I don’t know.
But, when the highest accolades those that DO like it can muster are, “It’s not really as bad as you’re expecting.”, or, “It’s not all THAT bad!”, well, I think that says a lot.
…and “it’s okay if you are just passing thru to see other stuff nearby.”
By that definition, Interior, South Dakota (on the edge of the Badlands) is a really cool place.
I know a city which has long used the slogan “halfway between (more desirable city) and (previously desirable city)”. Every place is halfway between a nicer place and something. It’s a weak selling point if the distances exceed a hundred miles.
A standard come-on for places with not much to offer which are at the edge of a region with desirable attractions is “Gateway to X”.
I need to remember to consult Dopers if I ever do make it out, because this (and other similar posts) appeals to me.
————
A guy I know, now CEO of a grid energy storage company, once years ago took a bunch of students and post docs to an academic conference in LV. The best deal they found on lodging ended up being a suite. Which had a stripper pole in the living room. And the cheapest way to get around town was an SUV limo that someone didn’t notice ( 
) came with . . . live entertainment. Slightly awkward.
I’ve been to Vegas numerous times, most of the time for work (to visit a nearby Air Force base). I really, really don’t like the casinos. First of all, I’m not a gambler; gambling has zero appeal to me. Secondly, it’s a very depressing sight: hundreds of people silently & robotically feeding these stupid machines their hard-earned money. As you said, it bears no resemblance to how casinos are portrayed in film and advertisements.
My daughter and I went to Cleveland a few months ago. She had never been to a casino, so we stopped by the JACK in downtown. It was a smaller version of every casino I’ve ever walked through in Vegas. In the back of the casino was a special room for smokers. We went in and walked around for 30 seconds. I about died.
JACK Cleveland is awful.
The proliferation of casinos everywhere inevitably means most of them are cheap and skanky (and JACK Cleveland isn’t even close to the cheaper and skankier end of the industry.) I like casinos and love poker, but North America now has approximately ten times more casinos than it should. That may be a low estimate.
What is cool about Las Vegas is that it’s Las Vegas, a place built specifically to attract every kind of tourist and offer things besides gambling. The atmosphere in a place like the Bellagio or the Aria when they’re rocking and people come in wearing beautiful outfits and the bars are absolutely jammed is a big part of the appeal, and you can break up that noise with seeing Penn and Teller, visiting a museum, or eating a delicious meal. You can walk to a cheaper, more casual casino or go have a Gordon Ramsey burger or see the Bellagio fountain show. It’s honestly awesome.
hogarth mentioned Niagara Falls, which has two casinos, and Fallsview is kinda nice and Niagara Falls has lots of other stuff to do; it could be a new Vegas if it had a real airport. But just west of there they also built a casino in Brantford. There is nothing to do there. There are no shows. No attractions. Nothing nearby. The casino’s restaurant is cheap and terrible. Brantford exists to make the locals give their money away; it has no other purpose. Ontario has a bunch of those; Sarnia, Belleville, Mohawk, Gananoque, Pickering, they all exist for the sole purpose of draining people of government assistance checks, and everyone knows it. All should be shut down, and you can find similar shitholes across many, many provinces and states.
A few US states are holding out against this but the problem is that if one state has a casino and the next one over doesn’t, free money for the government flows out of one state and into the next. Michigan fired up casinos to some extent because Ontario was pulling people across the border. So Michigan opened non-tribal casinos, which means Ohio had to, and so on and so forth.
My last stay at a big casino resort was Mohegan Sun a few years ago and it was not bad --then again it probably is a matter of being scaled more appropriately with the balance of gaming areas and concert/sport, shopping and dining venues. And TBF the slow times of day were probably those that were occupied with our conferences.
But yeah, casino-as-destination by itself usually underwhelms unless you are one of those who get invited to the private gaming rooms with the true High Rollers or get into the clubs through the special door for the celebs.
At least we do know that in true Vegas style the businesses involved DID appear on the credit card bill as perfectly innocuous hospitality and transportation outfits.
I hate to be judgmental, but when I look at the people feeding money to these machines, I get the impression that they’re not exactly wealthy. When I see an older woman, I sometimes wonder if she’s feeding the machine the money her late husband saved up from working a factory job over many decades. Or maybe it’s from her savings or retirement. In any case, it’s sad to see.
With all this talk of Vegas kitsch, I’m surprised there has been no mention of the departed Bonnie Springs - Old Nevada. What a lovely hotel/zoo/dude ranch/old west town/dive bar in the middle of nowhere next door to Red Rocks.
Talk about mens’ rooms - that bar is the only place I can recall where the urinal was a full-sized bathtub. Hard to miss THAT! And I’m gonna love any zoo that displays exotic wildlife such as “rock doves”!
What a fun place!
A drive-in around Indiana, PA had a bathtub in the men’s. During intermission it was crowded.
According to a number of sources I’ve read, one quarter of the people you see have diagnosable gambling addictions.
Vegas is a place people who don’t gamble every day go to gamble. The nicer properties are specifically places people go to enjoy a luxurious vacation, not just blow their check on quarter slots.
Wait - around Indiana and Pennsylvania? Isn’t that Ohio?
Indiana, PA is a town in Pennsylvania, northeast of Pittsburgh.
The Las Vegas Aces came to town in 2018, won the WBNA championship last year, and have spent the offseason assembling a superteam (well, an even super-er team) that might just end up as the greatest women’s basketball team ever.
The future is now!
I’ve been to Vegas once for sure. Maybe twice. That’s how impressed I am with it. Not my thing.
Now there are a couple of towns in Colorado that allow gambling. One of my best friends lives in one. We will sit at the bar, and play video poker. That’s fun. The beer is free, but we tip heavily, so it comes out kinda even.
If you’ve ever seen “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” it was filmed in Death Valley, with the crater. (My picture of it is my wallpaper for my laptop.) The commentary track on the DVD gives details of how they did it.
I wasn’t impressed by the casino in Macao, but I saw a show there that made Cirque du Soleil look like a first grade play. We took the ferry from Hong Kong just to see it, and it was worth it.
I like reading this kind of thing, because I get invited now and then to go to the Indian casino, and have been to Atlantic City when they carried around buckets of quarters. I am way too cheap, when I spend my $50 limit, that’s IT…(I went to Atlantic City eons ago with a friend when gambling started up, strictly to observe. He put down I forgot how much, a month’s salary to a broke-ass cheapwad like me - at a gaming table. Put it down, and lost it within seconds. …I just got up and walked down the glorious tacky boardwalk. Bought appalling souvenirs at the ‘Playboy’ shop, and the humidity on the beach transformed my stick straight hair into a tumbleweed. Good times!) Mr. Salinqmind and I planned to go to Las Vegas when he retired, but along came covid and the world crawled up its butt… my very well off relative filled up a FB page for days with pictures of the Bellagio and all the shows he saw. Must be fun.