New Year's Day

New Year’s Day was very relaxed.  We slept in then wandered down to the Flavours buffet for breakfast before heading back to the room for another nap and some rest.  Although not too hung over the cold and the late night had made up pretty tired.  Once we felt a little more awake we decided to head to the Machine Gun Vegas gun range to try out some serious firepower.  We chose MGV especially since they offer the chance to shoot a grenade launcher as well as hand guns, semi- and fully automatic weapons.

It was a strange experience seeing so many people in one place openly wearing handguns on their belts.  Considering gun ownership is supposedly common in America I haven’t seen anyone wearing one in any other place, although they did check us for guns, knives and other weapons at all the theme parks.  Rob and I both chose different packages which meant we were shooting completely different guns.  The expert helped me select three guns with relatively little kickback that I could control and Rob chose the Gamers package which gave him 4 guns, one of which was fully automatic.

The shooting range was a long narrow room at the rear of the store and while inside we had to wear eye protection and earmuffs at all times.  For each different gun we were given a choice of targets to shoot at, all of which had different bad guys.  The guns were held in a locked cage at the back of the room.  The supervisor would bring us the guns one at a time, show us how to grip and aim then load them and set us loose.

First up were the hand guns, I was shooting a Glock and Rob had a Barretta.  The Glock had more recoil than I had expected and my arms were getting a little sore half way through the second clip.  Next up were semi-automatic rifles (Kathryn: MR556A1, Rob FN-SCAR) which we were able to rest on the ledge in front of us to fire so the weight didn't have much impact.

I then took a step into the past and shot a Thompson M1A1, also better known as the classic Tommy gun. Rob followed this up with M4 Carbine, which was a beast of a gun, and he rounded it out with the recognisable AK-47. It was a great experience to be able to do something we can't easily do in New Zealand.

When we left MGV we put the top down on the car for the first time and headed a little way out of town to one of the shopping malls in search of snow gear.  Although the day was sunny it was still pretty cold with the top down so we also had the air conditioning on hot to cut out some of the chill.  At the shopping mall we each bought a pair of snow pants that actually fits instead of the horrible ones we got online in New Zealand.  While browsing the other gear they had available, Rob found battery powered boot warmers which looked like fun but unfortunately we couldn't find gloves with built in wrist guards.  We drove back to Harrah’s to change and meet up with the group for dinner and a variety show at Planet Hollywood.

Dinner was again at Flavors, after which we walked down the strip to Planet Hollywood. With some time to kill we went off on what was going to be a quick look around the Planet Hollywood shops, but Kathryn ended up with a new pair of shoes somewhere along the way.

Planet Hollywood’s V Theatre is the home of ‘V’, tagged as the ultimate variety show in Vegas. The show is essentially an accumulation of support acts into one show, bound together by one presenter. Led by the very funny juggler Wally ‘Go Faster’ Eastwood, the show included amazing acrobatics, magic, physical strength and roller skating, as well as comedy right through.

We were seated with most of the Contiki group and once the show finished we all headed downstairs for a ride to the club for the evening. Being the last night, Contiki had arranged for us all to travel in Hummer limos which, while not something that would normally excite me, seemed to fit into the Vegas theme of excess. With a few free bottles of champagne and what felt like a 20 cameras we were soon living it up like it’s what we did every day.

We got to the club (Moon at The Palms) and decided that we’d at least go up and take some photos and look around, as the club is at the top of The Palms tower. Because we’d planned to just go home after the limo ride due to an early day tomorrow I wasn’t dressed to go out, so it was bit of a gamble to get in but I managed to get in with a group. We all met up again at the top of the elevator and took a few more photos, before we headed back down and took a taxi back to the hotel.