Stuck In The Denver Airport - United Airlines 4TW

One of the downsides of living in such a small town (Lincoln, NE) is that its really hard to get a non stop flight anywhere. Usually I have layovers in Minneapolis, Denver, or Chicago depending where I am flying. My assistant/business manager, wife, 1 month old baby, and myself are on our way to Las Vegas. I am mainly going to support 2 of my friends who I am sponsoring in this years World Series Of Poker. Yesterday I called in some favors and was able to get a press pass (for shoemoney.com) for me at the World Series Of Poker that I have to pick up by 5pm today or they said forget it. Well.... We landed in Denver to catch our connecting flight to Las Vegas and ..... surprise.... the flight was canceled. Weird eh? I actually have the boarding passes in my hand and the flight was canceled. Wonder when they were going to notify anyone. Anyway they tell me I need to wait for customer service... which took about 1 hour for them to tell me WE are #20-24 on the standby list for the 2:30pm flight.... weeeeeeeeee If we cant get on that then we wont get to Vegas until tomorrow. I asked the united rep if they are going to refund the 600$ in show tickets and hotel reservations we have for tonight and he laughed and told me to read my contract... that did not really help the situation. I wonder if I can bribe the airline guy to move us up on the list.. is that like a violation that will lead me to getting a cavity search or something... Anyone else stranded in the Denver Airport want to talk SEO/SEM/PPC or whatever send me a email ;)