Awhile back I wrote about MGM Rewards and a change in their language to make more prominent a note about playing to your historical average to be able to redeem free play on multiple offers.
The basic idea is that they can reject your access to free play when staying multiple times within a longer Las Vegas visit. Unaffected are your room offers and resort credit, just the free play aspect of the offer.
The vague language looked to me like a way to more frequently reject awarding free play, which would amount to a cost cutting move, and in my recent Las Vegas trip (which was 14 days of a 21-day arc out west for me), I had three MGM offers booked. So one outcome would be a test of the new rules and what to expect.
My first stay was at Nomad at Park MGM; as I was having the MGM Rewards agent activate my free play, I attempted to ask what it meant. She said if I stayed within 21 days of a previous stay, they would reject my free play. That didn’t sound encouraging.
Matt Bridger, a YouTuber focused primarily on Las Vegas vlogs, released a video right around the time I was at Nomad, referencing right at the onset he had to get upper level approval, but did ultimately receive his free play. That was a bit discouraging too, although he did ultimately get it, which was hopeful.
My second stay, which was a gap of more than a week, was at Delano at Mandalay Bay. I went up to redeem the My Konami free play offer I had secured, and while there the rep noted my room offer and immediately activated the room free play offer. It was quick and painless.
The final stay was at MGM Grand, which is where Matt had his issue. In this case the rep took a lot longer after quickly noting the resort credit, wrote down some numbers, and went into the back room. She came back out, activated the free play and I was good. I’m guessing she had to have higher up approval, just as Matt did, but was able to do it on the spot.
What surprised me was my offers had improved over the summer, and I replaced my bookings, so in terms of the room types and free play offers I had available to me, both were better than normal. The fact they gave me my offer all three times makes me hopeful that I’ll have the ability to keep getting these offers or something close.
But mostly, what appears to be the key is you need to keep playing at your norm, whatever generated those offers, to keep getting all the benefits from those offers if you’re going to use them more than once per Las Vegas visit. This doesn’t impact those who only stay at MGM for one window per visit, as many do.
There’s a subset of visitors who take advantage of the multiple bookings with a 72-hour gap between them to get the benefits; this has been me the last few years, as my visits have been over a week and so being able to book it twice or more isn’t out of the question from a calendar perspective, and so why not?
I personally enjoy playing and staying at MGM properties, and the offers add a lot of value to my stay, so I’m happy to avail myself of them. But it helps to be prepared to not get your free play for all the stays if something happens to cause your play to fall below the norm. You’ll still have your room and resort credit to enjoy, at least.
