Already staying at my sister-in-law’s Worldmark for the duration, and I don’t have time to to waste listening to a hardsell just to get low grade seats to a lower grade show.
If you’ve never been to Medieval Times, check out the Tournament of Kings at Excalibur.
Zombie Burlesque was a great show when I was there.
Moderator Note
This doesn’t answer the OP at all. Don’t threadshit.
With another blizzard here today, we just made reservations for the second week in March to go to Las Vegas, so I’m reading this thread with renewed interest.
We’ve been to Las Vegas about eight years ago. We don’t really gamble, so we’ll focus on seeing shows and people watching. We’ve already been to Hoover Dam and Red Rocks, which we enjoyed, but this time we won’t have a car so we’ll need to stay in town.
I’d like to hit the Neon Museum and sorry about the now-closed Star Trek experience. I’m wondering if there are additional similar tech-based attractions, like the Atomic Testing museum. What else? Any cool architectural salvage sites (not that Las Vegas is know for old buildings)? How about flea markets or shops that include modern-era furniture or equipment (such as typewriters or early computers)?
Like I mentioned in my original post, I find it fascinating to walk along The Strip checking out the facade of the various hotel/casinos. You can start anywhere and walk either direction as long as you want. The one “must see” in this activity is The Dancing Waters at The Bellagio. It’s lighted after dark, so it’s worth seeing twice (day & night).
The most important thing to understand about walking along the Strip is that the buildings are HUGE - much bigger than you can imagine. Therefore, everything is farther away than you think it is.
Some of the hotels are interesting inside too. Here are a few examples in alphabetical order.
•Bellagio (lobby full of Chihuly sculptures)
•Caesar’s Palace (Shops at Caesar’s w/ animatronic robot show)
•Circus Circus (circus acts in casino, amusement park in rear)
•Hard Rock Hotel - off the strip (Rock memorabilia)
•Luxor (inside of pyramid)
•New York New York (food court)
•Paris
•Planet Hollywood (fake sky in shops)
•Venetian (fake canals with genuine gondolas)
•Wynn (Vegas excess to the nth degree)
First sentence should be “One night…”
A big “don’t miss” - especially for first-timers - is the self-proclaimed “Worlds Largest Souvenir Store” on the NW corner of LV Blvd (The Strip) & Sahara. Sure it’s tacky & kitchy. That’s the essence of Las Vegas. No matter what your taste is, you’ll find something interesting.
If you’re a fan of the TV show Pawn Stars, or pawn shops in general, check out Gold & Silver, near the corner of LV Blvd & Charleston, in the shadow of The Stratosphere Tower.
Try Indoor Skydiving. I’m not very athletic but I was able to do it reasonably well.
Maybe it’s b/c it was a Saturday afternoon, or we were 2 women or it’s a de facto state - it was aggravating for us just to walk the 2-3 blocks from Wahlburger to the Strip Bus stop b/c everywhere we looked there was a street performance or tchotchke seller or ticket hawker/pamphleteer trying to get our attention. Mostly where it was easier to get thru or around the crowd. It got absurd when we talked openly at the bus stop how we weren’t going to be able to shake the lady trying to convince us to take her flier and buy tickets from her to the show she was hawking as that lady followed us in/out of the shelter after our repeated refusals. We finally booked it down the sidewalk to the next stop to shake her.
Then we were begged at on the bus going to and from the Shelby museum and an over-friendly guy who claimed to know the airport slot machines’ tricks and getting free stuff there tried working on me as I took the bus to the airport. I ignored him till he reached across to touch my arm, suggesting I was sleeping w/ my eyes open instead.
Overall it felt like there wasn’t an environment in the area (at the Shelby museum we had to go thru a sales pitch about paying to drive a Shelby right then and there in order to enter the museum) that wasn’t actively trying to get money from me. I expect high-pressure tourist environments but it’s still unsettling after awhile.
Nawth Chucka: You are right.
Las Vegas is all about separating you from your money, and nowhere is that more apparent than walking The Strip.
The hawkers are omnipresent & very aggressive. So are the other people you mentioned. So are people in costumes who want you take a picture with them (for money of course). Also lots of homeless.
It’s easy for me to say “ignore them,” or “don’t make eye contact,” but you have to figure out your own path to invisiblity.
As Herman Cain once said in a different context, “I don’t have any facts to back this up, but…” it’s my subjective impression that The Las Vegas Strip & adjoining area is the highest density of restaurants of anywhere I’ve been.
The days of $1.00 steak or lobster loss leaders are long gone, but you will find everything from all the fast food favorites to the hautest of haute cuisine. Every major hotel/casino has at least one celebrity chef venue, where you can splurge on a meal where preparation & presentation are visual art and entertainment. There also is a plethora of excellent modest priced places. If you venture off The Strip you MIGHT find a hole-in-the-wall treasure, but that’s a crap shoot (pardon the expression), & I don’t recommend it for newbies.
I recommend against going to national chains like The Cheesecake Factory. Don’t get me wrong. I love The Cheesecake Factory back home, but in Vegas I prefer to go to places that are only there.
Those are my general comments on Las Vegas restaurants. I’ll post some specifics later.
First rule of walking in Vegas: things are much farther away than they appear.
For example, if you are on Fremont street, you can see the Stratosphere tower, and it doesn’t look that far away - but it’s 1 3/4 miles away. That’s also the distance from TI/Palazzo to New York New York/MGM Grand.
There’s one off-strip place I can think that has a “cheap special”; Ellis Island. It’s a 10-ounce filet-cut top sirloin with “potato or rice,” green beans, and soup or salad for $8.
I have to say, I just got a plain old fish sandwich at Wahlburger and it was fantastic. Not fancy, but not insanely overpriced plus I got a free Wahlburger tumbler to take home.
I haven’t looked, but surely there’s a good Italian restaurant near the Mob Museum?
I deliberately avoided Vegas for years since I tend to like authenticity and the idea of being in various simulacra didn’t hold much appeal. I also don’t much enjoy slot machines or casinos.
But I went to a couple conferences and liked Vegas somewhat more than I expected. The quality of the food and hotels is excellent and can be pretty good value if you do your homework. I got several books from Chapters (Canada’s biggest good bookstore chain) about Vegas, did my research, and saw a fair chunk of what was on offer at the time.
I didn’t gamble more than twenty bucks in total.
If you have not yet booked, many books recommended the website LasVegasAdvisor, which offers some very good discounts. I have no affiliation with the site, but it seems like the real deal.
Celebrity chef culture is big in Vegas. There are many excellent restaurants. I would skip the buffets. I especially liked Daniel Boulud’s Bistro in the Venetian, Bobby (Flay’s) Burger Palace midstrip and Grimaldi’s Pizza (near Palazzo). There is lots of good food at reasonable prices. An unbelievably good lunch at Bistro is $30-40, Hamburger meal is $10, Grimaldi’s $15 plus drinks, tip, etc.
Shopping is plentiful if you like that. If you are thrifty, there are a couple Nordstrom Rack’s and Off 5th Saks (which I like), but you need to take a bus or drive. Almost any higher end store has at least one Vegas location.
Most shows have half-price tickets available. These can be purchased from several booths which are well marked. I saw most of the Cirque shows, several magic shows, a couple tame burlesque things, popular odd shows like
Absinthe, some good concerts (especially techno, but also in-residence stars and shows starring parts of well-known groups). Shows run from $20-$100 depending on seat quality and show. Many of the shows were good.
People in Vegas are in a party mood and very easy to meet. There are lots of clubs with decent DJs and pricey alcohol. I found it easy to get into any club if you dress appropriately, but only a few clubs were very good. (I liked Tao, at the Venetian). Pool parties are expensive but great fun and a good way to get a tan, the MGM and
(Sorry, phone and editing time issues).
Wynn had nice pools with pricey drinks.
Vegas is basically a busy “strip” and several blocks “downtown”. Since traffic and parking on the strip is awful, I wouldn’t want the aggro of driving, but if you are in a position to drive to Vegas YMMV. Tours to Red Rock, Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam (from bus to horse to helicopter) are everywhere. All of these are worth seeing once. So is Vegas. I’d go back for a long weekend, see a hockey game or for a conference. But I like more authentic places. Still, there is a lot to see and do for non-gamblers. And five days is the right amount of time for a visit.
And though I walked most places, Vegas is designed so that on the strip, it takes forever to go a short distance. The city buses are very convenient, though, and offer some of the best “people watching”.
We got back yesterday from a week in Vegas. The High Roller is a neat experience. So was the ziplining over the Linq. If you prefer indoor fun, there’s the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, the Titanic exhibit (with real artifacts) at the Luxor, or any number of other activities. Like Smapti, I jumped off the Stratosphere and had a blast doing it.
My husband and I took the Deuce bus most of the time and Uber once or twice. The one day we tried to walk, we put over 6 miles on our sneakers.
There will be no jumping, zipping, falling, twisting etc. on this trip, but all the other suggestions have been great. I have a long list to refer to because of y’all, and if it gets any longer I may have to move there. 
The family has decided to hit a Vegas buffet at least once, so which ones give you more bang for your buck?