Oh, Las Vegas. Just the thought of you and my skin gets fuzzy, my knees get weak, my mouth starts salivating and my gut sinks like Rose dropping the Heart of the Ocean into the Atlantic because I know that’s the fate my bank account is about to meet.

Vegas is the city where dreamers go to turn their paycheck into a fortune, end up regretting even going, and leave only taking solace in the drunken memories at the bar. To quote Robert DeNiro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein in the movie Casino, “ Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior’s college money on the poker slots.” By the way, that was in 1995 and things have only gotten bigger and more expensive.

To restate the obvious, Las Vegas is a money pit. It sucks the funding and life out of you like a spouse filing for divorce from a cheating billionaire. Every time I go, I have to mentally prepare myself for the fact that I’m setting myself back a couple months from buying a house, but I’m only a crazy twenty-something once!

The truth is that for as much as tourists spend in Sin City, we deserve something in return. I’m certainly not talking about a free meal or free night stay — although that’s what we actually get if we maintain usage of the player’s cards. We do, however, deserve just a slight little convenience before we file for bankruptcy on the casino floor.

The convenience I’m talking about is the free parking we deserve at casino complexes. However just last week, MGM Resorts International announced they would begin charging a $10 overnight fee to customers wishing to park at their facilities. MGM’s properties include, among others, the MGM Grand, Bellagio, The Mirage and Mandalay Bay.

Wait, what? So now before I even set foot on the ground after my four-hour, 240-mile drive I have to pay $10 just to get out of my car? I’m going to pay upwards of $17 for a crappy L.A. Water at the first bar I see and I’m damn sure the overcharge on that sad mix of well spirits will cover my fee.

Some people might like how MGM wants to build a fantastic parking structure behind the Excalibur that’ll blow our minds, but it’s just a parking structure! I don’t want or need LED lighting, a parking guide or “mobile technology allowing visitors to check space availability prior to arrival.” What I want or need is a quick place to pull up, ditch my car and use that $10 to get hammered.

I understand there may be other aspects to implementing the plan such as limiting the amount of people who leave their cars for a long period, sleep in their car or drink in their cars. It just makes me sad because I frequently reminisce on how fun it was to not have a room and wake up on the top level of the Caesar’s Palace parking structure in the bed of my friend’s Ford Ranger feeling like I had bathed in hand sanitizer because my skin was so dry from being beaten by the desert morning sun. People cannot miss out on a free experience like that.

I can only hope that if parking is now a fee, they make us pay before I park so by the time I leave the club shirtless with untied shoes, I’ll be too far gone to even care. When the morning comes, I’ll have come to terms with my maxed-out credit card and begun digging into my savings once again to get myself a tall can for breakfast and entrance to the pool party.

Oh, what the hell am I talking about? Ten bucks is nothing. Let the good times roll!