October 1, 2012

VIVA LAS VEGAS

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, except these pictures that I am sharing with you.  According to www.lvol.com here is a brief history...

WORLD-FAMOUS STRIP STARTS


The success of the El Rancho Vegas triggered a small building boom in the late 1940s including construction of several hotel- casinos fronting on a two-lane highway leading into Las Vegas from Los Angeles. The stretch of road evolved into today's Las Vegas Strip. Early hotels included the Last Frontier, Thunderbird (Still standing as the Arubu Hotel & Spa) and Club Bingo.

The El Rancho Vegas was razed by fire on June 17, 1960. As time passed, many other first-generation Strip resorts lost their identity through absorption by new owners, demolition, extensive renovation and name changes.

By far the most celebrated of the early resorts was the Flamingo Hotel, built by mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, a member of the Meyer Lansky crime organization.

The Flamingo with a giant pink neon sign and replicas of pink flamingos on the lawn, opened on New Year's Eve 1946. Six months later, Siegel was murdered by an unknown gunman who fired a shotgun blast as Siegel sat in the living room of the Beverly Hills, Calif., home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill.

Siegel's life was the subject of a 1992 movie entitled "Bugsy." Although the historic accuracy of the movie is questionable, the movie prompted the Flamingo to open the "Bugsy Celebrity Theater" in November 1992. The Flamingo, after numerous ownership changes, is now owned and operated by the Hilton Hotel Group. Its proper name is the Flamingo Hilton.

While the El Rancho Vegas and other 1940s resorts followed a western ranch-styled theme, the Flamingo was what Siegel called a "carpet joint." It was modeled after resort hotels in Miami. Only the Flamingo Hotel name has survived the 1940s era of Las Vegas Strip development. The final end of the Flamingo as Bugsy knew it was announced early in 1993 when Hilton Corp. revealed plans to construct a $104 million tower addition at the Strip resort -- the last of a six tower master plan. The addition opened in the spring of 1995.

Architectural plans included razing the outmoded, motel-style buildings at the rear of the property, dooming the fortress-like "Bugsy Suite" and bullet proof office used by the gangster before his death in 1946. In December 1993, the last remnants of Bugsy Siegel and his residence were destroyed when the hotel bulldozed the Oregon Building that held the suite in which the gangster once lived.

 

 On approach to Las Vegas from Charlotte, North Carolina passing through 10,000 feet

Flight was scheduled to arrive LAS @ 6:30pm MST

View of the Hoover Dam on our final approach

BUILDING BOOM SWEEPS LAS VEGAS


Resort building continued to accelerate in Las Vegas in the 1950s. Wilbur Clark, once a hotel bellman in San Diego, Calif., opened the Desert Inn in 1950. Two years later, Milton Prell opened the Sahara Hotel on the site of the old Club Bingo. The Sands Hotel opened that same year, 1952. Those hotel names have survived but the properties have undergone numerous ownership changes.


Our room at the Riviera...  This room was much larger than the on in Hawaii and Amsterdam...                                             

Front of the hotel 

You can feel the heat from the lights just standing under the overhang on the side walk.

In 1955, the Riviera Hotel became the first Strip highrise in at nine stories. Previously, Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn had offered guests the highest unobstructed panoramic view of the Las Vegas Valley from the resort's third-floor Skyroom, a cocktail and dancing haunt of visitors, residents and celebrities.


Other resorts that opened during the building boom begun in the 1950s included the Royal Nevada, Dunes, Hacienda, Tropicana and Stardust hotels on the Strip and the Downtown Fremont Hotel-Casino. The Royal Nevada later was absorbed into the adjoining Stardust Hotel property.

In another part of the city, the Moulin Rouge Hotel-Casino opened in 1955 at a time when blacks were not welcomed guests at Strip casinos and black entertainers were required to live off- premise while entertaining Strip audiences. The Moulin Rouge, frequented by all races, was built to accommodate the growing black population.

Joe Louis, the late heavyweight champion of the world, was a Moulin Rouge owner-host. The Moulin Rouge has had a stormy past, closing and re-opening many times over the years. As times and attitudes changed, Louis became a much loved casino host at Caesars Palace on the Strip. The Moulin Rouge was declared a national historic site in 1992 when plans for its revival were announced.

City and county community leaders also realized in the 1950s the need for a Las Vegas convention facility. The initial goal was to fill hotel rooms with conventioneers during slack tourist months.

A site was chosen one block east of the Las Vegas Strip and a 6,300-seat, silver-domed rotunda with an adjoining 90,000-square- foot exhibit hall opened in April 1959 on the site of the current Las Vegas Convention Center.

The silver dome was demolished in 1990 to make room for convention center expansion to a 1.6-million-square-foot facility of which 1.3 million square feet is exhibit space. It is currently one of the largest single-level facilities in the world.

These are pictures from Fremont Street Experience...

Lots of people, casinos, restraurants, and live bands...


The Public grand opening of the Fremont Street Experience was on December 14, 1995. The Fremont Street Experience features Viva Vision, the world's largest video screen which is 1,500 feet long, 90 feet wide and suspended 90 feet above the urban pedestrian mall. Viva Vision features nightly spectacular light and sounds shows with 12.5 million LED lights and a 550,000-watt sound system. Fremont Street Experience is a one-of-a-kind venue which includes free nightly concerts and entertainment on two stages. With direct pedestrian access to 10 casinos, more than 60 restaurants and specialty retail kiosks, Fremont Street Experience attracts over 17 million annual visitors.
 
 


Glitter Gulch is a famous Gentlemen's Strip Club on the Fremont Street Experience
                                                  
 
 
Could this qualify for a DUI???  :-)
 
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, supported mainly by room tax revenues, today is a major player in attracting more than 28.2 million visitors to Las Vegas in 1994, including more than 2 million convention delegates.
 
The Stratosphere Casino, Hotel & Tower is one of the most recognizable Las Vegas Strip Hotels in the world, and its 1,149-foot tall Tower is a one-of-a-kind fixture in the Vegas skyline.
 


Circus Circus Las Vegas is a hotel and 126,000 sq ft casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Winchester, Nevada. It is owned and operated by MGM Resorts International. Circus Circus features circus acts and carnival type games daily on the Midway.  Opened October 18, 1968.  Wikipedia
 
The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign is a Las Vegas landmark funded in May 1959 and erected soon after by Western Neon. The sign was designed by Betty Willis at the request of Ted Rogich, a local salesman, who sold it to Clark County, Nevada. Wikipedia This day was a wedding hosted by one of the thousands of Elvis Presley's...  What a special day!!!

Since 1942 it has been one memorable day after another at the legendary Little Church of the West and what better backdrop for your eventful day than the luxurious glamor of Las Vegas, “The Entertainment Capital of the World”.

Originally built as part of the Last Frontier Hotel located on an isolated stretch of highway that would one day become the famous Las Vegas”Strip”, the Little Church of the West upholds the heritage of Las Vegas with its unique architecture. It’s a freestanding replica of an old west mining town church. With an exterior of cedar and an interior of California redwood, the chapel looks much the same today as when it was first built. It speaks of the early days of Las Vegas when its business district consisted of only the first three blocks of Fremont Street. As the town grew with the population boom caused by the construction of near by Hoover Dam, Fremont Street began to pulsate with wall-to-wall casinos. As first class resorts began to dot the desert skyline and big name entertainment lit up the beckoning marquis, the stage was set for the Little Church of the West to take its place in the annals of Las Vegas history.  www.littlechurchlv.com

Luxor Las Vegas is a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.
                                      
The 30-story hotel, owned and operated by MGM Resorts International, has a 120,000-square-foot casino with over 2,000 slot machines and 87 table games.

At 42.3 billion candlepower, the Luxor Sky Beam is the strongest beam of light in the world. Using computer designed, curved mirrors to collect the light from 39 Xenon lamps and focus them into one intense, narrow beam, engineers say that a person could read a newspaper by Luxor’s Sky Beam from ten miles up. On a clear night, the Sky Beam is visible up to 250 miles away to an airplane at cruising altitude.

Restaurants within the hotel consist of TENDER steak & seafood, T&T, Pyramid Café, MORE the Buffet, Rice and Company, and the Backstage Deli. There is also a Food Court on the Atrium level which contains a McDonald’s, LA Subs, Nathan's Famous, Bonanno's Pizzeria, Blizz Frozen Yogurt, and Starbucks Coffee.[23][24] Since July 21 a new Asian-Fusion restaurant has been opened in the Luxor called "Rice and Company" serving Chinese and Japanese dishes and including a Sushi Bar

The hotel is marked by a 140-foot (43 m)-high obelisk and a 110-foot (34 m)-tall re-creation of the Great Sphinx of Giza.

The Excalibur Hotel and Casino is a hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, in the United States. It is owned and operated by MGM Resorts International.
                                      
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The 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m2) gaming area at Excalibur consists of both table games and over 1,700 slot machines. In addition to casino space, the Excalibur resort includes a renovated pool area, a 13,000-square-foot (1,200 m2) spa and fitness center, the Canterbury Wedding Chapel, the Octane Lounge, a food court and children's attractions

Dick's Last Resort restaurant opened at Excalibur in June 2007. Dick's is known for its unusual dining experience in which servers purposefully act obnoxious towards guests. Employee "Taco" is considered Dick's mascot and entertains guests with his own version of the Bellagio fountain show using water dispensers behind the bar. Other restaurants within Excalibur include The Steakhouse at Camelot
 
Add captExcalibur opened on June 19, 1990 and was originally built by Circus Circus Enterprises, which was purchased in 2005 by MGM Resorts International. When it opened, Excalibur was the largest hotel in the world with over 4,000 rooms and covering over 70 acres.  As of 2009 it was the fifth-largest hotel (by total number of rooms) in Las Vegas, and the seventh-largest hotel worldwide.

New York-New York Hotel & Casino is a hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip at 3790 Las Vegas Boulevard South, in Paradise, Nevada. It is owned and operated by MGM Resorts International.

New York-New York uses the New York City influence of its name in several ways. Its architecture is meant to evoke the New York City skyline; the hotel includes several towers configured to resemble New York City towers such as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.  In front of the property is a lake representing New York Harbor, with a 150-foot-tall (46 m) replica of the Statue of Liberty, and replicas of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Main Immigration Building on Ellis Island, and Grand Central Terminal.

The resort is located on the northwest corner of the Tropicana - Las Vegas Boulevard intersection. At street level, pedestrians are blocked from crossing by concrete barriers. Instead, New York-New York is linked by overhead pedestrian bridges to its neighboring casinos to the south (the Excalibur, across Tropicana Avenue) and to the east (the MGM Grand, across the Strip).
 
Statue of Liberty made completly of Jelly Belly's

The US Post Office Forever Statue of Liberty Stamp, which was intended to show the actual Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, actually shows the replica at New York-New York. This is due to an error by the stamp designers, who incorrectly chose a stock photo of the replica instead of the original and did not recognize the difference. Over 10.5 billion stamps had been printed with the error before it was noticed, by which point it could not be corrected.

Within the resort, particular gambling areas, lounges, restaurants, and meeting rooms are named after New York City neighborhoods or landmarks. The main casino area, for example, is named after Central Park, while the shops are modeled after Greenwich Village.

 
The MGM Grand Las Vegas is a hotel casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.  The MGM Grand is the third largest hotel in the world and the largest hotel resort complex in the United States, ahead of The Venetian.  When it opened in 1993, the MGM Grand was the largest hotel in the world.  I was unable to get alot of pictures do to the masiive revotions to the building.
                                      
The Signature is your gateway to the best of Las Vegas. Three all-suite towers adjacent to MGM Grand set new standards in personalized service and amenities in a non-smoking, non-gaming environment. Directly connected to the energy and excitement of maximum Vegas™ at MGM Grand as well as the serene luxury of The Signature, you get the best of both worlds.



M&M World Las Vegas, Nevada

Located on Las Vegas Boulevard, about a half-block down from the MGM Grand Casino and Hotel,M & M World, Las Vegas is a must see for the chld in each of us--but may not be a store for a kid.

The second level has floor-to-ceiling level bins of all 22 colors/varieties of the candy, including some colors not found in the bags.

Aaron's Birthday Photo..... Happy Birthday

The fourth floor is centered around Nascar and M and M sponsorship
The Coca-Cola Store stands next door to M&M World. On the outside is an impressive giant glass coke bottle set into the front of the building -- probably 50 ft. tall.

Hard Rock Cafe.... Featuring 42,000 square feet of pure unadulterated rock n' roll, the new cafe, located next to the MGM Grand Hotel, provides three-floors of non-stop action and features the world's largest Rock Shop. An interactive "Rock Wall™", interactive "Microsoft Surface" tables, hi-speed Internet access, a contemporary lounge and bar, and patio dining are yours to experience while enjoying an unobstructed view of the world famous Las Vegas Strip. A Hard Rock Live multi-function venue on the 2nd floor rocks with concert seating for 1000, while state-of-the-art in-house audio visual equipment offers mind blowing imagery and sound. The cafe also features a built-in stage with an attached Green Room that will be occupied by artists from around the globe.

Paris Las Vegas is a hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, USA, that is owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment Corp.. As its name suggests, its theme is the city of Paris in France
 


The Hotel includes a half scale, 541-foot (165 m) tall replica of the Eiffel Tower, a sign in the shape of the Montgolfier balloon, a two-thirds size Arc de Triomphe, a replica of La Fontaine des Mers, and a 1,200-seat theatre called Le Théâtre des Arts. The front of the hotel suggests the Paris Opera House and the Louvre.





The Bellagio Hotel and Casino was inspired by the Lake Como town of Bellagio in Italy, Bellagio is famed for its elegance.

One of its most notable features is an 8-acre (3.2 ha) lake between the building and the Strip, which houses the Fountains of Bellagio, a large dancing water fountain synchronized to music.
Inside Bellagio, Dale Chihuly's Fiori di Como, composed of over 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers, covers 2,000 sq ft of the lobby ceiling.




Caesars has 3,960 rooms in six towers: Augustus, Centurion, Roman, Palace, Octavius, and Forum. The Forum tower features guest suites with 1,000 square feet of space. It is the only venue in Las Vegas to host a World Series of Poker Circuit Event.
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In 1992, The Forum Shops at Caesars opened; it was one of the first venues in the city where shopping, particularly at high-end fashion house stores, was an attraction in itself.
 
Caesars Palace has the second-built circular escalator in the United States. The other is at the Westfield San Francisco Centre.


Mirage which features Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat

Harrahs Las Vegas

Mandalay  Bay on the Las Vegas Strip.  The gold coloring of the hotel is a result of gold leaf used on the windows

The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino

The Palazzo on the Vegas Strip

Harley Davidson Las Vegas Cafe...  Brags to have gthe best Bar-B-Que in Las Vegas


Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino Las Vegas, Nevada

Hope you enjoyed your short tour of Las Vegas, Nevada.  You can see more pictures or purchase photos or canvas wrap pictures at www.PhotoEnrichments.com.  Please "LIKE" us at  www.facebook.com/PhotoEnrichments.  Be sure to subscribe to our blog so you can view other upcoming photo shoots...  Thanks for visiting....








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