Vegas was fun in the fifties when I lived there. Mechanical slots actually paid off. There were name acts in the lounges like Louie Prima and Keely Smith, Gogi Grant, Elvis and Johnny Ray. It was a $2 cover or a couple of drinks for a show. Old Frontier Village was the fun place. The resident raunchy comedian was Hank Henry. Battistas Hole in the Wall was, and still is, a pretty good place to eat.
I love the area, The Castle Mountains, Buffington Pockets and Corn Creek. But, the city is all theater. The facade, the people, the activities are all theater. There is nothing authentic in Vegas.
We’re headed there in April. With all the snow melt we might be getting a super bloom. We’re also visiting Joshua Tree, with Vegas as the rest day in between.
I did a search to see if anyone had already said this. I went there once, ten years ago, for a photography convention/trade show. “Adult Disneyland” is exactly how I described it. I can see the appeal. It’s not for me, though. I am glad I went for the experience, and I did enjoy it as an experience, but I have no burning desire to return.
My step-brother is definitely not going back. He was there for a conference in 2017. Staying in the Mandalay Bay. He actually slept right through the massacre, only to be awakened and hustled out by heavily armed law enforcement pounding on his door when they started clearing the hotel.
And there is a store specializing in children’s clothing and toys. It’s not far from the Red Rock casino.
My favorite room in Vegas was actually in Henderson, where we stayed on the last night of our round the country trip. For $100 we got a room as big as suites in some places I stayed, spotless, with a smart toilet that raised its lid as you approached.
The food and casino were meh, but the toilet was amazing.
On my second most recent trip to Vegas, the toilet in my room at the Sahara (then the SLS) cracked and flooded the hallway of the lobby when I tried to sit down on it at 2 AM. A panicked call to the front desk and a visit from maintenance later I was sure they were going to bill me for the damage, but instead they comped me an upgrade for the rest of my stay to what I think of as the Orgy Suite - everything all-white, mirror on the ceiling above the bed, curtain covering a peephole into the shower, so forth. Most recently I stayed at Caesars Palace, where I swear the bathroom was almost as big as my bedroom at home.
“Adult Disneyland” is a pretty apt description of the place in my book, and I’ve found 3 nights to be about all I can take of the place before the constant excess and decadence starts to have a numbing effect.
If I wanted overpriced kitsch, I’ll go to the Madonna Inn, which is a least near stuff I’d like to see instead of being out in the middle of a fucking desert where nothing should live, and there aren’t “slots” jammed into every nook and cranny with some retiree mechanically pulling a lever in a Skinner experiment turning humanity into zombies.
I thought that was a criticism which could be levelled at a bunch of airports in the US, I may be wrong, given we’d typically connect to/from international to domestic, and need to clear immigration on the way into the US. However, we’ve got Priority Pass cards so the idea of going to a lounge in one terminal, then transferring to the terminal we are leaving from is on the cards, and only Vegas was the one we actually did that. Denver, well, we didn’t have to. However, I thought JFK suffered from this, it not being easy, if possible (post-covid) from SFO, and not in San Diego either.
I also thought a chunk of LAX was disconnected from the other chunk too. Though never had to traverse that, I know we could get from T4 to TBIT.
My daughter and SIL go to Las Vegas a couple of times a year, but spend little time in Las Vegas itself. They rent a car and drive to various parks where they hike.
A friend used to do a Vegas trip each year that was all about drinking as much alcohol as possible while spending as little money as possible. He has great stories.
Never been. I don’t think I’d be surprised (dismayed?), it’s being described here just as I imagined it. However bad it may be I’m sure it has that dump Atlantic City beat.
What consistently dismays me about Vegas is the fact that Vegas itself is pretty much advertised, there is gambling, drinking, general carousing and sketchiness, in that respect it is completely unremarkable and not at all unique (maybe the concentration of carousing and sketchiness is fairly unusual for the US, but most major world cities have areas where such things go on)
The dismay for me is that a couple of hours out of town there are things that are completely unique, as in there is almost nothing else like it on earth, specifically the drive towards Utah, and the most amazing geological formations and scenery (though there are plenty of other amazing sights within an hour or two’s drive). And I’m betting only a tiny fraction of visitors to Vegas see it.
As a single person, I enjoyed Vegas for the 5 days I was there, but 5 days were definitely enough. I enjoyed the shows in the casinos way more than the gambling, and I highly recommend taking in a couple if you go there. I enjoyed prowling the strip, and I enjoyed the Freemont area, which is actually the original Las Vegas. What I don’t see is any appeal for kids. It is not a family venue, and I saw very few kids when prowling the strip or the Freemont area.
That was the only bar available for a time, Vegas and Atlantic City were the only two gambling, sports, and entertainment cities in the country. Gambling is everywhere now, but these two places still lead in combining that with the top entertainment and sports events. Things are changing, before long there will be other low bars of comparison. Probably none as low as Atlantic City for a while, it takes time for decay to ruin a city.
I lived there during the heyday of the “family friendly” movement.
The idea was never to make it like Orlando, where the point is a destination aimed at kids that parents could tolerate.
Instead, the idea was to create something that was slightly kid-tolerable, and marketed as more kid-desirable than the reality, so that adults with one or two kids would not instinctively cross Las Vegas off the list of possibilities for their own adult-centric vacation before they even began researching destinations and deals.
This was aimed at the adults who are adults first, and parents second. Places like e.g. Orlando are aimed at adults who are parents first, second, and third, with adults perhaps in fourth place.
By and large the scheme worked for its limited objective at the time. But the kid-stuff has not aged well, was always a loss-leader, is not being upgraded / improved, and is increasingly out of step with 2020s tweens & teens.
The only “kids” Vegas is interested in are the hordes of LA trust fund douche-bags. Once summer hits the hotels become mobbed with club bunnies and bottle service assholes partying at top volume at all the pools on the Strip.
Unlike everybody else in this thread, I like Vegas. It’s only 3 hours up the road and for me, it’s “Adult Knotts” (screw Disney.) World class restaurants, great shows, some fun bars and always something different to see/do. Now they’ve added professional hockey, football, baseball (inevitable) and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a WNBA team there before the end of the decade. I’ll be seeing the B-52s in the fall, and U2 will be playing the Sphere on their upcoming tour. I consider my entertainment dollars well spent in Vegas.