Random thoughts from our trip with Kayla to Las Vegas:
- If you go to Las Vegas and see only one show, it must be Mystère at Treasure Island. If you see a second show, it should be Penn & Teller over at the Rio. If you squeeze in a third show, it’s a toss-up between Love at the Mirage, or just seeing Mystère again.
- The phrase “but it’s a dry heat” is most often used sarcastically, but it actually does make a big difference.
- The Criss Angel Cirque Du Soleil show is not the train wreck the early reviews would lead you to believe. It’d be better if they just ditched the Cirque association and made it a straight up magic show, though. (I imagine that the Cirque name brings in an older demographic that’s never heard of Criss Angel, so from a business point-of-view I see why they went with it.)
- Scariest moment of the whole trip: standing in the observation area of the Eiffel Tower replica, 50-ish stories off the ground, looking through the drainage hole in the thin piece of metal that is the walkway, and seeing all the way to the ground.
- Seeing the little ghost towns that are the unfinished resorts Fontainebleu and Echelon was pretty weird. And, I don’t want to say that MGM’s CityCenter is still going poorly, but at MGM Grand, they offered me a free condo just to listen to their pitch about why I should buy tickets to see Ká. (Okay, that joke needs a little work, but I’m too tired/lazy to refine it.)
- But seriously, as an MGM shareholder, my unbiased advice to you is to buy 2 CityCenter condos. They make great gifts for birthdays, Christmas, Arbor Day, or any other gift-giving occasion.
- At last report, Kayla was well in excess of 400 photos taken. It was interesting to see things through her eyes. And a complete blast to play tour guide and show her as much as we could pack in to the time we had.
- The roller coaster in Adventuredome at Circus Circus is hands-down the best of the coasters on the Strip. But Circus Circus is a nightmare to walk to (being in the most barren part of the dull end of the Strip) and through (with its narrow “midways” and the throngs of people with kids).
- The Palazzo continues to impress. It’s got everything you could want, and it is easy to find everything, as well. Not what you’d expect from the owners of the Venetian, which, along with Caesar’s Palace, really seems like some sort of maze experiment. It hasn’t happened yet, but I fully expect to round a corner at one of those places some day and find a hunk of cheese sitting there.
We’ll be back in Vegas again in December for the marathon. Looking forward to it.
Matt Riffle