Enhance Your Las Vegas Trip: Planning Ahead to Maximize Your Vacation

When you first decide to go to Las Vegas, you are probably really excited. Then when you actually start to plan the trip, you are probably overwhelmed! There is just so much to do in Vegas that it's hard to decide what things you should schedule time for. Plus, there are a lot of people who have been there who go and tell you "you must see this!" or "you have to eat here!" Some people go by the seat of their pants and just do whatever they happen to do, but if you really want to make the most out of your trip to Vegas, you should really plan it out. These tips should help.

Make a list
You can do this in excel or on a notebook, however you wish. The concept here is to make a grid to list attractions. Here's how I did it. I went to each major hotel's website and added each attraction that I was interested in to my list. The list had columns for Hotel, Attraction Title, Hours Open, and Price. Once I had visited the website for every hotel on the strip, I did a general search for "things to do in Vegas" and added random attractions that I found to add to my list. I listed EVERYTHING I could find that sounded interesting, even though I knew I wouldn't have time for all of those attractions.

Map it out
Once you have your list, print or download a copy of the Las Vegas Strip Map. Searching for that bold term in google will bring up dozens of maps. It really doesn't matter which you choose, just make sure it's pretty current. I copied a strip map into MS Word. Then I added on the sides a list of each attraction at each hotel. This made it so I could visually see where all the attractions were on the strip.

Make cuts
Once I did this, I was able to see more of how likely it would be that I could visit each attraction. Based on the hours the attraction was open, the location, and the price, I made some cuts and narrowed the list/map down to things I realllllly wanted to see. I decided to skip anything past the Treasure Island as I didn't feel really drawn to any of the attractions past that point.

Decide Day attractions and Night attractions
While most attractions can be visited any time of the day or night, some of them are just more exciting at night, and others make more sense to visit during the day. For example, you can see the Bellagio Fountains during the day, but it is so much cooler at night! You can go up the Paris Eiffel Tower during the day, but it looks so neat at night! Certain attractions aren't even open at night so make sure you have time to visit those during the day.

Make a plan by day
After I had my final list of things I realllllly wanted to see, it was time to plan it out. We were only going to be there so many days so we had to make a plan if we wanted to hit all of this. My main concern was that we wouldn't have a car, and we wouldn't want to use a cab or pay for transportation just to get up and down the strip. What I ended up doing was highlighting on my map things I thought we could hit on the same day based on location and timing. There were certain things I had to do on certain days because we had tickets for a few shows, so on those particular days I looked for attractions near the shows.

By doing all of this organizing and planning, I was able to say "1. eat at NYNY, 2. walk to Bellagio fountains, 3. etc". We didn't plan exact times that we would visit each attraction, but we did plan the path we would follow. Once in Vegas, I found this really did save us a lot of time and a lot of walking because we didn't go out of our way ever. For example, I knew I was visiting the Wax Museum on a certain day, so the previous days we never ventured down to the Venetian. Instead we planned to visit the Venetian as part of our path to follow after the Wax Museum. The same goes with the hotels at the end of the strip, the Luxor and Mandalay Bay. We were seeing a show at the Luxor so we waited until that evening to check out those 2 hotels. The last thing you want to do is walk all the way down to the Wynn and then turn around and have to go all the way to the Luxor for your second attraction of the day.

You won't be able to eat much
When planning your paths for each day, plan to only hit 2 restaurants or buffets a day. You really won't be able to eat more than 2 main meals a day, unless you are someone who can eat a lot. The first day we tried to eat 3 times at 3 good restaurants we wanted to visit, then by the second day we were stuffed and found it hard to eat breakfast. They may charge a lot for meals in Vegas, but that is because you get A LOT of food. One day we spent with my Grandpa and we only ate twice - 1 buffet at 8 AM and 1 buffet at 7 PM. When I am at home, I'm hungry much more often than that, but in Vegas, twice was enough!

Plan time to return to your hotel
If you want to enjoy not only the daytime, but also the nighttime, you will probably want to schedule a return to the hotel once a day for a change of clothes, and possibly even a break. It's really HOT in Vegas, even in September when we went, so you can get worn out walking the strip all day. We scheduled time each day to go back to the MGM Grand to shower, change, and lay around for an hour. Our path was usually designed in a circle so we would always easily circle back to the hotel before the evening hit. Then we felt refreshed and able to go out again for the evening. I also enjoyed being able to change clothes since I would wear shorts all day, and pants or a skirt at night.

Save some for next time
If you are finding it hard to plan everything into your trip this time, then save some for next time! I know we will return again, as almost everyone I know has been more than once. Anything that you can't make time for this visit, make a mental list to visit it next time. Things may not always be the same when you return, but I've noticed most attractions do not change over time as attractions my family members visited years ago are still popular today.

In the end
I was happy with the amount of things we were able to visit during our short trip to Vegas. I already have a list of things we can visit "next time" we go! We learned some things on this trip, such as only eating twice, that will make it even easier to plan our second trip. We did go off our planned path at times, but overall we stuck to the general itinerary and found it was perfect for hitting things at a good time each day. Take your time, plan ahead, and enjoy!!