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Caesar’s Palace Review

Caesar’s Palace is one of the most recognized names of any casino in the world, let alone Las Vegas, and with good reason. Situated in the centre of the Strip, Caesar’s Palace is simply vast, and has so many jaw dropping sights, you have to visit it even if you don’t spend a dime.

Just listing the things Caesar’s offers doesn’t do it justice, though - sure it has 120 shops, 3,300 hotel rooms, a 4,100 seat stadium modelled on the Colosseum and live entertainers from Celine Dion to Elton John - but it’s the way Caesar’s is presented in such a lavish, detailed, and, dare one say it, mad style that truly makes it one of the top places to visit in Vegas.

Read on to see the complete Caesar’s Palace review.

Sand Storm hits Las Vegas

I’m writing this from the comfort of the traditional British summer, with temperatures struggling to reach 20 degrees C, the worst flooding we’ve had in over 150 years, and the Sun last being seen back in April. Which, as coincidence would have it, was the last time I went to Vegas - and yes, it rained in Vegas while we had glorious sunshine in the UK!

Now that I’m back, though, the Vegas weather is reverting to type. No problems with water over there, but a real problem with sand. Just check out these pics taken by Roy Vegas of the sandstorm that hit on Friday July 27th 2007. Apparently it lasted for only half an hour, but it certainly was dramatic.

More pics after the jump.

Is Las Vegas heading for ecological disaster?

It had to come sooner or later. With all the money pouring into Las Vegas in the biggest building boom the strip has ever seen, some commentators are wondering whether the company is growing too fast, and whether its growth will be sustainable.

Fast Company have speculated that the combination of low-skilled jobs combined with the potential for what it calls for an “ecological disaster” (no water in the desert, apparently!), all add up to “an environmental pileup in the making”

New Elvis-themed resort heading for the Strip?

Disturbing news reaches us that a new Elivs-themed property is being planned for the south of the Las Vegas strip between the Harley Davidson Cafe and the Smith & Wollensky building just north of the MGM Grand.

This area of the strip is currently occupied by the Hawaiian marketplace, which I’ve never liked. It’s full of stalls selling junk, gets massively overcrowded, looks ugly, and is a nightmare to walk through when you’re on your way to the MGM Grand and New York New York.

Caesar’s Palace gets new $1 billion expansion

Harrah’s have announced that Caesar’s Palace won’t be left behind in the mad Vegas construction boom, and will have $1 billion spent on expanding the property. Part of the new expansion scheme includes the construction of a new 665 room hotel tower called the Octavius Tower, which will rise some 350 feet into the Vegas sky (or just over half the height of the new Palazzo).

Can the Excalibur survive the new Las Vegas building boom?

Old hotels in Vegas are disappearing at an alarming rate, with giant billion dollar mega hotels being built on their imploded ruins. The Stardust went in March 2007, and the New Frontier is set to be imploded in early 2008. These hotels, though large, were old, and although imploding them was expensive, the total cost of imploding them paled into significance compared with the billions of dollars being poured into the construction of the new hotels that will replace them.

However, Las Vegas is one city that doesn’t stand still, and the new hotels are changing not just the skyline, but the nature of the visitors who are set to come to the strip in future years. Just as the older hotels such as the Stardust and New Frontier fell out of favour once the huge themed mega-resorts such as the Luxor were built, the worry is that these existing mega-resorts will also go into decline once the new super-luxurious mega-hotels are completed.

Luxor undergoes $300 million transformation

The Luxor hotel in Las Vegas is undergoing a huge $300 million refit aimed at freshening the place up and removing much of the Egyptian theme that pervades the place (which you’d have thought would have been quite difficult for a gigantic black pyramid!). The refit is being carried out to ensure the Luxor continues to attract visitors amidst the changing nature of the tourists pouring into the city.

For the huge new billion dollar hotels that are currently being built in Vegas aren’t just changing the skyline - they’re also changing the type of visitor and their corresponding tastes.

New Project CityCenter renderings

As the giant Project City Center development continues its construction, some more renderings of the new Las Vegas hotel complex have appeared from some of the project’s architects, Rafael Vinoly. The renderings show what the complex will look like both from within its center, and also how it fits in with the existing Las Vegas hotels on the strip.

More pictures of Project City Center after the jump.

Las Vegas Dunes Hotel implosion videos

The Dunes hotel in Las Vegas was an icon of the Las Vegas strip for decades, until its life was cut short in 1993 by Steve Wynn, who decided that the ageing hotel had reached the end of its life and needed to go.

So it was that the Dunes was imploded in front of thousands of invited onlookers and tourists amid a spectacle of fireworks, pyrotechnics and showmanship. No-one does a hotel implosion like a Vegas hotel implosion!

More videos of the Las Vegas Dunes hotel implosion after the jump.