Family-friendly Las Vegas Attractions

A friend of mine said she was taking her daughter for the first time to Las Vegas. She's under 21, so going to the casinos or bar is not a thing. I haven't been to Vegas this year, which means I didn't actually write any updated lists for cool things to do for all ages, because Vegas is a town that has something for everyone, if you know where to look. 

You can take an elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower

Usually, people only know about Circus Circus, which is not the best hotel to stay at, but it has circus acts throughout the day and in the back is the Adventuredome, an indoor theme park that feels like it's outside that is for big and little kids. Eric and I spent an afternoon there on one visit and we had a great time.

The Fremont Street Experience canopy show

Here are some other ideas for your trip with those that are under legal drinking age:

• Pinball Hall of Fame on S. Las Vegas Blvd moved a few years ago from their nondescript location on Tropicana. The new location is larger and very easy to find. You can learn a little bit more about it here.

• Springs Preserve, which is part living history, part zoo. They have hands-on exhibits, videos, walk-thru exhibits, animal talks, and a hiking area, or you can take the tram around. The restaurant is fantastic, too. Check out my whole post on it here.

• The Mob Museum downtown has a bunch of interactive exhibits that gives you the history of Las Vegas. I've been here several times and it's a perfect place to beat the heat and learning about where you're visiting, and it's literally one block from the excitement of Fremont Street. If you aren't traveling with kids, head downstairs to their speakeasy, where you can get some of the best drinks in the city based on prohibition times. Here's a link to my large post.

• The Neon Museum is great for seeing retired neon signs from hotels and The Strip in general. They have a night tour and a day tour. Both are great and are a bit different. Only about 5-6 signs are wired to light up at night, but the whole space has lighting, so you can still see all the others well, too. Here are links to my full nighttime tour and daytime tour.

• Ethel M’s Chocolate has a free little chocolate-making viewing and outside has a free cactus garden that’s really beautiful. We try to go see this every trip, because it's free and chocolate is awesome. Many nights you can visit the cactus garden all lit up. I have yet to make it there after dark though. Check out my post on that here.

• Mandalay Bay's Shark Reef has a ton of cool aquatic animals. You will have to walk all the way to the back of the hotel, which seems like a mile, but it's probably not. I do this every 5 years or so and it's always worth the price and you completely forget you're in Las Vegas.

• Downtown on Fremont there’s a vintage toy shop that is like a museum, but they sell everything there, called the Toy Shack. I spent a good hour here wandering around and marveling at everything. We bought a few things as well. The prices were really reasonable, even for vintage items. You can view my post with this included here.

• Fremont Street also has free concerts on certain days, with a lot of well-known artists, and it’s free. There's a bit of a more adult vibe here, but I still think it's worth the visit. If you aren't going there during the summer, you can still enjoy free concerts, and the canopy lights up every night with random dance parties, so I highly recommend it.

• I definitely always recommend people walk around downtown (Fremont St and then a couple blocks on both sides) to see all the street art and sculptures that came from Burning Man festivals over the years. It’s particularly great to go as the sun is going down and you can end at the Container Park to see the mantis spit fire every 15 mins or so. He dances to music. You can see my post on the downtown arts district here.

• Everything at Area 15 is awesome, but absolutely Omega Mart. It’s an interactive museum experience with a mystery you can solve. We were there for 5 hours and only left because we were hungry. There is a lot of crawling and climbing steps, if you want to do that, so wearing comfy clothes and shoes is important - You can also just go to Area 15, but you need to have a free ticket that you can reserve online. There’s a little art park out front with amazing stuff. See my post about Omega Mart and BTS (behind the store) of Omega Mart.

• The Park between the MGM and New York New York has some really fun places to eat, including a Hello Kitty Café, and you can see some wonderful art pieces here as well as see musicians play live music in the evenings. Here's a little piece I wrote on it in my post on freebies, which might give you other ideas for your kids.

10 Tips For Saving On Travel Food

Food isn’t like souvenirs. No one goes on vacation without buying it. You have to make room in your travel budget to eat, but there are many ways you can make that part of your expenses smaller. Just because you are trying to save money doesn’t mean that you have to eat fast food or sandwiches for every meal or can’t experience the best cuisine a place has to offer. Below is my top 10 list of ways to stretch your food funds.

Ask the locals where they eat

Odds are, people who live where you’re traveling don’t eat at the fanciest restaurant in town. You know who eats there? Tourists and people celebrating their anniversaries. The “normal” people eat at affordable dining establishments that are also delicious and serve food from the local area. They are going to want to point you towards some of the city’s gems and impress you because, unlike hotel staff, they don’t get paid for recommending the crazy expensive steakhouse down the street.

Look forward to lunch

You probably aren’t always frugal. While on vacation, it’s okay to splurge sometimes. If that includes going to a top-rated restaurant that you know is spendy, make reservations for lunch instead of dinner. The food will be just as tasty, but cheaper than at dinnertime.

Split an entrée

Most restaurants serve you at least twice as much food as you can eat. Don’t be weighted down having to carry around leftovers or feel bad about food left on your plate. Share a main dish with your travel companion. Most hotels will split an entrée for no fee, but even if you have to pay for an extra plate, it only costs a few dollars, which is cheaper than paying for a whole other meal.  

Order an appetizer for a meal

Most appetizers can be plenty to fill you up and can be as little as a third of the price of an entrée. This is also a great option for you if you like to try many different dishes. Order two to three for the same price as a meal.

Hit up the food carts

Food carts can offer a huge variety of different local and international foods, but can be half the price of (or less) than dining at a sit-down restaurant. With this kind of savings, you can try fare from several carts with no regrets.

Shop the farmers market

There’s no better way to experience local cuisine and interacting with residents than a visit to the closest farmers market. You will find a variety of food, including meats, fruits, vegetables and cheeses. Purchase enough for lunch and enjoy the afternoon having a picnic in a nearby park.

Rent a vacation home or stay in a hotel with a kitchen(ette)

This is my favorite way to stretch my food budget, because there are so many options. Renting can be a great value over hotel stays if you’ll be visiting for a week or more, plus it gives you the chance to check out the local grocery store. Make many of your own meals and save considerably. I don’t often like to spend money on eating breakfast out, so I love to buy new cereals and pastries I can enjoy in my room.

Sign up for Groupon

If you haven't been using Groupon, what are you even waiting for? Save 40-90% off food and more, meaning you can eat for way less than you originally planned, meaning you can splurge on a fancy meal, spend that money elsewhere, or actually just stay on budget. Sign up at Groupon for the destination of your next vacation (they cover many international locations as well as the United States) and eat for less!

Stay at a hotel that offers free breakfast

You don’t realize how much dining out can cost until you go on vacation. A reasonable breakfast can cost between $8-15 per person. If you multiply that by the number of people you’re traveling with and the number of days you’ll be staying, that number can be huge. If you find a hotel in your price range that offers free breakfast, you’ve hit a jackpot of savings.

Don’t order off the kids’ menu

If you travel with children, you’ll notice that most kids’ menus seem to have the same small rotation of foods. Obviously, little ones don’t just live on hot dogs, pizza, chicken nuggets and PB&J sandwiches. Not only do they charge an outrageous amount for these “staples” that cost hardly anything to make, but they offer hardly any nutritional value and your kids are likely to eat only half of it before declaring they’re full. Instead, order a meal that you both will eat and share. This saves you money and might get them to eat a vegetable or two.

While there are other ways to save on dining, these have proven to be the most useful for my travels and are my first suggestions to anyone asking how to cut costs on their trip. They are easy to do and will enable you to try a bigger variety of foods, too. You’ll experience more of the city and its people, giving you a greater vacation experience.

How do you save money on dining out when you travel?

Apps for Connecting With Home

When you travel, it can sometimes be hard to keep in touch with home, especially if you're traveling out of the country.  I'm not about to just cut off all communication for a week or two just because I don't want to pay $.60 for a text message or much more than that per phone call minute. Some international phone plans are better than that, but a lot still aren't. Here are the ways I stay connected with home when I travel. 

Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash

You could rely on email, but if you're traveling solo or actually want to speak to a human being, that's a bit impersonal, though you can also call/text people in addition to emailing them all the fun details of your days. I tend to do both, but I like for people to know that I haven't died, and I want to see my dog while I'm away for more than a few days.

Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

Voxer

Instead of texting, I use Voxer. Not only is it free, but it works off WiFi, so it can push through your "texts" when you have a signal, but will timestamp it when you actually sent it. It will also tell you when your message was delivered and when it was read. If the recipient clicks on it, can see exactly where it was sent from. This way you save money and people know you're alive, and if you go missing, they know where you were last. Voxer allows you to send/receive messages, videos and voice recordings, and it's free, unless you upgrade for more capabilities. Then you can also use the walkie-talkie feature with your travel companions. You could use WhatsApp instead. I just didn't think it was as user-friendly.

Photo by Glen Anthony on Unsplash

Skype

Yes, I'm old, apparently, because the kids all snicker when you mention Skype instead of Facetime. One, I don't have an iPhone, and two, I don't want one. Skype is mostly free, easy to use, and allows you to actually see another person, even if you think you look like a hideous beast on camera like I do. 

Trying to figure out a time to talk to someone when there's a very significant time difference can be difficult, but I generally send a Voxer to my mom (or whoever I'm going to call), to let them know when I'm planning to Skype, so we can have the app open. I use it on my phone, so I can give them a walk thru of my Airbnb. Ha! (Most of the cooler kids are using Discord, which is a good way to talk to people for free if you both know the time to meet there. We use it for D&D and meetings for a non-profit group I'm in.)

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

Swarm

This doesn't strictly help you stay in touch, but it does let people know where you are at any given time. I check in to most places I go, because I like a record of things I did, in case I forget, but I also like my friends to know where I am, just in case. If I'm away and I don't check in somewhere for a day, they probably know there's something wrong. Plus, Swarm check-ins are fun and you earn points and stickers. 

Photo by Oleg Magni on Unsplash

TripIt

This is another way for me to allow people to keep tabs on me. I upload my entire itinerary to TripIt, including my flights and where I'm staying, so I have something with all my confirmation numbers and addresses and phone numbers in one place (which also saves paper) and then I share it with one or two other people who like to know what I'm doing and who I want to check in with.

These are just a few of my favorite apps, but they are especially useful for keeping up with people wherever you are. If you have a favorite app to stay in touch with home, I want to hear about it. Let me know about it in the comments.