Thanksgiving Trip 2019

This marks the very first blog in the Nesters choo-choo trip travel blog.

Las Vegas Thanksgiving 2019

What a fantastic trip! Full of memories and experiences! Exhausted, yet fulfilled!

As grandparents of 7 children, ages 2 to 11 along with a 17-year-old foreign exchange student, and 9 adults, we not only made it work, we all had a terrific time. We stayed at the Bluegreen Club 36 resort with the presidential suite and a standard room next door. The rooms are beautiful with gorgeous views and had everything we needed. The resort is located off the strip, yet close enough to shuttle or walk to the Las Vegas Strip. (We walked two days to the strip with the whole group!)

The resort staff team was the best we’ve ever experienced! The staff were kind and courteous. The guest services, concierges, check in and out staff, security, janitors, housekeeping, everybody! The presidential suite was perfect for our family. There is a game room with a pool table, theater, and enough play space that worked out perfectly for the children. The children had their own space while the adults were able to visit, play games, watch tv, cook, and rest. There are three nice sized bedrooms, a dining room, living room, kitchen, and the game/theater room. Each bedroom has its own bathroom that are large and inviting. The showers in two of the bathrooms are large walk in’s with rain showers, what a luxury! These two bathrooms also have large soaking spa size tubs, and double sinks. The kitchen has a pantry, oven, dishwasher, full size refrigerator, and a full island bar above the sink and counter.

The resort has an inside pool on the fourth floor that was everyone’s favorite.

We made a full thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen and hosted 23 people comfortably without being overcrowded.

We called maintenance for different instances, and they were on top of it. They had to replace our air conditioner unit and had it replaced in less than an hour. We requested towels, Kleenex, toilet paper, etc., and they delivered everything in a timely matter and were always cheerful.

Again, I can’t say enough about the staff at the Bluegreen Club 36 Resort. The guest services gave the kids a goody bag. When the check-in desk found out we were celebrating two birthdays, they gave each a gift and a card.

What I learned from this trip?

This was a first-time trip to Las Vegas for most of us, so obviously we wanted to see and experience Las Vegas. Shows for 17 people was not realistic nor affordable, so we chose to walk the strip. To prepare, I did some research and found a list of “free” things to do with children while in Las Vegas. I was going to refer to this link in the blog, however, there are no “free” things to do in Las Vegas! This was very disappointing, but the experience we had made up for the disappointments. In other words, if you want to do anything other than walk, bring lots of money.

However, now that we’ve experienced the strip, I can give some suggestions for parents or grandparents with kids. Be sure to bring a wagon, we had one and it was a life saver for the little ones. (The older ones wanted to get into the wagon as well, including the adults.) At the Bluegreen Resort Club 36, there are two shuttles. One goes to Planet Hollywood and one goes to Treasures Island. The shuttle to Treasure Island stops shuttling in the afternoon, so be sure to plan accordingly. We ended up walking to the strip both days because we weren’t ready until 11:40 A.M. each morning, missing the last shuttle until the afternoon. The shuttles take a break between 11:30 A.M. and 1 P.M. We didn’t want to wait, so we walked. The first day, we took the shuttle back from Planet Hollywood to the resort. The second day, we took two extra-large Uber’s back to the resort.

Hindsight?

Both days we stopped to take bathroom breaks and ate lunch as soon as we arrived at our designation. There are restaurants and a store connected to the Club 36 resort. I would recommend eating lunch at one of the restaurants at the resort, then catch the Treasure Island shuttle at 1:00 P. M.  instead of walking to the strip. Treasure Island is the better shuttle to take for the kids. There is so much for the kids to see and enjoy around the Treasure Island area. The first day when we walked to the strip, we stopped right before Treasure Island, and we saw Minnie, Mickie and Paw Patrol, as well as a few other life size characters, but that’s all we did. We were all so tired when we got to Treasure Island, we turned around and walked back to the shuttle to return to the resort. We had to walk quite a while back to Planet Hollywood because the shuttle at Treasure Island had already stopped for the day.

The second day we walked to Excalibur and took the tram to Mandalay Bay to find the “free” Shark tank. That was fun, yet the so called “free” Shark tank costs over $20 per person. To do the math, that’s over $340 to see the aquarium. If you have that in your budget, I’m sure it would be a great thing to do. However, we were under the impression that we could walk by the aquarium so the kids could see the sharks, or at least see a cool aquarium. This information was per the free kids’ sites I found online. This is not so. But again, it was worth the tram ride. We then took the tram back to Excalibur and then walked to New York New York and went to the Coca-Cola, M & M, and Hershey stores. They were great fun! There were lots of fun stuff for kids, not to mention the candy. They also had great picture taking opportunities. But again, be sure to have your pocketbook handy! Everything is a bit pricey.

The view of the lights at night were beautiful. I will never forget the look on the face of our 2-year-old granddaughter. While walking back to the shuttle, the first night, she was watching the people walking by and kept looking up at the lights with her mouth wide open in wonder and excitement. When we saw Mini and Mickie Mouse, she literally fell out of the wagon trying to get their attention.

There are endless lists of things to do and places to go, a search online for things to do in Las Vegas will bring up any info you need. Remember though, when it says free, check it out, chances are, it’s not free.

The closest to a train we came on this trip was the tram. We filled up an entire car.

This experience included our entire family, but what memories we made! And as grandparents instead of parents, we had the privilege of experiencing a family trip in an entirely different way.

Choo-choo!