To help you along in your Vegas vacation planning needs, I’m going to periodically feature some deals that various companies are offering that I think are worth your notice.

In the interest of full disclosure, yes, if you take advantage of one of these promotions, Vegas4Visitors makes money for it. This site generates revenue through advertising and sponsorship deals so that you can read all of the reviews and other information for free.

But I’m very proud of the fact that Vegas4Visitors is one of the few online resources that provides critical, honest opinion about the things featured here. Unlike many, more high-profile sites, we don’t simply print press releases or write puff-pieces designed to lure you into something just so we can make a buck. If I don’t like something, I’ll tell you about it (read the Sirens at TI review for proof) and if I don’t believe something is not worthy of your time, I won’t put on the site.

So my promise to you is that I will only feature deals here that I think are worth talking about. Before you take advantage of any of them, you should do your research and comparison shop to make sure you’re getting what you want.

The first deal this week comes from Southwest Vacations. Southwest Airlines is one of the best carriers to and from Las Vegas, offering lots of flights from a lot of cities at fares that are usually significantly cheaper than the competition. Plus, I’ve always loved how their flight attendants often do silly things to amuse themselves and you like the occasional singing of “Viva Las Vegas” when landing or tweaking of the safety instructions (“If you are traveling with a child, or someone who is acting like a child, put your oxygen mask on first and then assist them.”)

If you book by July 17, 2009, Southwest Vacations is offering airfare and three nights of hotel accommodations for as low as $36 per night per person. Most of the packages will cost more than that, but I did a quick search and found a mid-week trip from LA to Vegas with three nights at the MGM Grand for $400 (that’s like paying $100 per night at the hotel and a $100 for airfare). They are also offering discounts on upgrades like show tickets, car rental, and more.

The second deal comes from Wynn Las Vegas. I think this hotel and its sister Encore are really great properties, with beautiful rooms, good service, lots of dining and entertainment options, and fun casinos. The problem has always been the cost, with these hotels being among the most expensive in town.

That’s why their current summer deal is pretty amazing. They are offering standard rooms as low as $159 a night and it includes a $75 resort credit that you can use to pay for just about anything that you charge to your room (such as a meal). Granted, not all days are that inexpensive, but if you have some flexibility in your travel schedule you can score yourself quite a bargain for a really nice hotel.

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And there will never be a high-speed train linking Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Okay, “never” might be a little extreme in terms of the last one, but I’m fairly comfortable in my assertion that the chances of me or you or anyone else riding a train to Las Vegas in the next couple of years, as has been endlessly discussed in the media, are about as close to “never” as the idea of me settling down, getting married, and having a couple of kids.

You may have heard about the Maglev proposal, a project expected to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 billion that would feature 300 mph, magnetically propelled trains running from Anaheim to Las Vegas. Or you may have heard about the DesertXpress, a $4 billion proposal that would feature 150 mph trains from Sin City to Victorville, California (about 80 miles north of Los Angeles).

The competing projects have been in the news a lot lately, especially now that the Federal Railroad Administration has declared that Las Vegas can be considered as part of a high-priority California rail corridor. By extending the corridor to Vegas, the long in the planning stages projects now qualify for a variety of federal loans and other funding. If everything goes according to plan, the DesertXpress folks say they will have trains up and running by 2014 while the Maglev people say theirs can open in 2016.

But it’s that “according to plan” thing that has me skeptical.

Both the Maglev and DesertXpress proposals have been around in some form or another for years and the idea of having train service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas has been talked about ever since the Amtrak line shut down in 1997. Anyone remember the Talgo train proposal? That was another big pronouncement/never happened deal back around 1999.

The problems with train service to Las Vegas are numerous. First is the convenience factor, or rather lack thereof. The Desert Xpress route will mean that the bulk of the Los Angeles residents will need to drive to Victorville to catch the train, something that takes an hour when there is no traffic and two or three or more hours when there is traffic (and trust me, there is almost always traffic). The Anaheim station for the Maglev isn’t much more appealing unless you happen to live near Anaheim, but here again you’re talking an hour or more in traffic for a lot of people. Simply put, it isn’t going to be convenient enough for most people to want to use it and that’s a huge factor in transit adoption rates.

The second problem is the time factor. The Victorville to Vegas route and the Anaheim to Vegas route are both expected to take around 90 minutes to complete. Add in the time that it will take people to get to the train station, get tickets, check bags, and wait for the train to depart and suddenly you’ve turned 90 minutes into four hours or more. When you can get to any of the Los Angeles area airports and catch any one of dozens of daily flights to Las Vegas in less time, the train doesn’t make any sense.

Third is the cost factor. Both trains are expected to run around $50 for a one-way fare to Las Vegas, so roughly $100 round trip. Plan a few weeks in advance and you can get airfare for about that or even less sometimes. And no matter how much of a gas hog you have, you can probably drive to Vegas and back for less than $100 worth of fuel.

Then there’s the cost factor to actually build the system. Whether it’s $4 billion or $40 billion, raising that kind of money is going to be nearly impossible, especially in these current economic climates. With much of the rail line going through California – a state that is, as of this writing, handing out IOU’s to pay its bills – you can see why I might want to roll my eyes a little when I hear about this stuff.

So if the train isn’t convenient, efficient, or cost-effective then people simply aren’t going to use it. If people don’t use it, it won’t make money. If it doesn’t make money, it will shut down. Amtrak learned this lesson about a dozen years ago.

The bottom line is this: there is not enough of a demand for high-speed train service from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. If there was, these trains would’ve been built a long time ago. The fact that they still don’t exist should be telling.

Who knows… maybe “never” is too extreme. I’ve been wrong before. I’m wrong all the time. And I think the concept of any kind of mass transit is great – fewer cars or airplanes, theoretically good for the environment. Heck, if they actually do build the train I’ll ride it once just to see what it’s like.

But I’m not budging on the broccoli. Never going to happen.

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