Thanks for an interesting post. As it is built in a desert one would think that they could have planned a better street grid across the flat desert landscape. I guess the private developers wanted each casino to be an island where people would spend all their time and money on their island. I think the private developers were more powerful than the local government and have more funds than the city and built what they wanted where they wanted.
Nice pics, good commentary to read. It's been a long time since I've been in Vegas, over 15 years. About all I've heard in recent years is complaints about the rising costs and efforts to make the F1 race weekend incredibly hostile to anyone without a ticket, which is really sad given how affordable of a destination it used to be. I'm glad that it appears they're able to keep things clean though.
I can't imagine that Vegas' future will be as bright as its recent past, between all the casinos that have popped up around the country, the existence of online sports betting, the corporate operators ruining everything they touch, and the generally fickle preferences of travelers, I think they'll be lucky to retain their current level of tourism.
You know, the first time I was ever in a casino (which was in Montreal), I was struck by how different it was from the movies. Instead of flashy and sexy it was, just being frank here, a bunch of somewhat dour old people pressing buttons. At least that was my first impression in Montreal.
But in Vegas... actually it was quite hopping, lots of young people. True I only paid $50 per night for my hotel room (actually it was "free", but with a $50 resort fee), but my sense was Vegas was doing fine.
On an interesting note, at one point the fire alarm in the Flamingo sounded... it is an absolutely gigantic facility (3500 hotel rooms, and can you imagine walking down 27 flights of stairs if you couldn't use the elevator, I thought about this since my room was on the 27th floor!), false alarms would be a tremendous pain, so I actually wondered how that would work. The fire alarm was whooping, but it did not say "leave the building", it said something like "a situation has been detected, please wait for further instructions". I was on the casino floor at the time, and the blackjack dealers and such were kind of looking around with a little concern, but nobody stopped gambling. (I left, because if it was real, I did not want to get stampeded.)
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I can't imagine that Vegas' future will be as bright as its recent past, between all the casinos that have popped up around the country, the existence of online sports betting, the corporate operators ruining everything they touch, and the generally fickle preferences of travelers, I think they'll be lucky to retain their current level of tourism.
But in Vegas... actually it was quite hopping, lots of young people. True I only paid $50 per night for my hotel room (actually it was "free", but with a $50 resort fee), but my sense was Vegas was doing fine.
On an interesting note, at one point the fire alarm in the Flamingo sounded... it is an absolutely gigantic facility (3500 hotel rooms, and can you imagine walking down 27 flights of stairs if you couldn't use the elevator, I thought about this since my room was on the 27th floor!), false alarms would be a tremendous pain, so I actually wondered how that would work. The fire alarm was whooping, but it did not say "leave the building", it said something like "a situation has been detected, please wait for further instructions". I was on the casino floor at the time, and the blackjack dealers and such were kind of looking around with a little concern, but nobody stopped gambling. (I left, because if it was real, I did not want to get stampeded.)