Vegas

We had the weekend off before starting our next pet sit, so we took a quick trip over to Las Vegas for three nights to meet up with my dad! The flight from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas is just a little over an hour of flying time, with several direct flight options.

We stayed at the OYO hotel, which is across from the MGM and until March the Tropicana. They are knocking the Tropicana next month to build the new baseball stadium. OYO is at the end of the Strip where casinos have lower table minimums, the people have more character, and it wasn’t too far from the Cromwell where my dad stayed.

We spent most of our time at the tables – primarily black jack, but also some roulette, and even a little craps at the end. We hit most places between the Mirage and Mandalay Bay on Friday, and then went downtown/Fremont Street on Saturday. Overall Jeremy was up about $200 and I was down about $200, so not bad for two full days! Surprisingly, I think we both fared the best at roulette.

On our last day we did the Sphere Experience. This is the newest “entertainment” venue that opened in September last year. When there aren’t concerts, you can go inside the venue for the Sphere Experience, which starts with an hour where you walk around the main level and engage with their interactive robots or get an Avatar scan.

The robots are humanoid and can talk with visitors – kinda like a charming ChatCBT in an underwhelming robot body. The “Avatar” scan uploads your body to the Metaverse, whatever that means (we didn’t do it). In reality, this portion was an opportunity to sell a captive audience high margin food and drinks.

Next, we moved into the theatre for a 50-minute movie. The theatre was like if a planetarium had a baby with an IMax, with high definition screens (see photo of the lizard below) covering nearly all of our visual range. The seats vibrate and they blow air at you to mimic different environments. The show was pretty good, but the overall experience of the show was amazing.

We’re glad we did the Experience, but the tickets are definitely overpriced for what you get. We would have liked to have had more educational bits around the venue. For example, what’s the venue’s purpose, how was it made, what is it made of, why are there robots and Avatar scans, history related to Las Vegas, or even advertisements of upcoming events.

All in all, our Vegas trip was a great success! Looking forward to our next excursion into the Sin City.