Trippin' the Light Fantastic

January 2017 - Las Vegas NV


Let's wander the Strip. This is a walk over several trips on the Strip over a two week period. I started writing this and realized it would be too long if I combined it all into one post! So instead I will do several of a typical walk that we would do.





We've used Las Vegas as a stopping point over the last few years if we drive across the States for the winter.
The first time (2012) we rented a condo for two months before we went to Mexico.
Other years (except winter 2015-2016 when we flew from home to Mexico and didn't drive) we have used timeshare for a couple of weeks.


There is always something new to find in Vegas.

BTW neither John nor I have the slightest interest in gambling. After 14 days we have not spent a penny gambling. However, on our last night we may go to dinner at a casino and spend a few dollars.

UPDATE as John is reading this post he says he spent $5 at lunch the other day with buddies at South Point. If you sit at the bar and play some poker your drinks are free!

 

If we walk to the Strip from Wyndham it is two miles one way. There is also a shuttle from Wyndham to Harrah's so it depends on where you plan to go.

Let's shuttle from the condo to Harrah's for this excursion. From the shuttle we need to walk through the casino, don't let any of those annoying timeshare people stop you!

Harrah's Las Vegas (formerly Holiday Casino) is a hotel and casino owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment Corporation. Harrah's has over 1,200 slot machines.

In 1991 we made our first trip to LV, we were in Palm Springs CA for a couple of weeks so took an overnight trip.
Here is the Holiday from that trip!
In April of 1992, the conversion of Holiday Casino to Harrah's Las Vegas was completed. In July 1997, Harrah's completed a $200 million renovation abandoning the showboat for a carnival theme.

In 2015 I received an email asking to use one of our scanned photos from 1991. I was surprised and it was this one so I told the blogger to go ahead and use it.

Vintage Las Vegas <vintagelasvegas.tumblr@gmail.com>
11:00 AM (3 hours ago)

hi Jackie

I love your blog, and I love this 1991 photo of Holiday Casino.
http://junkboattravels.blogspot.com/2012/09/ruby-tuesday.html
Can I use this on my blog, with a credit and link back to your website? I've been documenting 20th century Las Vegas on this Tumblr for a couple years. I wanted to figure out how the strange Las Vegas I know came to be, and I never thought I'd still be figuring it out 3 years later.
http://vintagelasvegas.tumblr.com/
I credit all my photos when credit is known.
Jeff

The hotel offers 2,677 rooms with an attached casino providing 90,637 sq ft (8,420.5 m2) of space. The hotel consists of 2 towers, Mardi Gras, and Carnival Towers, the tallest of which, Carnival, has 35 stories.

If you are hungry they have a great food court with anything you may desire.
Stop and say hello to a couple of my friends.

On the way back you might be able to see Big Elvis performing in the bar.
Here he is as we exit Harrah's. Lots of "characters" in the space between Harrah's and the Linq.

 

You can either walk on the street or else cut through some casinos on our way to the Linq area.


The Linq Hotel and Casino (formerly Flamingo Capri, Imperial Palace and The Quad) is a casino, 2,640-room hotel, and shopping promenade owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment. The casino is 118,000 square feet (11,000 m2) with 830 slot machines, 55 table games, and a race and sports book. it opened in 2014.

Just about every celebrity chef has a restaurant in Vegas!

 

O'Shea's is still here, I remember going there our first trip to Vegas when you still used a bucket to keep the coins you won in the one-armed bandits!!! I was glad to see it revitalized when they created the Linq as they were considering tearing it down in 2005.

Click here for a couple of meals I had on the promenade.

At the far end of the promenade High Roller is a 550-foot tall (167.6 m), 520-foot (158.5 m) diameter giant Ferris wheel.

It opened to the public on March 31, 2014, and is currently the world's tallest Ferris wheel. It is 9 ft (2.7 m) taller than its predecessor, the 541-foot (165 m) Singapore Flyer, which had held the record from 2008.

We have a great view of it from our condo. P.S. you can see Harrah's.

 

What's Vegas without a few showgirls?

We'll go into the Flamingo.
The Flamingo Las Vegas is a hotel and casino also owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment. The property includes a 77,000-square-foot (7,200 m2) casino along with 3,626 hotel rooms. The 15-acre (6.1 ha) site's architectural theme is reminiscent of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne style of Miami and South Beach, with a garden courtyard housing a wildlife habitat featuring flamingos. It was the third resort to open on the Strip, and it is the oldest resort on the Strip still in operation today.

A view from the Strip.

1991

Next up is Bally's which has gotten a makeover in the front. Crossing over Flamingo on the pedestrian bridge.

Bally's in 1991, we stayed here for about $40 a night.

The Dunes Hotel was a hotel and casino that operated from May 23, 1955 to January 26, 1993. It was the tenth resort to open on the Strip. Bellagio now stands on the former grounds. The Dunes golf course is now occupied by parts of Monte Carlo, New York-New York, CityCenter, and Cosmopolitan, and T-Mobile Arena.

No pedestrian bridges then.

The hotel features 2,814 extra-sized guestrooms that are 450 sq ft (42 m2) or larger and over 175,000 sq ft (16,300 m2) of banquet and meeting space. The casino occupies 67,000 sq ft (6,200 m2). About 75% of the rooms are in the Indigo Tower, and were renovated in 2004. The remaining rooms are located in the Jubilee Tower, constructed in 1981.
On November 21, 1980, the hotel, then operating as the MGM Grand, was the site of one of the worst high-rise fires in United States history, in which 87 people died.

Let's go outside in the sunshine and cross over to Bellagio.
Looking south as we cross.

Click here to see the Chinese New Year decorations.

Caesar's Palace is across the street.

Caesars Palace is a AAA Four Diamond luxury hotel and casino situated on the west side of the Las Vegas Strip, between Bellagio and The Mirage. It is one of the most prestigious casino hotels in the world and one of Las Vegas's largest and best known landmarks.

Caesars Palace was established in 1966 by Jay Sarno, who sought to create an opulent facility that gave guests a sense of life during the Roman Empire. It contains many statues, columns and iconography typical of Hollywood Roman period productions, including a 20-foot (6.1 m) statue of Julius Caesar near the entrance. As of July 2016, the hotel has 3,976 rooms and suites in six towers and a convention facility of over 300,000 square feet (28,000 m2). From the outset, Caesars Palace has been oriented towards attracting high rollers. The modern casino facilities include table games such as blackjack, craps, roulette, baccarat, Spanish 21, mini-baccarat, Pai Gow and Pai Gow poker; a 4,500-square-foot (420 m2) 24-hour poker room; and a large number of slot machines and video poker machines.

Here's a pic from 1991.

Let's go inside.

Next door is Mirage.
The Mirage is a 3,044 room Polynesian-themed resort and casino resort.

The original marquee sign in front of the Mirage is the largest free standing marquee in the world.

The Mirage was built by developer Steve Wynn and designed by Joel Bergman. It opened on November 22, 1989 and was the first resort that was built with the money of Wall Street through the use of junk bonds. It was built on the site formerly occupied by the Castaways and prior to that, the Red Rooster Nite Club. In 1980, Steve Wynn, a family friend, asked Roger Thomas to join a team designing the first major ground-up resort in Las Vegas in 25 years, a hotel and casino more sophisticated than others in the city. This would become The Mirage resort and hotel, which opened in 1989.

The Mirage was the most expensive hotel-casino in history, with a construction cost of US $630 million.The hotel's distinctive gold windows get their color from actual gold dust used in the tinting process.

In 1993, The Mirage hosted an extended run of the Cirque du Soleil show Nouvelle Expérience in a tent in The Mirage parking lot. It was during this time that Steve Wynn decided to invite Cirque to create Mystère for the soon-to-be-built Treasure Island resort next door. Finally returning to where they began in Las Vegas, Cirque du Soleil has a permanent production at The Mirage, LOVE.

We didn't go inside this time so here's some photos from 2015.

From 1990 through 2003, The Mirage was the venue for the Siegfried & Roy show. The two headliners combined magic and the use of wild animals. The show closed in 2003 after performer Roy Horn was bitten and injured by one of the white tigers used in the show.

Since we mentioned Treasure Island we'll finish there.

 

A couple of one-armed bandits.