If you never got invited to the cool “My Parents Are Out of Town” parties during high school, then make your reservations for Las Vegas--the ultimate in naughty night life on a 24-hour, invisible clock. Not only can you experience the Sodom and Gomorrahish thrills of being in the thick of the action, you don’t have to worry about the neighbors calling the cops or about being grounded for life for a few hours or days of extreme living. And, you really don’t have to stress about a walk on the wild side in Vegas, because it’s one of the safest big cities in the world.
Though Las Vegas looks and
sounds like a fictional place in a futuristic novel, it’s really just a Wild
West rail town where the bad boys made good on the primal vices. When the
federal government banned gambling outright in 1910, the Vegas high and low rollers
just locked the doors and required magic passwords for entry. By the time the
Depression rolled around, the city was rollicking hard enough to miss an entire
chapter in history. In 1931, Governor Fred Balzar tossed in the government ban
towel, and gambling got the official nod.
Today Las Vegas is a gambling
town, but it’s much more than that. Though about 87 percent of all visitors
give Lady Luck a try, the average time spent at the tables or on the slot
machines is under four hours per day with an average total trip budget for
gambling running about $550 per head. With 37.4 million visitors in 2004 and
millions in travel dollars flashing around, the party city of the world offers
something for everyone from little Bethany
to Grandma Ethel.
Hotel City
Las Vegas might well be called “Hotel
City.” In fact, some of the major
hotels feel like mini metropolises. It would be quite possible to check in and
live royally without stepping a foot out the front door of a Las
Vegas mega-motel. From luxury pools to exotic shops to
grand buffet halls, the major sleeperies aim to keep you fed, watered, and
entertained around the clock. Actually, they don’t even keep track of the time
at the big gambling hotels or, at least, they don’t display clocks. Check in,
and you are really off the clock for the duration of a vacation.
“The Strip” (which is actually outside the city of Las Vegas) includes about
five miles of the biggest and most interesting hotels you’ll see anywhere in
the world running from the Mandalay Bay (with built in shark reef) to the
Stratosphere (with a city view tower). In fact, seventeen of the big twenty
hotels in the world are located in Las Vegas.
The MGM Grand (featuring an African Lion habitat) ranks first in the world with
a room count of 5,034 rooms.
There are over thirty super hotels down the main Vegas drag and then more
downtown plus smaller digs sprinkled throughout the city. The big gambling
hotels have open-door policies and cater to both guests and non-guests. In
other words, you don’t have to stay at any particular hotel to enjoy the
amenities. Check in where you like and wander around at will. You’ll see
everything from a roller coaster spiraled around New York,
New York to romantic gondola rides at the
Venetian to water dancing at the Bellagio. You can even watch the pirate boat
show from the sidewalk in front of Treasure Island.
These are just street glimpses of the offerings on hotel row.