We want to take a 4-5 day vacation next month before junior starts kindergarten.
Disney is out since there’s no way I can handle the heat & humidity of outdoor parks in a Florida summer.
So we were looking at the deals in Vegas. Haven’t been there in about 6 years but still know the general layout of where everything is.
I know it will be hot there but how hot is hot? We plan to be either at a pool or indoors but still…??
Even with sunscreen on can you enjoy the outdoor swimming pools without baking?
We’re not big gamblers anyway so we’d mostly swim (looking at Madalay Bay), see a show (BlueManGroup?), and see the indoor sights (Cesar’s shops, Venetian shops, etc.).
Any recommendations besides Mandalay Bay?
Here’s what I can tell you about 110-degree heat:
Right now, here in central Illinois, it’s about 95 degrees with about 98% humidity. It’s downright dangerously hot. As soon as I step outside I feel like someone has thrown a blanket soaked in hot soup over my body.
Many years ago, I was in Modesto, CA in July. July is Modesto’s dry season and I think the humidity that day was in the single digits. I remember driving by a bank and seeing the temperature on the little sign outside: 107. I wasn’t uncomfortable at all, and indeed, I had the windows down and no a/c.
So the bottom line is that, even though Vegas is hella-hot in August, it’s not the kind of hot you’re used to in Minnesota. You may even find it comfortable.
And make sure you drink lots and LOTS of water. I was in Vegas for a weekend last year and I was parched from the moment I stepped off of the plane.
I was hoping to hear something like this. With the humidity here this past week it’s been god-awful, and it’s only around 96 compared to a Vegas 106.
I was just in Vegas a couple weeks ago. It’s definitely hot, and if you plan to be outside you definitely want to have water with you. However, it isn’t unbearable. Summer in the Southwest is perfect poolside weather.
The heat definitely doesn’t extend indoors, though. A lot of effort goes into making the casinos comfortable. If you hang out indoors most of the time and restrict going outside to the pool or to walking from one building to another (and several buildings on the Strip are linked by trams anyway), you’ll be fine.
If you are going as far as Las Vegas, why not consider Disneyland in Anaheim? The weather is quite nice, much cooler than Las Vegas and generally dry.
We considered it but we usually do the Disney thing in February in Florida.
Is Jr the youngest or the oldest?
The beach at Mandalay with the lazy river is probably the best pool set up for kids but there is little else for them to do so far down the strip. If you’re okay with spending a bit on taxi’s everytime you leave the hotel it will work, otherwise you’ll find little legs run out of steam quickly in Vegas and everything is further than it appears.
ETA: I just remembered - Mandalay, Luxor and Excaliber are all connected via a tram, so stay at Mandalay and use the tram to get to the rest of the strip.
Excalibur is not as nice a hotel and the pool is just okay but it’s a castle and it’s a reasonable walk to the M&M museum.
There are things to do with the kids there although the kid friendly Vegas experiment is over.
The free outdoor shows - Bellagio fountains, Mirage volcano and I think they’ve removed the strippers from the pirate show outside TI again, are all fun for the kids. See the Forum shops at Cesaers Palace - they have an FAO Schwarz and a cool show in the back rotunda about Neptune I believe.
Yeah, Excalibur is probably your best bet for kid entertainment these days. So is Circus Circus, but that will almost certainly require a cab trip.
Jr is an only. He’s a trooper though as he did the Magic Kingdom this past year at age 4 for nine hours with no stroller or dad’s shoulders.
But yeah, we’ll probably take trams and taxis most places. I know he’ll want to see the Fremont street experience at night.
Just FYI - the FAO Schwartz closed a year or so ago. I found out the hard way when I left gift buying for my kids to the last minute on my last trip to Vegas.
I had the opposite experience to HeyHomie’s. Last year I was in Vegas in July, and maybe it was hotter than 110 because it literally felt like I was in an oven – very unhumid but very hot, oppressive waves of heat rolling off anything solid.
In fact, I stayed at Circus Circus, and waking up at 7 am on a Tuesday morning and finding no poker players there at that hour, started to walk across the street to the Riviera to see if there was some to be had there. It was still in the upper 80s or even 90s, so I decided against it (walking across the street at 7 am because it was too hot!)
Then again, if you were at a pool it might be a different story because the pool would cool you down and you don’t have to worry about being soaked in sweat once you arrive somewhere.
But I wouldn’t go again in the summer if I planned to ever step outside the casino I was staying at. I mean that literally. I wouldn’t even want to wait outside for a shuttle for more than 5 minutes.
ETA: I’m in Florida and I walk 20-30 miles outside on the weekends, so I know from hot!
Yeah, I walked the entire Forum and didn’t see that. About the only kid-friendly store in there now is a magic shop, which I found kind of uninteresting.
The Forum is sadly really bland now. I remember it used to have a lot of interesting, unique shops. Now it just has a lot of high-priced boutique stores that appear to be nothing more than places to sink your jackpot earnings on a $5000 purse or shoes.
I dunno, man. Florida summer’s pretty nasty, but if you’re afraid of Southwestern heat in the 80s and 90s? That’s a lovely day out.
There are a bunch of legit museums in Las Vegas, including a children’s museum:
Bringing kids here to Las Vegas is a horrible idea. There simply is very little for them to do - and even people who live here agonize over what to do with kids on the weekends, for birthday parties or whatever. Yeah, Circus Circus has the amusement park out back, and there are some pools to play around, but other than that, you will spend lots of time and energy finding anything to do with anyone under the age of 21.
If you have kids, you have to walk through the casino areas quickly - don’t dawdle or security will be shooing you along.
Regarding the weather - it has been very weird here this year. We had actual humidity a few weeks ago! Normally the heat is bearable because there is no humidity to speak of (2-7%). So far, July has been under “normal” - meaning only about 100 degrees instead of the 110 and above. The trick is to go to the pool area early in the morning, when the sun will not burn four layers of epidermis off your body in 10 minutes, or go in the early evening - when it is still light out, but no direct sun. And I would strongly suggest bringing light sweaters for everyone - they crank up those air conditioners like you won’t believe, and if you sit anywhere indoors for an extended period of time (or go to see a show like Lion King or whatever), it can get downright nippy!
Again - I strongly suggest not bringing kids to Las Vegas, but if you do - Circus Circus would be your best bet. Some of the Stations Casinos chains have a Kids Quest area that is like a really, really cool place to hang out, with adult supervision; think of a day care with free video games, slides, games and other activities. Most kids don’t want to leave! There is an hourly fee - and I think the maximum you can let kids stay is 3-4 hours, but a great way to get away with spouse and have a quiet dinner, or play some slots, or see a movie and not feel like crappy parents. The kids really do like going there (at least at the Sunset Station Casino.)
So, what, that Spongebob Squarepants motion ride in Excalibur is adults-only? 
When my sisters and I were teenagers we stopped in Vegas for a couple days as part of a family vacation to the Grand Canyon. We weren’t even very young kids, but it was still miserable for us. We felt unwelcome anywhere in the casino where we were staying (Paris) and had to be escorted out by security because we were watching our parents playing around with the dime slots.
We tried to walk around outside and see the sights, but everywhere we went there were these guys trying to give my father brochures for prostitutes while he had his wife and 3 teenage daughters with him! It was just uncomfortable.
This has been more than 10 years ago now, so things might have changed, but it was the worst part of the whole vacation. I haven’t been back to Vegas since.
Morgis raises a good point. You can’t walk ten feet down The Strip without at least half a dozen guys handing you little cards with pictures of naked titties on them. 99.99% of them wind up on the ground, and of course kids can grab as many as they like. Something to think about.
I remember a lot of that from visits back in the 90s, but my last couple trips there I haven’t seen these guys anywhere.
My most recent visit (only visit, actually) was in March 2010 and what I described was very much the case. Perhaps the city has cracked down since then?
They were definitely there a couple weeks ago, and they were fairly aggressive. I didn’t look at them or make any move to grab the flyers, but they were still trying to push them into my hands.
It may be that they only come out after a certain time, as I didn’t go out onto the Strip sidewalk until after sunset.
On doing a little research, it seems that Clark County and Las Vegas keep trying to crack down on them, but they keep popping up like cockroaches and the casinos and police really don’t care to lean on them.