VegasChatter

But we've found some ways to get around the blind booking bit, largely thanks to Betterbidding.com where past Hotwire and Priceline bookers dish on what hotels they were given.

When we made our reservation a week ago for our upcoming trip, we decided to use Hotwire since we just wanted a cheap hotel for Thursday night. (We're splurging for the Friday and Saturday night hotel.) We found a four-star in the central strip district for $54 a night. Cross-checking on BetterBidding.com, we guessed it could either be Paris Las Vegas or Planet Hollywood, both of which would be fine with us.

We entered our pertinent info and sure enough, we were assigned a room at Planet Hollywood. Sweet.

Arriving in Vegas took a little longer than we planned last night, so we called the hotel from Highway 15 at around 830pm and told them it would be another two hours. The affable front desk made a note of this in the computer and that was that. When we finally rolled our bag up to registration at PH, we had to wait for about 10 minutes as they checked in other customers. But it was worth the wait.

Since we always ask for an upgrade just to see what the options are, we kindly asked the front desk agent, if there were any upgrades. (No folded up $20 trick needed here.) And he told us that we were already assigned to a very nice suite.

How nice? Um. It was a 1,500-sq.ft. Panoramic Suite on the 26th floor. It was bigger than our apartment. And it was the NASCAR room so memorabilia from famous NASCAR drivers were on display. Oh and how could we forget the views overlooking Paris and beyond the Strip to The Bellagio?

All in we paid $72 including taxes. Yes, we know. Insane. And for the record, this upgrade wasn't because of our affiliation with HotelChatter, Jaunted or VegasChatter.

We'll have the full review of the hotel suite on Monday as we're in transit to our next hotel in Vegas but see kids, this is why it sometimes pays to play the Hotwire Roulette Game.