Book the room a week in advance (more, if heel-bruising stumbles back to the cheap end of the strip aren’t for you.) Flaunt your entitlement issues at the hotel reception in the passive voice: “Is there really no available upgrade? There’s nothing at all to be done?”
Learn that the receptionist can swing a suite for you and your friends at no extra cost. Wait a beat — soak in the gravity of what this will mean for dance parties — and thank the receptionist for her efforts. You’re so, so very grateful — yes, just a king should likely suffice for the night, and yes, you’ll tell her personally if it doesn’t.
Ascend the 15 floors to your room, passing dead-eyed slot-machine settlers and bored strippers on the way to the elevator. Notice the dated ad for Crazy Girls: Las Vegas’ No. 1 Topless Revue next to the elevator door, wherein a line of blondes pose from

behind in matching underwear and heels. Asses sure looked different in the ’80s, didn’t they?
Slide the room key in the door and stand in wonder: floral-print everything, enough floor space for your 30 closest associates to crash come daybreak, a full bar. You were expecting a dorm-sized box with a musty bible and a view of the next building over. How great to be so wrong.
Marvel at the arrivals of old friends, contraband Four Loko and foot-long disco sticks — not just the stuff of Lady Gaga’s carnal imagination, after all — with increasing wonder, and take all of them with you out into the night. Stop at a 7-11 and ask the cashier if he could please unscrew the disco stick battery compartment. It’s not what it looks like, creep. Buy the wrong batteries and the right doughnut.
Watch the sun rise over the local Ross and all the surrounding desolation. Joke about the possibility of Crossdressing for Less, and promptly fall asleep in the last corner of bed available. Spend the day in awe of the beautiful fakeness of it all: the half-scale Eiffel Tower, the casino waitresses, all of the lights. Wait half an hour for a foot-long margarita at the mall until you learn there’s no more Sex on the Beach. You just wanted Sex on the Beach. Where’s all the Sex on the Beach?
See a stranger convinced he’s about to die. Ask whether Miley Cyrus really took salvia last year, or whether it was all the spin of a quick-thinking publicist who knew it was legal.
Hear the slam of a hand against the hotel door and a decisive shout: “SECURITY!” Laugh at your friend’s sense of humor on the way to the peephole, and realize that there are, actually, three unarmed guards. Oh.
Call out for everyone to hide, and open the door. While the officer does realize that this is Las Vegas, there are other guests, and they are trying to sleep. This is your warning — and if the officer has to come back again, you face banishment from the Riviera Las Vegas. Which means you can’t come back again. Not ever. Tell the officer you’re sorry, you’ll be quiet, and feel pride in knowing, on your caffeine/adrenaline high, that you have done Vegas right.