It’s an old cliche with casinos that the house always wins, and obviously that’s true to an extent, otherwise multi-billion dollar casinos wouldn’t be sprouting up all over Vegas at the moment. If the house didn’t win, how could they afford these vast projects, right?
Why, then, do people insist on gambling if they can never win? Well, as these stats show, some people do win, and the prizes on offer are as huge as everything else in Las Vegas.
The Venetian Hotel is one my favourite hotels in Las Vegas. It’s wonderfully cheesy, yet at the same time truly astonishing. The thought of recreating Venice in the middle of the Nevada desert, filled with thousands of slot machines and poker tables, is what gives rise to the impression of the cheese, but seeing it in real life, with its immense attention to detail, simply takes your breath away.
In fact, everything about The Venetian is jaw-dropping – from its looks, to its cost, to the staggering levels the designers went to in order to achieve Venetian perfection.
See what I’m on about with this review of the Vegas Venetian Hotel.
As the north end of the Vegas strip goes mad with multi-billion dollar developments, one thing has become increasingly clear – these new Vegas hotels and casinos are monsters! As if the existing hotels weren’t big enough, the new hotels currently under development are dwarfing their older neighbours.
As you can see from this shot, the Wynn already dominates the older Mirage, while the new Palazzo and Wynn Encore will be bigger still. Add Echelon Place and the 63-storey Fontainebleau to the mix, and the older hotels are in danger of disappearing beneath their shadows!
The Fontainebleau hotel and casino, currently under construction on the north end of the Las Vegas strip, has managed something few other new hotels have managed in Vegas – secrecy. Despite the fact the Fontainebleau is actually being built, nobody has seen any renderings or artists’ impressions of what the building will look like.
Until now that is. Grainy though this scanned image is (courtesy of Las Vegas Review Journal’s print edition), this is what the new Fontainebleau will look like when it’s completed at the end of 2009 – and it looks stunning!
Read more on the Fontainebleau hotel after the jump.,
The Palazzo is slowly starting to take shape. The new hotel being built between The Wynn and The Venetian is set to open later this year (though more likely early next year), but for those who can’t wait to see what it looks like, here’s an artist’s impression!
The main hotel is the large left building, while the building towards the right is a new condo that’s being built as part of the new complex. You can just about see the existing Venetian sandwiched between the two.
Following on from the succession of new multi-billion dollar mega-hotels currently being built at the north end of the Las Vegas strip comes news of, well, another new multi-billion dollar mega hotel.
Called the Crown Las Vegas, the new hotel resort will be built next to the $3.4 billion Fontainebleau that’s currently being built opposite Circus Circus.
Crown Las Vegas will be slightly different from other hotels in Las Vegas though.
At 1,888 feet tall, and with 142 stories, it’ll be the tallest building in Las Vegas by a mile, dwarfing even The Stratosphere.
Actually, it’ll be the tallest building in the Western hemisphere!
More details and pictures of the Crown Las Vegas after the jump.
Parts of Las Vegas have always seemed so outrageous, you sometimes feel you’re in a theme park. Excalibur, for example, with its giant King Arthur’s castle, sandwiched between a giant black pyramid and New York New York with a rollercoaster.
Now, though, that theme-park feeling has been brought vividly to life, courtesy of Lego. At their Californian LegoLand themepark, they’ve built a gigantic replica of the entire Vegas strip out of 2 million Lego bricks. It took their designers over 3 years to make, and features a 20 foot tall replica of The Stratosphere, working rollercoasters, and Lego showgirls.
MGM Mirage’s shiny new Project CityCenter resort that’s currently being built in Vegas sits neatly next to the Monte Carlo hotel, which also happens to be owned by the company. So, a nice contiguous block of land, with two first class properties standing proudly side by side then?
Not quite. Sandwiched in the middle is a tiny WalGreens drug store (or what we in the UK called Chemist!). Apparently, WalGreens refused to sell their plot of land, and are quite happy running their little store as the western hemisphere’s most expensive privately financed project is built around them.
A picture paints 1,000 words, as they say, and now Google proves it. Not content with just providing its users with streetmaps of various cities around the world, it’s now added the ability to see fullly interactive panoramic photos of some of those cities as well. And yes, Las Vegas is naturally one of the first cities to be included.
As you can see from the screen shot, the pics are a bit on the blurry side, but it really gives you a sense of being in Vegas, as you can pan left and right, and even more forward and backwards, with newer images morphing over the existing one to provide a sense of movement.
This really is impressive technology, and is a great way of checking out an area before you decide to book a hotel. Go have a play with it now at Google Maps. Just type in the name of a hotel, followed by “Las Vegas” (e.g. “Circus Circus, Las Vegas”), and then click on Street View. You’ll be amazed!
Harrah’s Casinos will be among the first companies in the world to use a brand new table-top computer from Microsoft.
The new computer, called the Microsoft Surface, is straight out of the film Minority Report. You can see images, files and documents on the table-top screen, and then drag them around with your hands, just by touching them.
You can then move them around the screen, resize them, or manipulate them any way you want, exactly as you would if they were real life objects.
Better still, the Surface will recognize objects placed on it, such as digital cameras or mobile phones, and will let you move files into and out of those objects. Harrah’s envisages using the technology to load free slot-play to your account when you place your Total Rewards card on it.
