Uh, about last night ... (actually about the Limo Tour)

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This posting is from: annie
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Yes, there were a number of comments about the Limo Tour this
year, specifically about the fact that things did not come off
as we had expected.

+I think it's great. My only real issue this year is that I thought
+the Limo Ride was disorganized, especially compared to last year.
+It seemed to be like herding cats. I don't know why - last year
+the group at least more or less stayed as a group. What happened?

What happened was this ... we tried a few things and they did
not work! That's it.

I'm not trying to defend what happened, or make excuses, but I
can tell you what we had planned and how it was supposed to work,
and then how it did not work.

It all started here ...

+l. Do not use the Wynn as a pickup point for the Limo tour!

It really wasn't our choice. It was where the show du jour was
playing, which dictated the initial load-in point for the Limo
Tour.

We were aware that the door staff at the Wynn is not on the best
of terms with the limo company we use. In fact, they are not on
good terms with any limo service except their one preferred
vendor.

This meant that we would not be able to stage the limos at the
Wynn, park them and load the beverages, and leisurely allow the
riders to load as we have in the past.

Our plan was to assemble the riders in groups according to limo
number and load them quickly when the limos arrived. This part
of the plan did work more or less as expected. All of the limos
arrived more or less on schedule, were loaded promptly, and then
proceeded to the beverage loading area.

The plan at the beverage loading area, which was to the rear of
the Sahara, was to quickly throw a cooler and various other
items into the limo and send them on their way.

This is where things started to fall apart. There was a bit of
confusion as to exactly where the beverage loading area was,
so this added some time, and caused a back-up of limos at one
time.

Additionally ...

+2. Tighten up the schedule for the Lomo tour. We wasted too
+much time for booze at the Sahara!

.. it was reported that the riders in one vehicle insisted on
going into the Sahara to purchase additional items, which added
to the delay.

However (and I was in the very last limo) with some delay we were
on our way, or so we thought, to the downtown drop-off area.

Each driver had a printed copy of the schedule, listing stops,
arrival time, and the approximate dwell time. The first stop
after the beverage loading was supposed to be the intersection
of Fremont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard, the very EAST end of
the Fremont Street Experience canopy.

About half of the limos unloaded their passengers at the corner
of Fremont and Main, by the Plaza, on the WEST end of the Fremont
Street Experience. We were unaware of this until that was where
our limo let us off!

We then did what we could to get both sub-groups assembled at
the downtown load-in point, and to keep them from wandering off
until all were accounted for. This required some very assertive
policing to keep those who were at the load-in point within
sight while the missing and unaccounted for were located.

Once the group was finally assembled, the tour went of pretty much
as planned, with the planned-as-optional stop at the Palazzo skipped
due to the Bellagio stop running long.

That's the story as to what happened.

But wait, there's more!

This was unknown to me or any of the volunteers until after the
week had concluded. Apparently there was one driver with an
attitude problem, as this report indicates:

>It was not our fault, I think, but the fault of I know of at least
>one limo driver, that did not what to be there and wanted nothing
>to do with our group. Did this driver know what he was getting
>into, before he went to work that nite, and what kind of girls
>we are. He had the limo at 78 temp. in the limo, hot, and he
>could not follow other limo's, he went his own way.

This came in via private e-mail after the fact. It came from a
rider in one of the four-passenger limos.

Did the driver know the nature of our group? Probably not. Our
group is fairly well known to the drivers and dispatchers at
Bell-Trans, but with the rate of turnover and the chaotic
nature of their schedule, it's possible that some didn't know.

We've had naive drivers in the past, and most of them have
warmed up to us by the end of the tour. This is the first
report of a blatant attitude issue I've heard during all of
the years of the Limo Tour, and that goes back to 2001.

Even with the problems this year, the Limo Tour still rated
4.34 out of 5 on the enjoyment scale with 26 responses, or just
more than half of the riders. This does show that most of the
riders enjoyed it, many of them significantly.

There is one, however, who obviously did not enjoy it. I feel
bad about this one, who made this comment:

+I was extremely uncomfortable during the Limo tour when we
+made our stops. I am a private person and did not enjoy being
+stared at and made fun of. It seemed to me, that we were being
+put on display for the benefit of the tourists.

Looking backward with 20/20 hindsight, there's really nothing
warning a newcomer that there's a lot of very visible public
exposure on the Limo Tour.

I think we need to put such a warning up front on the sign-up
screen. I also think we need to accommodate those who do not
wish to get out of the limos at the various stops, including
those where a walk is planned, such as downtown.

But anyway, there were some lessons learned, and we do know now
of a few things that do not work. Don't worry, we won't try to
repeat what doesn't work.

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(This posting was entered by annie, an external user of MyDLV.)