Las Vegas Travel Guide - Big is the Way to Go
You must be bigger to be better in this city
Outside the Aladdin Hotel and Casino on the dry, wind-swept Las Vegas Strip, the two women working inside the free lemonade stand are struggling to keep up. As fast as one woman can fill plastic cups with the citrus drink, vacationers walking by in the 90-degree Fahrenheit April heat are snapping them up. Into each customer’s hand, the second woman efficiently pushes a yellow coupon offering its holder a free fun pack if he or she comes into the Aladdin casino.
In a city where an erupting volcano, a scaled-down Brooklyn Bridge, a pirate ship attack and America’s tallest free-standing observation tower are all used by casinos to lure tourists and their cash inside, the Aladdin Hotel is clearly under siege.
Sure, the Aladdin’s brightly-colored wooden lemonade stand - roughly measuring in at a tiny eight feet high and ten feet wide - gets potential customers to stop and consider going inside. But as it’s attracting gamblers one by one, most of its nearby competitors, embracing the Las Vegas philosophy that bigger and bolder is better, are bringing them in by the hundreds or thousands.
Bright lights, the hint of a winning spin or roll, and gimmicks like lemonade stands are no longer enough in the new Vegas.
Here’s what some hotels have built around their casinos to bring inside a healthy share of the Nevada city’s annual 30 million visitors and the $20,000,000,000 they will spend. New York-New York: Just two blocks south of the Aladdin at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard (aka The Strip) and Tropicana, the newest hotel/casino spectacle, gives Vegas a decidedly Manhattan look.
This resort, a collection of scaled-down high rises such as the Empire State Building, features a twisting and looping roller coaster and models of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty outside its front doors.
MGM Grand Hotel: Across the street from the New York skyline sits what’s often billed as the largest resort complex in the world. This emerald green 5,005-room hotel, with an 88-foot high lion out front, a popular theme park and Emerald City out back and, in the middle, a casino so large you’ll find yourself frequently referring to the directional maps, makes you realize you’re definitely not in Kansas, or wherever, anymore.
The Stratosphere: This 1996 addition to Vegas, near the northern end of The Strip, is easily spotted, thanks to its 108-storey observation tower. A 35-second ride on the world’s fastest elevator puts you at the top of this tower, where, if you’re truly brave or crazy, you can ride on an outdoor roller coaster or a free-fall ride.
Treasure Island Hotel: The lagoon outside this complex is the site of regular battles between pirates and a British ship.
The Mirage: This casino/resort, on The Strip just south of Treasure Island, boasts a volcano outside its front door that erupts every 15 minutes in the early evening.
Caesars Palace : A posh place in the heart of the strip gives visitors a 70-shop mall, The Forum Shops at Caesars, as an added incentive to visit.
Fremont Street :The five-block long covered pedestrian mall in Las Vegas’ downtown features nightly light and sound shows centered on the 90-foot high roof, over top 10 casinos. If all this wasn’t enough to make competition tough for smaller, older casinos like the Aladdin, the stakes keep rising as more huge resorts spring skyward.
The Luxor :A few blocks south, and almost challenging the MGM’s lion, is the 100 foot high sphinx that guards the door of this pyramid-shaped hotel/casino. Features inside include a motion simulator ride, IMAX theatre and the wonder of the unique building itself.
New ones on their way include: The Bellagio, a 3,000 room, 37-storey hotel with an 11-acre lake out front. It’s already taking shape, on the strip just south of Caesars Palace, and will open in 1998.
The Paris Hotel and Casino. Ceremonial ground breaking has been done for this 2,500-room hotel that will come with a 50-storey model of the Eiffel Tower. No sign of construction though, on the site that sits between the Aladdin and Bally’s.
The new Sands
, a planned $1.5 billion, 6,000-room hotel that’s being billed as the world’s largest hotel/resort complex.
To try and keep pace with these new resorts, many existing ones, like the Aladdin and the Sahara, are all promising massive renovations and expansions of their own. All this makes one thing certain: Las Vegas, which first began offering legalized gambling in 1931, will undergo a larger casino/hotel boom in the 1990 s than it did in the first 60 years combined. Maybe not in the number of casinos and hotels, but definitely in size and grandeur.
Big doesn’t only apply to the buildings themselves in this desert city. On the inside, spectacular things are happening too. Take the shows, for example, which usually bombard the eyes with non-stop illusions, wild costumes, acrobatic moves and plenty of flesh. Perhaps the most extravagant features illusionists Siegfried and Roy, whose white tiger adorned show at the Mirage also comes with an equally enormous $89 price. Over at the MGM Grand, former Partridge Family television star David Cassidy is packing them in with his EFX show and its 250 special effects. Shows also feature magicians, like Lance Burton, comedians like Rodney Dangerfield, and music for almost every taste.
Among the big names in April were Canadian pop star Celine Dion and rock band U2, whose nightly sound checks were keeping local residents awake in this city that supposedly never sleeps.
And of course, what would Las Vegas be without showgirls, whom you can see as part of at least a dozen shows? The Stardust, famous or perhaps infamous for showgirls thanks to the sleazy, bombing movie by the same name that was set at the hotel, promotes its Enter the Night show around its showgirls. Yet it’s some of the other entertainers in this show, like the figure skating duo of Cindy Landry and Burt Lancon, that will leave the most lasting impression.
Also big in Vegas is the food: large meals for little money. Over 50 hotel/casinos offer breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets to bring the gamblers in, with prices starting at around $3 for breakfast, $5 for lunch and $7 for dinner. Shopping’s big too. Where else but Las Vegas would you find what’s billed as America’s largest factory outlet mall, with 140 stores?
What isn’t big about Las Vegas, you ask? Well, the payouts of the slot machines. During my previous trip about seven years ago, you could take a single roll of nickels or quarters and sometimes play for a half-hour, winning enough small pots to keep you going. This trip I often dropped an entire roll into one of the computerized bandits without getting a single coin back. With the casinos able to exactly control slot machine payouts, many seasoned gamblers will tell you it’s obvious how the city’s lavish building boom is being financed.
Many gamblers are leaving The Strip and taking the five or 10-minute drive to casinos like Sam’s Town or Boulder Station, which promise looser slots. I found I lost my money just as quickly at those places too.
Back on The Strip, the Aladdin lemonade stand has been boarded shut for the afternoon, giving in to one more thing that’s occasionally big in Vegas: the winds.
Las Vegas Facts:
Getting There: From Vancouver, dozens of air-only and air and hotel packages are available, starting as low as $150 for airfare and $220 for air and hotel.
Where to Stay: Vegas has more than 90,000 hotel rooms, the most of any U.S. city. Room rates on The Strip can range from $29 to $399 per night.
Getting Around : Car rentals start at $25 per day. If you plan to stay in town, the best bet for moving up and down The Strip is the shuttle bus, at $1.30 per trip. Taxis are easily found.
The Weather : Dry and sunny (it’s a desert, after all). Scorching hot in the summer, with an average high July temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit. January’s average high is 55, and April’s 79.
What to Take : Sunscreen, good walking shoes, bank card, bathing suit, a belt with extra post-buffet notches, and, most importantly, an attitude that you will lose all your money gambling but that it’s all in the name of fun.
Author : Jeff Beamish
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