure Island, though fuck knows how we got there or why he went that way when he could have turned left and gone straight there. Was in such a hurry I stiffed the guy on his tip as I couldn’t be bothered with the math and we raced into the Casino asking the first desk we found where to collect our tickets. We got told one direction, which was wrong, raced to the Concierge this time and got told a different direction along with what sounded like a warning ‘I don’t know what time the ticket office closes.’… What? A late arriving burger and stupid vegetarian panini might fuck up a plan and hinder us from getting the tickets I had bought LAST FEBRUARY! Eeek!

We bolted into the direction of the ticket office, it was now about 8:55pm and there was only one little guy working the ticket collection desk. I waved at him a confirmation number and my ID and hey presto! I had the coveted Mystere tickets in my hot (did I mention that even after sunset it was about 38C outside and still no humidity?) little hand. Woo-hop… the burger and panini were so not missing out on the show.

Mystere is everything I expect from a Cirque du Soleil show. Ever since I saw Allegria in 1997 at the Royal Albert Hall, I have been fascinated by the unique blend of athleticism, gymnastics, strength, physical prowess, dance, grace, beauty, costumes and music that go into each of these shows. Mystere I think is probably an older show and has many of the Cirque du Soleil’s trademark elements – trapeze artists, trampoliniest, pole climbers, arcrobats, dancers and of course their uniquely adult clowns.

I absolutely love everything about the performance, though I have to admit at the opening element of the show a young man was suspended high above the stage in a large steel framed cube doing some amazing feats of strength and grace, and all I could think about was the poor performer who fell to her death at Ka a couple of week ago (link?). It occured to me that many others in the audience, and perhaps several on the stage too, were thinking of that tragic occurrence while watching this young man display his incredible talents, high above the stage without a net or a safety wire.

After the show we foolishly decided to walk back to the hotel down The Strip… OMG, nearly midnight and so fucking hot I could feel my eyes drying out, my throat and nasal passages felt parched and I was so dehydrated by the time we got back to the hotel. I have just consumed about 2L of water and still feel thirsty. Such a wonderful night, but now I am so exhausted and ready for bed!

*look Toni, it’s the Winged Victory of Samothrace! Right where you’d expect it. 😀

The Mystère is solved… and we have tickets!

Posted on March 12, 2013 by borysSNORC

Last week I rang Las Vegas, at some ungodly hour of the morning local time, to try and buy tickets to Mystère for when we get there in July. I’ve been watching the website like a hawk since I booked tickets for the other Cirque du Soleil shows we are planning on going to, back in early February, because Treasure Island only had dates up to and including June showing up on their website booking system.

I wouldn’t have bothered to call except that the June dates were showing limited seat availability (literally only 8 seats in the back rows of the best section of the house!) on a random Tuesday at the end of June? I assumed they probably sell them in bulk to tour operators or to other hotels etc… that or it has something to do with the fact that we are going to be in Vegas for the week of the World Series of Poker finals, which I understand is something that means something to gambling type people, and Vegas is going to be packed. Either way I wanted to get onto it well in advance. So I called the Treasure Island Hotel Box Office and was told that the July dates were showing up in their system but that the lovely lady on the phone was unable to book them which was ‘a bit strange’. She informed me that the dates would most likely be released by the end of March/early April, and she recommended that I should call back then, and that hopefully July dates would be accessible at that time.

Naturally I ignored her advice, and decided to tweet the Cirque du Soleil promotions team to find out when July tickets for Mystère would be available. ‘Lo and behold, I got a response and two days later I checked the website and the July dates were now showing up! Woot! However, much to my consternation, only dodgy seats were showing up as available?!?

Looks like another call to Las Vegas for me! Wouldn’t be so bad except their phone system automatically picked up my call both times put me immediately on hold irrespective of whether you’re calling from across town or across the world! After a few minutes listening to advertising on how the ‘fabulous Treasure Island Hotel can enhance your Las Vegas experience’, a lovely lady helped me out with ordering a pair of tickets for the show… and gave us great seats (third row, front and centre!) even though the website showed these exact seats were unavailable! Also, she informed me about discounts available for students (yay!), pensioners and military personnel that aren’t on the website. That little pink star below… that’s going to be us!

So… a hint for new players – don’t believe everything you see on the website!

I ruthlessly played the Aussie ‘Mate’ Card for fun and profit today.

Posted on February 9, 2013 by borysSNORC

How excitement! I got tickets this morning for three of the Cirque du Soleil shows that we want to see in Vegas. Given we were buying tickets for so many shows, I emailed the Las Vegas, Cirque du Soleil Customer Service team to find out if we could get some discounts or get access to a more personalized seat selections than just picking ‘Best Available’ in the online checkout systems. A lovely lady named Stephanie emailed me back and gave me some customer service phone numbers to call – here they are if anyone else happens to be looking to book Cirque tickets in Vegas in the near future:

1-800-963-9634 or 00-1-702-531-3800.
and they’re open 7 days a week from 6am-11pm PST.

So I got up stupid early to call them in mid-afternoon and spoke to a very friendly guy named Salvatore, that would be Salvatore with the sexy Latino accent. I told Salvatore which shows I wanted to see and he started off helpful choosing seats for me that weren’t in the highest price brackets ($198 per person per show was going to get pretty expensive pretty damn quick!) and we started off looking for tickets for “O” (named for being French for water / ‘eau’ apparently) which supposedly has been THE Las Vegas show ticket for several years now.

Salvatore originally found us some tickets in the front row of the first balcony for $156 each which was okay I guess… but I asked him about the lower orchestra seats availability and he said they go up to between $177 and $198… gulp. Then he said he could get me row “J” for the $156 price which sounded a bit better.

So I said (deliberately hamming it up here), “That sounds awesome, mate! I am so looking forward to going to these shows they’re the only reason we are coming to Vegas!”
He laughed and said “Mate?”
I, of course, said “Oh yeah sorry, I’m actually calling from Australia!”
“Australia?” says Salvatore “Wow, ok, let me see if I can do any better. Hang on a sec, ma’am.”.
“Call me Borys. :)”
“Hmmm… well, I can get you some tickets in Row F and the best price I can do is $138 each on those.”
“Salvatore, that’s fantastic! (slight pause) What else have you got?”

See that pink star? That’s right… that’s where we will be sitting! So we go through a similar rigmarole over the other two shows that we want to see that are operated through the MGM Las Vegas Group. Next was Ka, which is more traditional Cirque but with a variety of martial arts flavours thrown in from what I understand.

So then Salvatore did his magic with the seating plan again and he gave us a really solid discount on ticket prices again AND he put us in the SIXTH ROW centre! Go Salvatore! You’re on a roll…! See that little pink star? Yep. That’s gonna be us!

Next we moved onto the very very saucy 18+ Vegas version of Cirque du Soleil called Zumanity at the New York New York Hotel. This is supposed to be ‘the Sensual Side of Cirque’ but I have a feeling it’s the dance, acrobatics, athleticism, music and choreography of the Cirque but crossed with the some Rocky Horror style Vegas nudity, bling and smut thrown in. Definitely foresee this being a night of fun with lots of cocktails…

And by the Salvatore and I had finished our small talk about this particular show and how much fun he said it was… this is where our tickets ended up. Again at a bargain discounted price!
Woo-hoo! All up a very productive phone call to Salvatore which saved us not only nearly $400 and gave us some of the best seats in the house for each show, but also saved us from the Beatles ‘Love’ show or the Criss Angel show which are usually the only ones which aren’t sold out by the time people hit town… and all because I played up the clueless little Aussie chick thing. :S

Thanks Salvatore! You’re a gem… and I’m sorry, I still don’t like being called ‘mate’ but I’m not above using it whenever it’s going to help. Tonight, I am the Queen of Tickets!

Happy Birthday to me…

Posted on January 11, 2009 by borysSNORC

Yes it’s that time of year again… the birthday. Seems the older we get the birthdays tend to creep up on you with alarming speed. Not quite sure what happened to 2008 for example (but according to this journal I was obviously there 🙂 ). I received lots of lovely emails and messages on Facebook wishing me a Happy Birthday etc which is really nice. Most of us (me included) get very wrapped up in our busy lives and have an awful habit of forgetting friend’s birthdays. So it’s kinda cool that Facebook reminds us so we can send sweet nothings.

I’ve had a busy day… had brunch on BigSal and Surly’s deck with the family and was feeling really kinda flat this morning. Came home watched a movie and had a bit of a quiet afternoon before heading off to the Cirque du Soleil to see Dralion under the Big Top over at Hamilton with Yale! I went once before to see Alegria back in 1997 at the Royal Albert Hall in London with Bluddy Mary and it blew me away. The talent, hard work and creative vision that goes into these shows is nothing short of amazing. So I’ve been very excited all week waiting for today to roll around.

We had amazing Tapis Rouge tickets which came with lots of fabulous gourmet nibblies and champagne etc, a copy of the program and souvenir copy of the show’s soundtrack…. and of course, fantastic seats* in the 2nd row close to centre stage! From where we were sitting you could see the expressions on all the perfomers faces… the concentration and strain of the crazy feats they’re doing as well as the elation they obviously felt when they’d executed difficult manoeuvres. Some of the acts were gravity defying gymnastics, some were masterful examples of extremely well timed acrobatics and some of them were passionate and soulful displays of dance, music, strength and creativity. Parts of the show were so beautiful and so moving it’s actually quite difficult to find superlatives sufficient to describe them with justice.

It was an awesome experience that I’ll never forget and I am so glad I got to go…. I wish I’d had the good sense to see Quidam and Saltimbanco and Varekai when they were in Australia over the last few years. So I’ve had a pretty amazing birthday and my friends and family have made me feel pretty special… which goes a long way to overcoming that dreaded sigh of inevitability that comes every year with the awareness of getting one year older 🙂

*The seats were perfect for getting a great view…
but I have an awful feeling my back is not going to thank
me for sitting still for so long on nasty bench type seats.