Adam Jewell – Search & Affiliate Marketing

One the ski season is over at Elk Mountain, PA, the 2009 PSIA National Academy has wrapped up, beach season is right around the corner. This summer, many weekends will be spent down in Avalon, Jew Jersey. It’s been ages since I’ve actually been to a real beach aside from Santa Barabara for CJU and I’ve never been to the Jersey shore (down the shore as they say around here) so this should be a cool summer.

The whole beach/shore house thing is new to me. The owners of these places get sick amounts of money to rent out their places for the beach season. We’re talking upwards of $30,000 for about four months. Granted, it probaby sits empty for most of the rest of the year but that is some crazy cash for a four month rental. Someone takes the plunge and heads up a house. Then they sell “shares” to people. Generally most offer a full share which is all you can eat, go down anytime. That will run you around $2000 – $3,000 depending on location and how many people will pack into the house. A half share will cost a little more than half of the full and you’ll get to use the place about half the weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Some have quarter shares which are still cheaper than most beach house rentals if you were to do it on your own but if you get to many quarter shares, then you could end with with all of them wanting to go down the same weekend and have a big mess on your hands.

For this first year, I went in for a half share. It provides a place to get away on the weekends but I don’t feel like I have to get down thee every weekend just because I paid for a whole season. Throw in the csot of the house, gas and tolls to get back and forth, food, drinks and whatever else might go on down there and you’re looking at $300+ per weekend. That’s enough to take a nice weekend getaway to a bunch of different spots througout the summer! It’s a hell of a lot more than a ski house and a season ski pass for the winter too.

This is the first post about spending the summer weekends down at a shore house in Avalon, NJ. It will probaby be an absolute mad house down there this weekend since it will be Memorial day weekend but we’ll give it a go and see what it’s like. It’s very tempting to skip this weekend and wait till next when the crowds are likely to be far lower but for a variety of reasons, this will be the innagural weekend at the shore house in Avalon, NJ.

When you head out to Vegas in an economy like this, you want your moeny to last as long as possible and go as far as possible. Gambling generally isn’t going to facilitate this and if you sit in front of slots all day it gets really boring really fast and you’ll probably get soaked. What do you do? Go to some of the fantastic Las Vegas shows, get great deals in tickets and have more money in your pocket for sampling some of the great restaurants Las Vegas is famous for.

So long as you are not terribly picky about what shows you go to and where you sit, your best bet is a place called Tix4Tonight.com in Vegas. There are a few outlets on the Las Vegas strip where they sell tickets. You go there the day of the show and pick the available shows you want to see and then get discounted tickets. Discounts are anywhere up to 50% but may be as little as 15% depending on the show.

Tix4Tonight charges a few bucks as a processing fee but you still save a small fortune when you buy your tickets through them. They often have all the Cirque shows including O, Zumanity, KA, Love, Chris Angel as well as many other shows from Carrot Top to ICE, Howie Mandel and sometimes even big headliners like Elton John.

Except for a few shows where you might want to try to get really good seats, Tic4Tonight is a great way to go.

After you make your purchase at Tix4Tonight, you take the voucher to the box office and trade it in for a ticket. The venues generally seem to give you the best ticket(s) available for the show when you present the voucher.

Over the years I’ve gotten tickets to KA, Zumanity, Grazy Girls, ICE, Crazy Horse Paris and many others. The one ticket I would NOT reccomend buying from Tix4Tonight is Blue Man Group. For Blue Man Group at the Venitian, the Venitian seems to push a block of pretty bad seats to the Tix4Tonight company. They are pretty far off to the side and just not that great. The Blue Man Group show is just ok and over priced to begin with but if you are going to go see it, you’ll want to get tickets that are more centered than the ones you’re likely to get from Tix4Tonight.

Get a great deal on discount las Vegas show tickets on your next trip to Vegas and go to Tix4Tonight as early in the day as possible!

If you’re headed out to Vegas and you are thinking about going to some shows, the Cirque shows are probably the ones that will be top of mind and they should be because they are generally really good. You won’t hear anywhere near as much about the Las Vegas ICE show at the Riviere because its not a Cirque show and it is at the Riviera.

ICE is probably THE BEST show I’ve seen in Vegas. It features about 50 ice skaters from Russia in some great skating, lots of acrobatics and some ok but not always funny comedy. ICE takes place on a simple set nothing like the multi-million dollar set of the Las Vegas KA show at the MGM Grand. It’s a pretty small theater and a pretty small set, just a little ice skating area that has a little loop that enables the skaters to skate out into the crowd.

There isn’t really any story line to it, just great skating a little comedy, some great acrobatics, great costumes a comfortable theater and great skating.

There are numerous skaters on stilts so they stand about 10 feet tall on the ice and have no problem cruising around with that type of aparatus. There is a wheel type of thing that one guy locks his skates in and holds onto the other end and rolls around in in various different ways. It’s hard to desribe but it very cool and looks like it would be tons of fun to roll around in.

Tickets for ICE should be relatively easy to some by when you are out in Vegas. You can usually get them at the Tix 4 Tonight places on the strip for about 50% off the $80 face value – so figure $40 – $45 per ticket.

If you are into Cabaret as well, another show you can see in the same night is Crazy Girls which is the longest running Cabaret in Vegas. It is comparable to the Crazy Horse Paris cabaret at the MGM Grand but significantly better than the Crazy Horse Paris MGM Grand show. There doesn’t seem to be much demand (or at leat not sellout demand) for the cabaret shows in Vegas so you can usually get tickets for those for about 50% of the face value at the Tix 4 Tonight shops on the strip. The Cabarets come in at around $30 per person and are a good way to spend an hour or two. Enjoy some great sights, a little comedy and spend far less than one of those Vegas slot machines or the over priced drinks at a bar would soak you for if you spent a couple hours gambling and/or drinking.

If you come out for WebmasterWorld PubCon 2009 or Affiliate Summit in January 2009 and want to see a great show, go see ICE at the Riviera.

I think I’ve found my new favorite hotel in Las Vegas – Treasure Island Hotel and Casino! The rooms are great (got a Petite Suite on the 12th floor), the casino is nice and the location is great with the Mirage connected by a little tram type thing that goes back and forth between the two hotels. More later on Treasure Island but lets just say Treasure island will be a GREAT place to have as the official hotel for PubCon Vegas 2008 this year.

Leno is better than Letterman – everyone knows it! If you thought Jay Leno was good on The Tonight Show, the you MUST see him live at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas! When going to the show, I only expected to see Jay but there was an opening act that was absolutely fantastic. It was the band called The Alley Cats. They had quite a humorous act and sang a number of oldies that really got the crowd into the show. They had a great stage presence, great voices and a great sense of humor. While seeing them was unexpected, it was a great surprise and if you get the chance to go see them, definitely jump on the chance. They seemed like a really great group of guys and Jay Leno is a great guy on and off the stage so you would expect no less from one of his opening acts.

Jay had the crowd howling from the get-go. He touched on everything from politics and the current financial mess to women and their cats and guys and their dogs. Was the lady in the audience with 5 cats sincel or married? Take a wild guess! In Jay’s standup routine just as on The Tonight Show, he doesn’t hold much back. He’s not raunchy like Andrew Dice Clay but he does delve into politically incorrect territory with the “how fat are we getting in this country” line of jokes and touches the edges of sexist and ethnic humor as did The Alley Cats.

While Conan isn’t to bad, Jay is a million times better. It’ll be a sad day when he leaves The Tonight Show but hopefully he’ll end up on another show and continue to perform live. He really seemed to enjoy performing as he always does and everyone in the crowd loved the show. The Alley Cats and Leno went for about 2 hours total which is much better than David Copperfield at the MGM which went for about an hour and fifteen minutes with lots of filler (video) in the show.

Tickets to see Leno in Vegas are about $100 and I was able to snag a second row seat a about 6pm the day of the show. The theater was just about full but one of the benefits of going to a show solo is that you can get a great seat to a great show at the last minute. Since tickets to see Leno are one of the more popular tickets on the Las Vegas Strip, you probably won’t find them at Tix4Tonight which offers discounted same day tickets for a variety of Vegas shows but it will still be the best $100 you spend while you are in Vegas!