jamesq | Estrella/Vegas 2010 - Part 15, The Good, the Bad and the Kà

The other show we wanted to see in Las Vegas was the Cirque du Soleil show Kà. There was a bit of a debate as to which Cirque show to catch. I had never heard of Kà, so I was pushing for Love because I like the Beatles. I was also partial to Zumanity because I like nudity. Finally, there was O which was the fourth of the "permanent" Las Vegas Cirque shows.

I wasn't married to any of these. While I was kind of hoping for Love, the others talked me into Kà. I'm glad they did - Kà was the best stage show I've ever seen. And I've seen stuff in the West End of London as well as the world-renowned Tropicana show in Havana.

Seriously, if you're in Vegas, beg, borrow or steal a ticket. It's worth it.

It had better be worth it, we went through a lot of trouble just trying to buy tickets. And therein lies a tale:

It started that afternoon when we discovered an ad in one of the hotel's magazines advertising some percentage off of Kà tickets. Basically, phone the toll-free number to order the tickets and mention the secret word ("Winter" I think).

othelianna was handling it and spent a considerable amount of time on the phone with the operator. We'll call her Alpha. At first, Alpha didn't know about the special. Then she discovered that there were only a limited amount of the "Winter" tickets available and the current allotment was sold out. But she persevered. Was anyone in the armed forces, she asked. Nope. Anyone staying at the MGM Grand? Nope.

Finally, she gave us 25% off of our four tickets and we're not entirely sure what category she did it under.

othelianna's credit card was charged and we had a confirmation number to use when grabbing our tickets at the counter.

Let me repeat that because it's important for what comes next. The credit card was charged and we had a confirmation number. Our tickets had been purchased.

Now if you've been paying attention to the rest of my stories, you know that there was five of us in Las Vegas. We only bought four tickets because we weren't sure if

thekillerb69 would be joining us. He said he's only partake if he won big at his morning poker tournament.

Now this isn't just a random thing, he's actually quite good at poker so it wasn't a forgone conclusion how it would turn out.

He came in second or third. High enough to make a profit.

So about ten minutes after buying the tickets, we're all hanging around the hotel room deciding where we want to lose money next, when

thekillerb69 comes in and asks if he can join us at Kà. No problem we say, let's just call the operator back and get an extra ticket.

We got a different operator, we'll call her Omega. Whereas Alpha did her best to help us, Omega did her best to piss us off, succeeding admirably in this goal. If it wasn't the generally unhelpful attitude, it was her putting us on hold for twenty minutes.

othelianna was literally counting down from 60 (whereupon she was going to hang up) when Omega got back to us.

It seems we shouldn't have been sold the original tickets because we didn't qualify for any sort of discount, so she canceled the original order. Now we didn't have any tickets at all because Omega took a dislike to us. Sucks to be you.

At this point we were livid. We also had our heart set on Kà. We had two options and we split up to attempt them both.

1)

othelianna and I (being a big, ugly and generally creepy looking guy) would go directly to the MGM Grand to bitch and get our original ticket back, and maybe some kind of deal because of poor customer service.

2) The others would go to one of those last minute discount ticket kiosks along the strip and see if they could get tickets there. I had walked by one in the morning and it was advertising Kà tickets for about $20 off. Not great, but better then nothing.

We got to the MGM Grand and found the general hotel ticket kiosk. This was for all the shows at the MGM Grand, not just Kà. Talking to the people there, we got a lot of "so sorry, nothing we can do". I was about ready to start escalating things to management when the guy I was talking to says "You can get two-for-one tickets if you're an MGM Grand Players Club member". It didn't cost anything to join and you could sign up in the casino.

It would have been nice to know that earlier.

We excuse ourselves and find two things while trying to find the right place. First, Kà has it's own ticket booth with way more people manning it. Second, the MGM Grand casino floor is a big place.

Eventually we find the right place and spend a half an hour waiting in line to join the club. Once we finally made it, our outlook improved by leaps and bounds. The staff at this booth actually knew what they were doing and was friendly and helpful. We got our coupons and headed to the Kà counter. There we find another super friendly and competent staff member. We got five tickets for Kà, and he even knocked the fifth ticket 50% off, just so everything was nice and even across the board.

Remember Omega, the girl who tried to screw us? If she had done nothing at all, the MGM Grand would have made about $90 each off of us, and we'd be congratulating ourselves on the good deal we got through Alpha. Instead she risked us not seeing the show at all and the MGM Grand making nothing. But thanks to the helpful staff who actually worked on the floor of the casino, we ended up seeing Kà for about $60 each. So while my experience with Omega leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth (and the follow up with the general ticket kiosk staff wasn't much better), my experience with the Players Club and the Kà ticket counter staff went well beyond redeeming the rest of it.

Would I stay at the MGM Grand? Maybe, if I found a sweet deal on the suites. I might rewrite this entry and send it to the MGM Grand management first though, just to make sure they don't backslide.

So go see Kà, but join the MGM Grand Player's Club first.