Planning an epic status match run in Las Vegas

At the beginning of the month, news broke that Wynn Las Vegas is offering a temporary status match. That match includes the opportunity to get a complimentary Holland America cruise for two in an oceanview cabin. If you’ve been reading this blog over the past couple of years, you know that if you want me to visit your casino, all you need to do is dangle a free cruise in front of me. My wife and I are both planning to match in order to get two cruises for the price of one trip to Las Vegas to execute the match. However, this match has a lot of moving parts. We’re planning to make a family trip out of it and while it is far from “free”, we intend to soak up some Joy of Free while we’re making it happen.

Caesars Diamond status for a $100 Celebration dinner all around

My wife and I both have the Wyndham Earner Business card and as a result we each have Wyndham Diamond status that we’ve matched to Caesars Diamond status. We have a third family member joining us on this adventure who has the same.

Several years ago, all three of us used our Diamond celebration dinners together and I anticipate that will do so again this time around. To be clear, we’ve all dined together and gotten a single check and used all three Diamond celebration dinners together and that’s what we’ll do again. (Anyone have a recommendation about where we should eat with it?).

I should note that for each of the last several years, I’ve heard rumblings that one has to earn 100 tier credits in order to be able to use the $100 Diamond celebration dinner. Despite some people saying that was required, my wife was able to use her Diamond Celebration dinner without having earned any tier credits. We’ll see what happens here. I strongly suspect that the Diamond celebration dinner doesn’t load to a Caesars Diamond account immediately and that leads some people to inquire at customer service about their Celebration dinner….and (no shock here) customer service gives them incorrect info. But we’ll see how it works out.

Match to Wynn Platinum for $100 spa credit each

We we recently reported, Wynn Las Vegas is currently matching Caesars Diamond (as well as other programs) to Wynn Platinum (though May 31, 2024), That’s awesome for a few reasons.

First, Wynn doesn’t often offer matches. Second, Platinum status comes with some nice benefits, which include:

• $100 spa credit
• $150 dining credit in your birthday month
• Complimentary Holland America Cruise*.
  *To get the cruise, a Platinum member must have stayed twice (and on nonconsecutive nights). More detail in this post.

Unfortunately, our trip to Las Vegas does not happen in anyone in our party’s birthday month (we’ll be within 30 days of one person’s birthday, but not the right month!).

However, we’re heading to Las Vegas in large part to make use of this Wynn match (which will also lead to another match). We would of course like to both use the $100 spa credit and make the two stays necessary in order to be able to take the Holland America cruise, so we’ve planned enough days in Las Vegas to be able to each get two non-consecutive nights at Wynn. It’s not really cheap and it probably isn’t worth flying all the way to Las Vegas just for this, so we’ll try to maximize as many related things as we can.

It’s worth knowing that we don’t really have full details on the cruise yet. I understand that it gets booked through Wynn Rewards, so I anticipate that booking it may not be quite as smooth and easy as other “free” cruises where we’ve essentially been able to call the cruise line and book whatever we wanted. Wynn status is good through January 31, 2025. I had initially heard a report (from someone who was clear that the casino employee who quoted this didn’t sound sure about it) that the cruise had to be sailed by June 30th, but Dave Grossman at Miles Talk reported in their Facebook group yesterday that Wynn has told him that the sail-by date is January 31, 2025. If that’s correct, it will obviously be a limiting factor to consider.

Possible gamble on booking Wynn Las Vegas via Fine Hotels & Resorts

In order to trigger the free cruise portion of the Wynn Platinum match, we need to make two non-consecutive stays at Wynn.

We’re going to accomplish that by staying a night at Wynn (my wife and I will both match, each looking to get our own cruise, so we’ll book two rooms), spending a few nights somewhere else, and then one more night at Wynn (again with two rooms).

When booking via Fine Hotels & Resorts, Wynn comes with a $150 spa credit. Normally, I’d hate that. I’m generally not into spa treatments and I know that the spa at Wynn isn’t going to have anything on the menu that only costs $150, so that type of credit is really just an invitation to pay more than I otherwise would have.

However, this time around, I feel a bit differently about it. That’s because we expect to match to Wynn Platinum and as a result both my wife and I will each have a $100 spa credit to use from our Wynn Platinum status. If we’re able to combine that Wynn Platinum $100 credit with the $150 spa credit from the Fine Hotels & Resorts booking, we should be able to end up with a free 50-minute massage (or a bunch of things that would be either nearly free or highly discounted depending on what we book) based on the Spa menu Wynn publishes online.

This actually works out to be a great deal. One of the nights we’re booking via FHR costs about $280 all-in. We’ll use an Amex Platinum card that offers a $200 annual credit for prepaid Fine Hotels & Resorts bookings to take advantage of that benefit and we’ll end up with complimentary breakfast for two and the spa credit. That certainly seems reasonable enough!

I should note a couple of things though:

1. I don’t know for sure that booking via Fine Hotels & Resorts will count as qualifying nights for the free cruise. It seems likely that they would qualify (after all, a true high roller might have their Wynn stays comped completely), but I don’t have any data points on this.
2. Booking via Fine Hotels & Resorts is slightly more expensive than booking directly via Wynn. More precisely, it costs about $40 more all-in on our specific nights to book via Fine Hotels & Resorts than it does to book directly at the Wynn website when logged in with a Wynn Rewards account. I think that’s clearly worthwhile since an FHR booking comes with free breakfast for two, guaranteed 4pm late checkout, and a $150 spa credit.

I’m currently a bit split on what to do. We’ve done both — we’ve booked the same nights via both Fine Hotels & Resorts and directly via Wynn (all at flexible rates that can be cancelled). I’ve been hopeful that we’ll get a reader data point as to whether FHR stays count, otherwise I’m not sure I’ll gamble on a Fine Hotels & Resorts booking — I may end up going with the direct bookings, which cost a bit less overall but don’t come with benefits like free breakfast and the $150 spa credit (and if I book directly, I can’t use my $200 prepaid Fine Hotels & Resorts credit from an Amex Platinum card, times two).

We’ve got some time, so I’m hopeful that I’ll get a positive data point on Fine Hotels & Resorts bookings satisfying the requirement for non-consecutive stays before our trip.

Either way, Wynn isn’t cheap. It gets very expensive over a weekend, so we’ve booked a long weekend in order to get a weekday night at the beginning of the trip and a weekday night at the end of the trip to pay less for our Wynn stays. If we go with the rooms we’ve booked directly, it’s still going to end up costing us a little over $500 for our two non-consecutive nights. I’d be happy to be able to use a couple of FHR credits if I can!

Match Wynn Platinum to Fontainebleau Gold

Fontainebleau is the latest mega resort on the strip, having opened just a few months ago. When they first opened, we reported that they were status matching other casinos. That lasted for one day before they pulled it. Thankfully, Fontainebleau brought back their status match shortly thereafter (though only through June 2, 2024).

I went to Las Vegas in January for a wedding and I intended to match to Fontainebleau status while I was there, but I never got a chance to make it to the property. I’m glad for that “bad” luck because as it turns out Wynn Platinum matches to Fontainebleau Gold, which comes with a couple of great benefits.

Therefore, this time around, my wife and I (and our third family member) will all plan to match from Wynn Platinum to Fontainebleau Gold. That’s great because, among other benefits Fontainebleau Gold includes:

• $150 spa credit
• $150 dining credit

Since there are three of us executing the match, we expect to end up with a total of $450 in dining credits. We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to use those all together to buy a nice dinner for four adults and two kids!

Furthermore, according to reader reports, the spa credit actually buys both a massage and something like a hot stone add-on or an eye mask add-on at Fontainebleau. Note that you do need to pay the 20% gratuity in both cases — your spa and dining credits can’t be used to cover gratuity. So we’re on the hook for a $30 charge to use each credit, but that’s entirely reasonable to me.

I should add here that you can book a spa treatment without staying at the hotel. Apparently, on the weekends, they do not allow non-hotel guests to book spa treatments unless they have status. As a Fontainebleau Gold member, reports indicate that you can book a spa treatment without staying at Fontainebleau even on the weekend (so you’ll want to let them know that you have Gold status when you call to make your appointment).

The Ocean Prime Free Resorts World stay comes in handy again

We’ve long written about Atlantic City status matching as a path to a free MSC cruise or two, but one of the other benefits of executing the tier matching in Atlantic City (from Wyndham Diamond to Caesars Diamond to Hard Rock Icon to Ocean Prime) is that Ocean Prime status comes with a complimentary two-night stay at Conrad Las Vegas at Resorts World. That complimentary stay even comes with a $100 dining credit and $100 in free play!

My wife and I used our complimentary Resorts World stays back in January. We needed 3 nights in Las Vegas, so we booked overlapping nights in order to get all three nights we needed covered (in other words, I had booked Friday and Saturday nights and my wife and booked Saturday and Sunday nights and we just moved our stuff over to her room after she checked in). Unfortunately, we can’t use that benefit again.

However, the family member joining us has also done the Atlantic City matching and that worked out perfectly because it means that she had two free nights to use at Resorts World. As it so happens, Resorts World is right across the street (well, diagonally across the street) from both Wynn and Fontainebleau.

So we’ll spend our first night at Wynn and then my wife’s sister will spend three weekend nights at Conrad Las Vegas, two of which are completely free thanks to the Ocean Prime match (and she’ll get the dining credit and free play). That’s a great deal on the weekend nights we needed. The same two nights at the Conrad booked via the cheapest flexible rate through Hilton would have been more than $1,200. Getting that for $0 is great! There isn’t even a resort fee on those nights. She’ll then use Hilton Honors points to book the third night, which will ring in at right around our Reasonable Redemption Value for Hilton points — not the best deal in Vegas that night, but it beats switching hotels.

My wife and I and our kids can’t make use of the free Resorts World benefit since we’ve already used it, so we considered other options. I originally intended to stay at Rio now that it is a Hyatt property (and Globalist breakfast is at Hash House a Go-Go!!), but the location of Resorts World is just perfect for this stay with the matching at Wynn and Fontainebleau (and it doesn’t hurt that we just like Resorts World despite the sort of isolated location a the north end of the strip). I had a Hilton free night certificate to use and I expect my wife will receive her annual Hilton Aspire free night certificate soon. We’ll end up using a couple of free night certificates for this stay and probably go with a cash booking for the third night as it presents an opportunity to use my wife’s Hilton Aspire Hilton credit and the quarterly Hilton credit on my Hilton Business card assuming that they’ll let us split tender.

I’ll add that Resorts World does have a status match, but it doesn’t look like there are any benefits that make it worthwhile.

Putting it all together

All together, since we are doing this trip in three-player mode, we’ll end up with:

• $300 in Caesars Diamond Celebration dinner money
• $300 in Wynn Spa credit from Wynn Platinum
• $450 in Fontainebleau spa credit
• $450 in Fontainebleau dining credit
• $600 in Wynn spa credits from booking two rooms via Fine Hotels and Resorts twice (we haven’t booked an FHR room for my sister-in-law — if we do, this will increase)
• Free breakfast for 2 on a couple of mornings at Wynn
• $100 in dining credit and free play credit at Resorts World for one person
• Hopefully, 3 complimentary ocean view Holland America cruises

The trip will end up costing us:

• About $525 for the two non-consecutive Wynn nights if we book directly and forgo Platinum card FHR credits
• Round trip flights to Las Vegas (outbound booked with Southwest Rapid Rewards points; return TBD)
• A couple of Hilton free night certificates
• About $300 for one paid night at Conrad Las Vegas, which will be reimbursed by credit card credits (note that I have gift card money from my Q1 credit on the Hilton Business card also)

That’s all going to be a lot of fun. I won’t argue that this is all “worth it” exactly. The flights to Vegas aren’t cheap, and neither is Wynn (we could probably just about book at least one cruise considering the value of the miles we’ll use getting to and from Vegas and the cost of the Wynn stay). I don’t yet know how difficult it is going to be to book the Holland America cruise (I understand that this gets booked through Wynn rather than being self-booked, so I anticipate some more friction). And that’s to say nothing of the time required to fly to Las Vegas and stay several nights in order to get non-consecutive stays at Wynn.

That said, we happened to have a long weekend coming up where there’s no school for 5 days and we were planning to go somewhere. We enjoy Las Vegas enough that this seemed like a good enough deal to make for a fun quick getaway (particularly when you consider how little we’ll need to spend on food!). It’s not something I would recommend, but I think it’s going to be fun. When we asked the kids if they remembered going to Las Vegas last year, my six year old immediately remembered the arcades at Circus Circus and Excalibur — or, as I explained to a lost adult who mistakenly took the elevator to the “Fun Dungeon” at Excalibur, “the machines with no hope of getting your money back”. We’ve got some fun ideas in mind for the weekend, so getting a trip where we’re able to leverage benefits to make it feel like a good value and we have the chance to hopefully pick up 2 more cruises seems like a good time to me.

While Vegas isn’t for everyone, it’s nice to know that we’ve got some winning in our future without setting foot on a casino floor thanks to some strategic casino matching — all courtesy of the Wyndham Earner Business card. As a reminder, all of this is possible because that card, which costs $95 per year, comes with Wyndham Diamond status, which matches to Caesars Diamond status. Thank you, Wyndham Earner Business for what will be yet another fun weekend filled with credits that extend some Joy of Free thanks to that Wyndham Diamond status.