This was sort of like a Vegas trip to me. An old gf and her son came to town and I was the tour guide. The gf and I last came out here back when the Excalibur was new. The son has recently turned 21 years old and is in the Air Force doing work at Hill AFB is Salt Lake City and Nellis AFB here. The gf and I were happy to see each other again, but our main focus was seeing Las Vegas in the eyes of a 21 year old.
The first night, I met them at Harrah's, where they were staying. These are hard core country and western fans, so there was only one place to meet. They beat me to Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill. When I got there, they had a big messy plate of nachos and a couple of drinks called a Patriot or something like that. It ended up in a family style meal with everyone eating off of each others plates. I'll save you the details.
After dinner, we took the monorail to the Hilton to see Louis Prima Jr. I was determined to see this show long before I knew they were coming. I bought them tickets and told them that if they don't like it, they could leave and I'd meet them in the casino afterwards. I think that they enjoyed Louis Prima Jr as much as I did. They did more hootin' and hollerin' and whistin' than clapping. The kid got a kick of the pictures of girls looking down on the urinals in the mens room at the Hilton. And he learned how to play a slot machine and how fast it can eat your money.
We went downtown after that and I told him he had a better chance of winning here. I told the boy about slot cards and he seemed interested. He would like the junk mail, he would like the occasional offers, he would like the casino rates, etc. But he never took time to get one. I suggested the Fremont or 4 Queens as a reasonable chance of winning and he lost in both. I suggested the Wizard of Oz machine which ate a lot of money fast. We saw a show in the overhead and finished the tour at the Plaza. The kid's mom pointed out a couple of machines she liked. One was a Red White and Blue reel, the other was Double Diamonds. The kid picked an odd machine inbetween them and soon turned $10 into $400. We walked around a little and he found another game by random chance and won about $170.
It was about 1:30 in the morning when we walked out of the Plaza. I was amazed how much of FSE closes down at night. All of the slot joints and gift shops were shut down. Only the major hotel/casinos were open. There were people actually mopping the floor of FSE. There were a few machines driving around that were vacuuming and washing the floor under the canopy.
We left, and I took them back to Harrahs and called it a night. We again talked about slot cards and I kinda left the kid with a math quiz in his head about how much coin in he gave to the Plaza and still won.
The next day, I met the group at Caesars. The kid proudly showed me his Harrah's slot card. We goofed around a little and went to my house. They were kinda interested to see that Las Vegas is more than just the strip and downtown. There are neighborhoods, WalMarts, Home Depots, Taco Bells, etc.
The show of the night was the kid's choice. He had been going through the magazines and picked his show. I was kinda hoping for Blue Man Group. He picked Believe. Dammit. The Chris Angel show. I wanted to spend my whole life without seeing that show. Now, I'm down to I want to spend the rest of my life having only seen the show once.
We went to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign and took some pictures. They do have a parking lot there, but there is only room for about 10 cars and some of them are handicap only. There is a long aisle for limos and that's where I parked since I was playing tour guide.
We got to the Luxor with a couple of hours to kill. We decided on dinner at the Mandalay Bay buffet. I found it very over priced. For 3 of us, it was $87. The food was alright for a buffet and way below Bellagio or Wynn standards. There were lots of kids running around and lots of strollers too, and that never makes things easier.
We finally got back to the Luxor and the high drama to get seated. There are workers walking up and down the lines to get in telling people there are two lines and no cell phones or cameras or picture taking, or videos...etc. I must have heard it 5 times in line. Then you walk through a metal detector which will go beep, the bouncer wands you and tells you no cameras or cell phones or you will be removed from the theater. Then we get some overpriced drinks and head to our seats. The usher tells us no cell phones or cameras or we will be taken out of the show room. We were almost 20 minutes early and were sitting at our seats talking when the house photographer came by for pictures. I stood up and gave her a really bad time about how there are no cameras allowed in the theater and that I will not be a part of her illegal activities that will get me booted from the show. I thought she was going to cry. I was happy that I got to vent.
The show. There are several different aspects that make a good magician. One, is that we know it's not real so you need to make it look real. Two, you need a good build up in showing the audience your props. Three, you need a good patter where use mental misdirection in telling people what you are doing while actually doing something else. Four, you need to act just as surprised as the audience when the trick works. Most theater magicians don't do that, they take a bow. Chriss Angel is good at number one. He makes some of it look real. I really couldn't follow his lead up to the big moment on many of his acts.
The show starts with several goofy usher type people playing around. I couldn't tell if they were French or Italian. They messed with the audience and did a little close up magic that didn't really work on the big theater. As it turns out, these guys are in on several of the acts. Then Chris comes on and does some close up magic while a girl uses a video camera, and the image is projected on a big screen. He interacts with the audience for a while. Angel has a huge ego. It was only after he made a crack about Cirque du Soleil, that I remembered that this is a Cirque production. With all of the snotty attitudes and rules and crappy clowning, I had completely forgotten this was Cirque. Then it took a turn for the worse.
"Something happens" and Chris goes into his dream state. Then it goes from dancing rabbits to a magic trick, more dancing rabbits and another trick, more dancing rabbits and another magic trick. This goes stale real quick. The dancing rabbits are about 10 people in rabbit costumes. They aren't cute bunnies either. They are ugly and brown and creepy. They make Alice in Wonderland rabbits look cute.
About 25 percent of the tricks he did, I knew what was going to happen as the props were set up. Another 50 percent were "I know how he did that". And there was about 25 percent that was unexpected. We all noted after the show (before we left our seats) that the bulk of the magic was all done over the exact same spot on the stage, where things come up and go down, so that must be where the trap door is. If me, an old lady, and a kid can all conclude that before the show is over, that should be a sign the show is lame.
The positives are....it is a comfortable show room. The sound system is very good. Angel is particularly good at making walking vertically down the side of a wall look easy.
It took an hour and a half to get from the Luxor to Paris on LV Blvd at midnight on a Thrusday night. I took some shortcuts from there, and stopped playing tour guide and started playing crazy cabbie. I took them to Harrah's and went home.
Friday and Sat were work days for me. Mom and son saw The Lion King on Friday and hated it. They both really wanted to see it as it was one of the videos that the kid grew up with. They gave high marks for costumes. They gave low marks to "just singing" and a really boring stage. They said it was way too long for nothing to be happening. Saturday, they saw KA and they were both amazed. They had dinner at Rainforest Cafe...okay, and Border Grill which they loved.
On Sunday, the kid was off with the Air Force, so mom and I saw Barry Manilow. His music was never my style. The guy is a great show man. I hope that I have his energy at 63 years old. He still looks the same and sounds the same as he did 35 years ago. It is a very high energy show. Most of the crowd were Manilow fans and that made it an even more powerful show. It was much, much better than I expected. Still, not my cup of tea. If he moves to the Paris hotel, I MIGHT see him again for free just to see what's changed. Otherwise, I don't plan to see him again. If you have a soft spot in your heart for Barry, this is a good show. Along with his popular power ballads, he seems to be a pretty good writer/poet. Many of his songs would make good poems. I thought that I would have recognized 98% of the songs, but as it turns out, it was less than a third that I knew.
Today was quiet time for the Mom who goes home on Tuesday, so that should end the excitement for this trip.
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