Oh What a Night!

Last Christmas our dear family friend and former neighbor Debbie bought us tickets to go see Jersey Boys as a family. We are huge Franky Valli fans! Every time I hear his songs I think of music blasting while doing our Saturday chores. They had sold out their LA performances so she got the tickets for Vegas! Unfortunately it landed on conference weekend.

We woke up at 4:15 am on Saturday to meet Kerilynn and Cory (who we carpooled with). Our plans were to meet at 5 am so we could make it to LV in time to watch conference at a stake center however we all weren't in the car til 6...and then there was a request for breakfast in Baker at Bob's Big Boy. I didn't even know they still existed.

Cory, LeeElle, Bob, John, & Kerilynn

We notice Bob and John had similar hair do's going on

By the time we made it to Vegas it was 10:30-so we missed conference. I was bummed.

We decided to walk around and wait for the rest of the fam. to arrive. We went to the Coke shop and had our own little international soda taste test. There were 16 soda's from different countries. Cory was the moderator

They have a ton of coke paraphernalia

The soda's



The Beverly from Italy tasted awful-bleck! It seriously tasted like Robitussin with carbonation. My personal favorite was the Smart Apple from China. I love the Chinese names...Smart Apple and Smart Watermelon. Most of the fruit ones were pretty good but there were a few that were gross. I'm not a fan of ginger soda, it makes your throat burn, I don't know how my grandma drinks that stuff!

We also hit up the M&M factory and decided to kill some time watching their 3-D movie. Word to the Wise-it's not worth your time, luckily it was free, the 3-D glasses didn't help de-blur the film much but we looked good in them!

On the strip

After stuffing ourselves at the delicious Rio buffet we made our way to the Palazzo to see...

We got there a half our early to get our seats. When we arrived there was a problem with the tickets. They said we were in row B-B. There was no row B-B. And the row Debbie had purchased tickets for (first row in the back balcony) had people in it. hmmm. The supervisor was called and explained they would figure out what was going on. The Seven o'clock start time was quickly approaching and the theater was filling up and we were still standing in the aisle seat-less. The show started so we stood by the door trying to watch the play but it wasn't really working. Finally the manager came back and apologetically explained that they had double booked the seats. She then said they had 12 seats throughout the theater so if we would split up we could still see the show and then after she would "take care of the rest". **Note: it was opening weekend of the play and the casino/hotel isn't completely open so they're new at this** We then set off to our seats. John and I were some of the last to go. We followed the usher to the orchestra level and proceeded down the stairs and we just kept going and going and going and going. He stopped at second row center! If there had been a pit orchestra we would have been sitting on the 4th and 5th chair violinists laps, respectfully. Pretty good seats eh? At intermission I made sure to find the rest of the family to rub in our seats. After gloating we decided to switch places with my brother Collin, who loves Franky Valli, and Cory. We all were on the orchestra level and had good seats so it wasn't that bad.

After the play the manager apologized more and then reimbursed Debbie for 4 tickets and then gave us 12 tickets to be redeemed at any time for any show at the Palazzo or Venitian (Jersey Boys, Phantom of the Opera, Wayne Brady, and Blue Man Group are the current shows). Not bad. So we missed the first 15 min. or so but we all got better seats and have free tickets to come back! We then took our picture in front of the sign and as we were taking the last photo some random guys came and stood in the picture with us. They just so happened to be cast members! It was a really fun night!

Overall I really liked the play. The only downside was the amount of swearing. I don't know if it's Italians or people from New Jersey, maybe it's both but they love to swear. The profanities were a bit excessive, OK, they were way over the top. But the songs were great, the actors did a fantastic job, they actually played the instruments-very impressive! I loved the way the told the story and set it up. Thank you Debbie we had a great time! So when's our next trip?