The Great Traveler

While debates rage on about which hotel is the nicest in all of Las Vegas, my favorite is without a doubt the Venetian. The Italian style theme with the gandola, the painted blue skies and the overall beautiful atmosphere is my vote for #1. The Bellagio, which seems to lack a theme, is nice, but very excessive for excessiveness stake. However, they do have the little spouts of water which form a perfect arch. If for no other reason, every visitor to Las Vegas should visit the Bellagio along with every civil engineering student in the world to see the stuff they do with water. The free water show, along with the water arches, are spectacular. Paris and New York New York are also well done, and if I didn’t have such animosity towards the French, Paris might challenge the Venetian for my top spot.

MGM, because of my experience there on new year’s eve is low on the list, while the Monte Carlo and Caesar’s Palace are both nice and very, very large. I have a hard time understanding how Caesar’s Palace has such a large open area of nothingness on land so valuable. I mean, there aren’t really going to have an outdoor Greek senate meeting like in the old days, are they? I can’t imagine how much revenue could be generated by applying those extra thousands of square feet in the front of the hotel to good use.

While I already assumed that Bally’s would be nothing, except for maybe having huge elliptical machines as decorations, I was still disappointed. The hotel was really a bunch of nothingness. Smart business perhaps, but nothing worth walking through. The Wynn had the most unheralded event of the trip, which was the singing Kermit show. A big green frog at least 30 feet in size sang a love song to an audience to which I was a party to, and then went in to hiding. With a lighting crew and a good voice, I was surprised Kermit wasn’t opening for Justin Timberlake. Since I’ve never heard of this act before, I can only assume its new. No doubt it will be a crowd pleaser that may soon draw big bird and miss piggy to make their own singing appearances.