Las Vegas Was Awesome Because We Got To Meet Holly Madison

When my wife suggested we visit Las Vegas this year my only request was that we go see Peepshow staring Holly Madison at the Planet Hollywood Casino and Hotel. As you may know, Holly was one of the Girls Next Door - one of recent favorite shows that I'm sort of fanatical about. She now stars in another reality show Holly's World which is all about her adventures working on Peepshow in Las Vegas. As much as I loved Girls Next Door for it's behind the scenes look at the inner workings of the Playboy Mansion, I'm as equally intrigued with Holly's World and it's glimpse into life in Las Vegas. So I was excited to see the show and visit some of the places where Holly and her friends hang out on the show. Stepping into the Planet Hollywood casino was like walking onto the set of Holly's World. There are so many spots that I've seen on TV a hundred times, it was pretty exciting for a TV lovin' fella like myself!

So we had tickets to see Peepshow Thursday night. It turns out that my brother flew in to town on Thursday morning for an event he was attending. We hooked up Thursday morning and hung out for a little bit, including walking over to Planet Hollywood to pick up my actual tickets for the evening's show. Short story shorter: we get up to the ticket counter, my brother whips out his credit card and scores my wife and I two VIP Package upgrades which include a meet & greet with Holly after the show along with pictures and a champagne toast. Needless to say, that was SUPER AWESOME of him to do for us. My wife and I were both super excited to meet her! She was very nice and friendly and took her time talking to everyone.

Here's the three of us!

You may remember a while ago I posted about my brother meeting Holly's Girls Next Door co-star Kendra.

In case you were wondering, Peepshow was fantastic! It's a high energy singing and dancing show with a very loose story frame. Holly plays an over worked and lonely girl who falls asleep one night and wakes up in a fairy tale land. All the different nursery rhyme characters try to help her find a man - they somehow do this by dancing and stripping. It's all done very tastefully. It's basically a modern version of burlesque striptease - which is an art form not just girls gyrating to rap music for $1 dollar bills.

We saw some other shows in Vegas too...

....Here's Jen and I with our official name tags in the hopes of being called on stage for The Price is Right Live! at Bally's. I've always thought this show sounded like a neat idea. It's basically a live version of the TV show, with a fresh batch of audience members plucked out of the audience for each round in Contestant's Row. All-in-all 50 people get a chance to win something! We didn't get called down, but our friends both won 1,000 Casino Comp. Credits in an instant win game they did between TPIR games. The show was alot of fun and they did give away some nice cash prizes and some dude won a Washer & Dryer set. There was a car and a trip in the Showcase Showdown, but nobody won!

We also went to Brad Garrett's Comedy Club at the Tropicana where Brad himself was performing for a few days. You probably best know Brad Garrett as Robert, Ray's brother on Everybody Loves Raymond. Apparently, he's not in town all that often so the house was packed to see him. We just lucked into being there when he was there. He put on a great show, he actually MC'ed an entire evening of comedy which consisted of a complete set by him and then long sets in between comedian Geechy Guy and hypnotist Mark Sweet. There was another comedian who came up briefly as well. We were in there for about two hours before it was done. A great night of comedy.

I also gotta give a shoutout to Tix 4 Tonight, a service that lets you score same day tickets to most of Vegas' hottest shows at a fraction of their face value. We used the service for all three shows I've mentioned here, plus the four we saw last time in Vegas - and we always have great experiences with them. Great seats, fantastic prices and the staff is incredibly knowledgeable. They seem to know everything about every single show in town. They must be doing a good business because they seem to have twice the locations they did when I was in Vegas two years ago. Even though there are frequently long lines at their sidewalk booths, I suggest their "hidden" location behind the giant Coke bottle. We never waited in a line there while I could see the line out on the sidewalk from where I was standing buying tickets. I can't recommend them high enough. They take the extravagant price of a night on the town and make it affordable that you can go see a show every night you're in town.