California 2006

Thieves everywhere

Our Grand Canyon tour was cancelled! The aircraft couldn't land because of fog. After an hour wandering around the airport terminal, avoiding buying fake Indian trinkets, we were back at the Golden Nugget.

So we decided to go to a timeshare selling presentation. This was the one sold to us yesterday as we walked into the hotel, with endless promises of free show tickets or gambling vouchers. It sounded fun, so at noon we were on an air conditioned coach with a dozen other suckers and taken off the the remotest outskirts of Las Vegas.

We were assigned Orsche as our personal representative for the day. She was from Hungary, and had met her husband in a dry cleaners. This we found out during the "look, I'm really a normal person and want to be your friend" stage of the sales pitch. And would you believe that we'll spend over $100,000 dollars on holidays during our lifetime whereas if we bought a timeshare in Vegas the increase in real estate value alone would be between 3 and 12% a year! Wow.

After two hours of this, and a look around the apartments, it was time to talk money. The price for the one week timeshare started at $33k. As we'd come to the presentation, she could offer it to us for $30k. We still weren't sure. She thanked us, and got a manager just to finish off the presentation (good cop/bad cop style). Who would have thought it - he authorised her to sell it to us for $25k plus two free weeks a year! Hmmm...we weren't convinced. But as we were obviously intelligent people he exclusively allowed us an opportunity that normally is only available to employees of the company. That brought the deal down to $10k. We explained that we just weren't at the right place in our lives to take advantage of this yet, and were thanked and ushered to the "corporate" area where they wanted our feedback on the presentation. There, would you believe it, the big corporate man was able to slash the last offer in half to a meagre $5k!!

So we signed up. No, of course we didn't, but left clutching vouchers for $100 of gambling. Thinking we'd have to devise a system to launder this through the roulette tables, Hannah took the vouchers to the "24 Karat Club" (of which she is now a valued member) and they handed her an $100 bill! She asked for them to split it into $20s, and grinned all the way back to the room. So she's celebrating our Las Vegas "winnings", but it's the hardest 3 hours I've ever had to work to earn $100.

The closest I got to the Grand Canyon

The Stratosphere

New York New York - they're building New London for 2010

The gateway to timeshare hell

Our air conditioned courtesy bus. It cost $500,000! Allegedly.

What a happy place to receive the hard sell. They did free sandwiches, though.

Who wouldn't want to live in a place like this?

Hannah remains unconvinced the the face of extreme salesmanship

Somebody's happy with their "winnings"

Our celebratory drink

My 24-hour Internet access runs out at 10pm here, but if you're lucky there may be another entry. If not, we're off to see the big casinos on the Strip tonight, via the world's largest gift shop!