The Vegas Thread!

^But that's where the famous Green Door swingers club is, as well as two gay "spas," a gay bar and a little theater is. I see nothing creepy about it lol!

Cool! I love Vegas, and it's always fun to just snoop around the Strip.

Hey guys!

Turns out Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba stays at Robb and my favorite Vegas hotel Monte Carlo!!!!

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvldSyNyXc

It's a superbowl commercial by the way!

just booked mandalay bay for 311 day,since the show is at the mandalay arena.

my main question is this: i'll be riding speed, but is it woth riding new york new york? I'm not much of a credit whore, so I don't care if I miss out on a crappy coaster, and it looks pretty rough

^It's an interesting, but very rough ride. As an enthusiast you should at least ride it once. Ride in the front of one of the cars and brace yourself.

So far it is my least favorite steel coaster I have ridden. Robb's video really does do it justice. Like Elissa said, you must ride it at least once.

Has anyone seen/heard any news about the new Stratosphere ride being built? I'm curious to see some progress on this because I'm really looking forward to doing it this summer some time because I will finally be 21.

So I had never been to a casino grand opening before...Until Aria opened. I got a great offer in the mail, so I decided to head out to Vegas for a few nights to catch the opening night fireworks and be one of the first official guests of the hotel.

My overall impression of Aria is that it looks really nice, but doesn't feel like Vegas. It's just more modern and boring with no personality. Like the M resort on a bigger scale.

On to part 1 of the photos, which are random photos of the property. Party two will be a feature on the standard room @ Aria.

The exterior at night

OMG!!! WORLD OF COLOR!!!!

This was actually kind of cool. At the main entrance, the giant water wall flow changes patterns and stuff. I guess it was designed to drone out the sound of the cars.

The lobby. A real wide open space. Behind the window is the pointless "park", which is really just an open space with some grass and trees.

A random picture of the casino floor. It looks nice, but has no personality.

Here's their 24 hour cafe that almost tried to kill me with chicken wings that weren't cooked.

The 2nd floor, which features most of the restaurants had a completely different interior design. It felt really out of place with the darker casino floor. Felt like it was thrown together. Here's the buffet.

And some random expensive restaurants

And a frogurt place. Why is yogurt trendy again???

The lobby of the Elvis Cirque show. What does a giant blue shoe have to do with Elvis?

FIST PUMP!

The airport terminal disguised as City Center's convention area.

Inside Crystals. The shopping mall with 5 stores. And everything is at least $1000.

But it does have random art features like this one.

The slot machines all feature small LCD touchscreens that provide players club info, resort info, etc. Now burning money is even easier! yay!

Vdara tower

Mandarin Oriental tower at night.

The lobby of the Mandarin Oriental has incredible views!

What do you mean no personality? I'm curious. The photo you took of the floor reminded me a lot of Planet Hollywood honestly. To me there are only 2 kinds of personalities for a casino - busy and dead.

There's no life to the casino floor. Despite looking really nice, it's decor is boring (just more of the overdone "modern" look---almost like a supersized M resort), it's too dark at night because it relies so heavily on natural light, there's nothing unique to make it stand out, and it's laid out in a way where even if someone was winning big at a table or slot machine you wouldn't hear the excitement unless you were right next to them.

I guess what I am trying to say is that it feels more like an indian casino floor, not the casino floor that is supposed to be the centerpiece of the most expensive vegas project ever.

I know this will be a controversial question, but as I have not yet been able to decide, which on strip hotel would you recommend to a vegas newbie?

We stayed at the Monte carlo my first visit and it was great - an all in all nice hotel, great location and good value.

^^It really depends on what you are looking for. Luxury or value? What are you visiting for? nightlife, gambling, food, etc.

Monte Carlo is a good combination of value and quality.

Wynn & Encore are the best for luxury and service.

Mirage is slightly more expensive than Monte Carlo, but is still a good value right in the center of the strip.

The lobby of the Elvis Cirque show. What does a giant blue shoe have to do with Elvis?

You can do anythin' but lay off of my blue suede shoes

Time to bump this with another photo update...

This time, I'll feature the standard room at Aria. Long story short, the only thing keeping their standard room from being the best is its size. THE Hotel, Wynn/Encore, and Venetian/Palazzo are all suite hotels with luxury amenities. Aria definitely one ups them in the amenities department, but not in size.

Anyways...on to the pictures:

A Vegas first: RFID keys. Notice the door doesn't have the typical key slot. That circle above the handle is the RFID thing. The great thing is how you can enter the room just by waving your wallet over the door if the key is in it. Just like the pussy cards in Hong Kong!

The bed. Quite comfy. On par with the other luxury hotels on the strip.

The TV/desk/mini bar/drawers area. An interesting configuration. I could see how this might be annoying on business if someone wants to watch TV, but their roommate is at the desk.

Aria made a big deal about how their rooms are completely touch screen controlled...next to your bed is this screen where you can control the drapes, TV, lighting, etc. The cool part is that you can have presets that it will remember and automatically adjust to at certain times (when the door is open, when you wake up, etc.)

The desk area also features just about every input you can imagine. I'm glad new hotels are all including options like this, so you can play your video games, watch your movies, etc. with ease. The annoying thing is that the outlet was like the only one in the whole room that was easy to get to!

The bathroom.

Whomever decided to put the tub behind the shower is a genius. It's nice to have that extra space to not worry about having towels on the floor to keep the floor dry.

I pretty much want RFID stuff to catch on for everything!

Thanks for sharing!

So weird, as I was reading this page, an Aria commercial came on! This place looks really cool and I agree about all the options they have for iPod, etc. I wish cruise ships would do something like that, the last cruise we were on even disabled the inputs for my little dvd player.

Whomever decided to put the tub behind the shower is a genius. It's nice to have that extra space to not worry about having towels on the floor to keep the floor dry.

though I haven't seen it in a hotel, I've seen in in a couple new homes, and I totally agree, its awesome.

So weird, as I was reading this page, an Aria commercial came on! This place looks really cool and I agree about all the options they have for iPod, etc. I wish cruise ships would do something like that, the last cruise we were on even disabled the inputs for my little dvd player.

I was actually wondering this. Isn't the connection on the panel the port that usually goes into the iPod/iPhone? Is there something I'm missing here cause I have no idea how you would connect an i-anything to that port... Usually to connect anything to an iPhone the other side is USB.

Any-who, I am making my first visit to Vegas in March. I've been looking at all of your suggestions and am getting quite excited. I was wondering what you guys would recommend for cheap lunches. I've heard there are some crazy buffets everywhere. But I don't want to eat then have blast off on a toilet lol.

Justin

For those "Vegas fanboys" out there, here's some news articles I've found over the past week about Las Vegas. One of the things I personally find fascinating is the business itself. The rivalries (Wynn vs. Adelson), the construction boom, the finances...it's all interesting to me. Here's some Vegas news from this week...Some more interesting than others, including a property on the strip changing hands:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/feb/19/harrahs-officially-takes-over-planet-hollywood/

Harrah’s Entertainment officially assumed ownership of the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino today. The Nevada Gaming Commission unanimously approved the takeover Thursday.

 

Harrah’s now owns nine Strip properties, including Caesars Palace, Harrah’s Las Vegas, Paris, Bill’s Gamblin' Hall and Saloon, Bally’s, Imperial Palace, the Flamingo, O’Shea’s, Rio and now Planet Hollywood.

 

The casinos have a combined 25,000 employees, with about 2,300 employees at Planet Hollywood. Harrah’s executives said Thursday the company will be looking to fill about 40 new jobs at Planet Hollywood.

 

Harrah’s said in a news release today that it expects its players club program to be integrated into Planet Hollywood’s by April.

 

Planet Hollywood has about 2,500 rooms and more than 100,000 square feet of casino space in the main property. Planet Hollywood recently opened its PH Towers by Westgate project in December, a non-gaming, 52-story residential and hotel tower with 1,200 suites.

The addition of Planet Hollywood to the Total Rewards program can't come soon enough IMO. I like Planet Hollywoods rooms and Sin City Brewing Company is inside!

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/feb/19/report-casinos-lost-money-second-time-history/

 

Report: Casinos lost money for second time in history

By Cy Ryan (contact)

Friday, Feb. 19, 2010 | 10:18 a.m.

 

CARSON CITY – For only the second time, Nevada casinos posted a loss – but this time it was the biggest.

 

The state Gaming Control Board today released its “Gaming Abstract” for fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30, showing a net loss of $6.7 billion among the 260 major casinos in Nevada.

 

Clubs along the Las Vegas Strip, which makes up 53 percent of the gambling revenue in Nevada, registered a $4.1 billion loss. The only bright spot, from a financial standpoint, was that people drank more. Sales of booze rose by 2.5 percent while revenue tied to casinos, rooms and food dropped. But 36 percent were recorded as “comp” drinks.

 

“It was a horrendous year,” said Bill Bible, president of the Nevada Resort Association, which represents several casinos on the Strip. He said many of the casinos had three and four waves of layoffs to cut cost during this national recession.

 

The only other time Nevada gaming companies reported a loss was in 2003, of $33.5 million, said Frank Streshley, chief of tax and licensing for the board. The business downturn came in the middle of the national recession.

 

Every market except Elko County, with its strong mining business, showed a loss for the fiscal 2009, Streshley said.

 

“Although we have seen some improvement recently, this reflects a tough fiscal year,” Streshley said. He said there was a national and global recession, and high unemployment. At the Strip, he said there were fewer visitors and they were “spending substantially less.”

 

The 260 statewide casinos that grossed more than $1 million or more in gaming revenues posted $22 billion in gross revenue, down 12 percent from the prior fiscal year. And in fiscal 2008, the clubs registered a win of $721.1 million.

 

The $6.7 billion loss is before federal income tax and extraordinary items. And the casinos paid $778.7 million in taxes in fees, or 7.4 percent of their gaming revenue.

 

In a breakdown, the report shows downtown Las Vegas casinos suffered a $54 million loss; Laughlin casinos reported a $158.8 loss; Boulder Strip casinos registered a loss of $823.3 million and the casinos in the balance of Clark County posted a $1.3 billion loss.

 

On the Strip, Streshley said the $4.1 billion loss reflects a 686 percent drop from the previous fiscal year, when the clubs reported a profit of $709.4 million.

 

The report shows there were 98,711 employees at the Strip casinos, down from the 114,465 workers in fiscal 2008.

 

Streshley noted this downturn comes only two fiscal years after the Strip reported a strong $1.6 billion in net income.

 

Bible said casinos on the Strip and downtown closed rooms and towers and reduced expenses “but there were still terrible numbers.”

 

On the Strip, casinos reported $178 million in bad debts in the gambling portion of the business. That compares with $112 million in fiscal 2007. The casinos reported $1.3 billion in complimentary expenses that includes drinks, rooms and food.

 

Statewide, total general and administrative expenses hit $14 billion. Streshley said more than $5 billion of that were casinos writing down the value of assets.

 

The control board said Washoe County’s 32 casinos reported a combined net loss of $47.4 million; Elko County clubs were registered a net income of $36.1 million. The south shore of Lake Tahoe with five clubs reported a net loss of $259.6 million and the Carson Valley area with 14 casinos generated a net loss of $8.6 million.

Everyone should go out and support casinos in Nevada while they are still cheap! Get those great room rates now, before Wynn/Bellagio/Venetian/etc. all go back to being $400 a night!

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/feb/18/disputes-erupts-between-green-valley-ranch-partner/

Station Casinos Inc.'s partner in the Green Valley Ranch hotel-casino filed a motion in bankruptcy court Thursday charging Station has breached its management duties under the joint-venture partnership agreement by diverting business to Station's wholly-owned properties.

 

The motion was filed by GCR Gaming LLC. GCR Gaming and the Las Vegas Sun are both owned by the Greenspun family.

 

GCR Gaming and Station have been equal partners in Green Valley Ranch under an agreement dating to March 2000; and also are partners in the Aliante Station hotel-casino in North Las Vegas and in a collection of smaller gaming properties.

 

Station, unable to meet its debt obligations after the recession cut into its revenue, and several subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy protection last July.

 

The Green Valley Ranch resort partnership was not included in the July filing.

 

But on Feb. 10, the Station subsidiary that operates the property, GV Ranch Station Inc., filed for Chapter 11 reorganization for reasons that have not been disclosed.

 

GV Ranch Station Inc. listed assets of $100 million to $500 million against liabilities of $10 million to $50 million.

 

The filing listed three unsecured creditors -- all associated with Station -- but didn't say how much they were owed. They are Station Casinos Inc., Vista Holdings LLC and Green Valley Ranch Gaming LLC.

 

Station has said in regulatory filings that in addition to its 50-percent ownership stake in the 496-room resort, it receives as the managing partner a management fee of 2 percent of the property's revenue and about 5 percent of its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The partners have the same terms for Aliante Station.

 

In its motion Thursday, GCR Gaming asked the court to dismiss the GV Ranch Station Inc. case, or to cancel the Green Valley Ranch joint venture operating agreement, or to lift the automatic stay of litigation in bankruptcy cases to give GCR the right to enforce its contractual rights under the agreement.

 

"In late December 2009, GCR first learned of a long-running scheme implemented by the debtor to systematically divert customers, business opportunities and other assets from Green Valley Ranch -- which debtor derisively calls the '50 cent piece,' in reference to its limited 50 percent ownership -- to (Station's) 100 percent-owned casinos," the motion charges. "... the scheme included -- but was not limited to -- debtor's specific, individualized efforts to lure Green Valley Ranch's 'high rollers' to Red Rock (a competing, 100 percent-owned casino); ordering Green Valley Ranch to terminate a highly successful marketing program; all the way down to instructing the food purveyor to deliver the 'prime' cuts of meat to Red Rock, while sending Green Valley Ranch the 'garbage.'"

 

GCR said this alleged conduct was confirmed by Timothy Wright, former general manager of Green Valley Ranch. GCR said Station's action violated the operating agreement requiring Station, as the manager, to run the resort in the best interests of Green Valley Ranch "and with the same care as a prudent person would exercise in the management of its own hotel and gaming properties."

 

Station, in a statement Thursday, said: "We intend to vigorously contest the Greenspuns' baseless claims."

 

"We are extremely disappointed that the Greenspuns have joined the fray of out-of-the-money constituents seeking to bring merit-less lawsuits in connection with our bankruptcy proceedings," Station said in the statement.

 

"This threatened lawsuit is nothing more than a desperate and improper attempt by the Greenspuns to gain leverage against Station in our ongoing restructuring discussions with Green Valley Ranch's creditors," the statement said.

 

A Station spokeswoman said the company would have no comment on GCR Gaming's specific allegations.

 

GCR Gaming's motion was filed by Marc Kasowitz, an attorney with the New York law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP.

 

In an interview, Kasowitz said efforts were made to resolve GCR Gaming's concerns out of court, but GCR had no choice but to file its motion after the Station subsidiary filed for bankruptcy protection.

 

Kasowitz said GCR has been deprived of an unspecified amount of revenue because of the conduct of Station, which he called an "egregious breach of the operating agreement."

 

Kasowitz said it is not the goal of GCR Gaming to buy out Station's interest in the resort. A Greenspun family affiliate also owns the District at Green Valley Ranch, a shopping center east of the hotel-casino.

 

The goal of Thursday's court filing, he said, is to have Station removed as manager of the joint venture. If that happens, he said, arrangements would be made to have another licensed operator take over operation of the resort.

 

Kasowitz declined comment on whether GCR Gaming is in disputes with Station over the Aliante Station joint venture and the smaller gaming ventures such as Barley's Casino & Brewing Co. in Henderson.

 

Divorces are always fun! Seriously though, Green Valley Ranch is an awesome property. I'll definitely do a feature on it next time I am out there.

^I hope you do a photo trip report of the Green Valley Ranch.

I remember a few years back that there was a TV show called 'American Casino', which was filmed at the Green Valley Ranch. I recalled it being an entertaining program at the time.

Everyone should go out and support casinos in Nevada while they are still cheap! Get those great room rates now, before Wynn/Bellagio/Venetian/etc. all go back to being $400 a night!

Or, if you're really on a tight budget, you can stay at the Tropicana for $29/night and get the mirrors on the ceiling above the bed - now THAT's Vegas!

I remember a few years back that there was a TV show called 'American Casino', which was filmed at the Green Valley Ranch. I recalled it being an entertaining program at the time.

It was an awesome show!

But then one of the main 'characters' died and they pretty much gave up. I REALLY liked that show a lot.

The prize from season 3 of Hell's Kitchen was to be executive chef @ Terra Verde (the Italian place @ Green Valley Ranch) for a year too.

Green Valley Ranch is my favorite of the "Locals" casinos. It's not too far away like Red Rock, and not too ghetto like The Orleans (which really isn't THAT bad...but Green Valley Ranch is just 1000x better).

I remember a few years back that there was a TV show called 'American Casino', which was filmed at the Green Valley Ranch. I recalled it being an entertaining program at the time.

 

It was an awesome show!

 

But then one of the main 'characters' died and they pretty much gave up. I REALLY liked that show a lot.

I watched a couple of episodes and liked it (especially the buffoons they had in marketing/PR trying to work on a shoestring budget). I did not realize one of the character died.