I Said Yes to Every Upgrade in Las Vegas. Here’s What It Cost.
4 min
LAS VEGAS—Few places vacuum money from you like this glittering gambling and entertainment playground. That’s true for the visitors in town for Sunday’s Super Bowl —official motto: Excessive Celebration Encouraged. And it’s true for visitors any time, with the $US200 seats at the pool and the $US800 bottle service at nightclubs. All before you step onto the casino floor. You can fly here for as little as $US50 if you play your cards right. But people come to Vegas to spend, and the businesses here know it. This place hits travellers with potential upgrades every few steps. So I flew in for an experiment, a real-life version of the Jim Carrey comedy “Yes Man” (or “Yes Day” if you’re a Jennifer Garner fan). I said yes to every upgrade and VIP package to see just how much you get for your money, and what can be skipped. I had parameters. The $US3,999 helicopter ride to the top of Valley of Fire State Park for yoga was out. As was the $US4,000-a-night upgrade offer to a three-bedroom presidential suite at my hotel. Still, I cut lines, got a massage in the reserved seats at the Aria sportsbook during an NFL wild-card game, relaxed in a private lounge before a show at the Sphere , and drank a French 75 from a prime window seat at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. In all, I spent $US976 to upgrade my Vegas visit. Was every upcharge worth it? Absolutely not. But a few are worth your money.
Yes, yes and yes
The offers began minutes after I booked a room for two nights at the luxury all-suite Palazzo resort. The price: $US480 before taxes and fees for two nights, a relative bargain on a holiday weekend in January. How much for a room booked last-minute for Super Bowl weekend? $US1,700 a night. I landed two upgrades after an email prompt gauged my interest: $US75 for early check-in and $US57 a night for a city view, the cheapest room category upgrade. Early check-in fees irk me , but this was worth it after my early flight. I was in the room by 11 a.m. The room was swank. The view of Treasure Island and the Mirage was nothing special.
I headed to Area15, an arts and entertainment complex. First stop: Meow Wolf ’s Omega Mart, a popular immersive art experience that takes visitors into a bizarro grocery store that links to an alternate dimension. Admission is $US54; upgrading to a $US99 VIP package promised to “enhance my experience” but bought me a souvenir pin, VIP lanyard, a cocktail and a 15% discount I didn’t use at the gift shop. Maybe the good stuff comes with the $US129 scavenger hunt package. (As I perused products like cans of faux La Croix in mashed-potato flavour and wandered a dizzying hall of mirrors, I wondered how many visitors upgraded with a trip to a local dispensary beforehand.) Admission to stroll around the rest of Area15 is free, but I upgraded to a $US35 pass, which included five attractions, the best of which was the outdoor Liftoff ride with great views of the Strip.
Cutting lines for crab legs
Many resorts here gave up the buffet business for good during the pandemic . The Wicked Spoon buffet at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas still packs them in. Saturday brunch had an hourlong wait during my visit. VIP line to the rescue! $US35 gets you a head start on the $US62 all-you-can-eat feast of snow crab legs, sushi and slow-roasted strip loin. The best part: The manager overseeing the line comped the fee because she said she enjoyed talking to me and a friend while we waited. (I never identify myself to employees as a Wall Street Journal reporter on these types of assignments.) Suddenly playing with house money, I sprang for the unlimited mimosa package for $US33 after tax and tip, to go with the brunch base price. There is a 90-minute limit, but I had places to be.
One movie, $US245
My colleague Jason Gay calls the Sphere, the giant orb that sits behind the Venetian, a “beach ball peaking on acid.” He paid $US539 to see U2 at the new venue. In the biggest single splurge on my trip, I paid $US245 to see a 50-minute movie there. The Director’s Seat package promised VIP entry, pre show lounge access with free beer, wine and snacks and a souvenir Sphere T-shirt. The VIP entry was the best perk, letting me skip the clogged Regular Joe lines. I was one of the first people in the atrium, where a humanoid robot named Aura chatted with me and a couple from Arkansas who also took the VIP plunge. The robot asked them the secret to their 55-year marriage. We met again in the nearly empty lounge before the Darren Aronofsky show “Postcard From Earth.”
Delta Sky Club this ain’t: The small food spread included soft pretzels with cheese and mustard. The bartender did dig out a great local IPA, Atomic Duck, and pointed me to the popcorn that VIP guests could take into the movie. The package promises premium seating for the show, a trip around the globe in which seats rattled when elephants or a jumbo jet rumbled across the giant screen. My seat was good, albeit one row up and an aisle over from my friends who paid $US79 for their standard tickets. The final Yes Day in Vegas is a spendy blur: $US190 to watch the Lions and Rams duke it out in an NFL playoff nail-biter from a high-top table with food and alcohol included in a roped-off section at Aria Resort & Casino. The rest of the sportsbook was standing room only. Then there was the $US40-a-person fee for the window seat at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant overlooking the dancing Bellagio fountains. The couple celebrating their anniversary one table back couldn’t believe I paid the fee. I left Vegas a little spoiled and out of sorts. When Southwest Airlines offered a $US50 upgrade to jump to the front of its boarding line on my flight home, I clicked buy. Can’t wait to explain that one to the folks in Expense Accounting.
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Investors are bracing for a bumpier fall stock market due to shifting odds of a Federal Reserve interest-rate increase and other macro challenges.
3 min
The stock market had a decent summer. Investors are bracing for a bumpier fall.
In the past couple of months, equity investors cheered soaring profits at big companies, shrugged off jitters in the bond market and nudged megacap tech shares back near records.
Now, as the post-Labor Day stretch begins, a number of new challenges lie ahead: ever-shifting odds of an interest-rate increase from the Federal Reserve. Sky-high expectations after a stunning earnings season. The persistent threat of higher consumer prices as fighting in the Middle East drags on.
“You’re moving from this earnings-driven market to this macro-driven market with the Fed, inflation and interest rates in focus,” said Keith Lerner, chief investment adviser for Truist Advisory Services. “It tends to be a choppier period.”
Historically, every major U.S. stock index experiences its worst average return in September. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has slid an average 1.1% in the ninth month of the year, in data that dates back to the 19th century. The S&P 500 has seen the same average decline—and for every September dating back to 1928, the benchmark ends the month lower more than half of the time.
Analysts caution against reading too much into those seasonal patterns. But in recent weeks, new reasons for investor caution have emerged. One of the largest: the looming threat of an interest-rate increase from the Fed, which announces its next policy decision on Sept. 16.
Chairman Kevin Warsh’s decision to ditch forward guidance and take more of his cues from markets has muddied the waters for investors when it comes to monetary policy. That has left traders scouring Fed governor speeches and economic-data reports for clues on the central bank’s next move.
“There’s going to be a lot of eyes on those numbers,” said John Luke Tyner, head of fixed income and portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors.
The past couple of weeks offered just one example of how frequently those expectations can change. After Warsh struck a hawkish tone during remarks on Aug. 28, the odds of a hike at the Fed’s next meeting jumped from 35% before the speech to 58%, according to CME FedWatch data.
On Thursday, Fed governor Christopher Waller made a case for leaving rates where they are. Interest-rate futures showed coin-flip odds between a hike and a hold. Then Friday’s robust jobs report amped up rate-hike bets once more, back to a roughly 60% chance of higher rates after the meeting.
“Rates have really been driving the car for equities the last few weeks,” said Ross Mayfield, an investment strategist at Baird.
That uncertainty comes as an unruly bond market could put pressure on stocks. Treasury yields have marched higher for much of the summer, driven by concerns about rising oil prices, growing U.S. budget deficits and a deluge of tech-company bonds now competing for investors’ cash. Last week, the rout went global, pushing yields to multiyear highs in Japan, Germany and the U.K.
Higher bond yields can drag on stock prices and lift borrowing costs for companies and consumers across the economy.
Rising prices remain the top concern for bond traders, and continued fighting between the U.S. and Iran has done little to ease those worries. The national average price of diesel climbed to a record of $5.850 on Friday, according to AAA. That is up from $3.712 a year ago.
Investors will get more insight on the path of prices this week, with the much-awaited consumer-price index report due Friday and a reading on producer prices Thursday.
With another blockbuster earnings season in the books, some analysts have also warned that any boost from the third-quarter reports due in the coming months could be minimal. Back-to-back quarters of standout profits have raised expectations and made it especially difficult to impress traders. Custom-chip company Broadcom, for example, said Wednesday that it more than tripled its earnings and nearly doubled its revenue. Shares slipped 2.7% the next session.
Many analysts note there are plenty of reasons not to panic. The economy is in impressive shape, thanks to a healthy labor market and the rippling effects of the artificial-intelligence investment boom. Profits are booming at America’s biggest companies. The Cboe Volatility Index has dropped to its lowest levels of 2026. Credit spreads are tight, a sign bond investors aren’t concerned about economic conditions that could hurt companies.
But the mood has shifted from the euphoria that felt tangible when the Nasdaq was notching back-to-back records early this summer. The question, Mayfield said, is whether the fundamentals that have bolstered the bull market so far can stretch the rally into 2027.
“There are more anxieties or uncertainties about the backdrop,” he said. “It does feel like a transitional moment.”
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