More of our Christmas walk

When we stayed at The Hotel at Christmas we walked up the Strip to Caesar’s Palace. MGM seems to own most of the south end of the Strip, their hotel/casino/resorts (I never know which term is the best, here the big ones seem to be all three things at once) include the MGM Grand (of course), Aria, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, New York New York, Monte Carlo and City Center. On the southwest side Mandalay Bay is furthest south, with great views of the airport and up the Strip, the Luxor in the center and Excalibur on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. The three are run independently and have different atmospheres, but are connected by both a tram and walkways. We usually walk through all the casinos going in one direction then do the tram to bypass two and go right where we want on the other half.

We walked from Mandalay Bay through the upper walkway connecting to the Luxor; it’s called Mandalay Place and is a small shopping center. In the middle is my favorite burger place in town, Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar.


Good burgers, good fries, wide assortment of beers. You can get burgers from $6 up to $65 (with foi gras and special sauce), buffalo burgers, chicken, fish, wagu beef, almost whatever. You pick the meat (or a veggie patty), toppings, sauce, cheese, whatever, how you want it cooked, and the bun, so you get what you want. Or you can pick one of the pre-set ones, I like Keller’s favorite with thick fries. And great shakes.

Then through the inside of the Luxor pyramid and over into Excalibur. Built when Vegas was trying to cater to families and kids, the hotel is two big angles around the outside and inside is a fairytale castle.


That was taken from the bridge over Tropicana Avenue going to New York New York. From there we walked over to the Monte Carlo and took another tram through City Center to the Bellagio. I don’t know why they didn’t continue the tram to New York, maybe sometime in the future. Then they can cross Tropicana and join in to the Excalibur segment. Anyway, I like the view of City Center from the tram, which goes right through the middle of it.


Through the Bellagio casino over to the shopping arcade, which has new Christmas decorations this year.


Last time they had big trees made out of presents. Kind of dull this year.


Then across Flamingo to Caesar’s Palace. The view from Caesar’s courtyard is rather interesting, you can see Bill’s Gambling Hall (which will be replaced as part of the new Link center), Balley’s with the big poster of the back side of one of their showgirls, and the Eiffel Tower and Paris.

Christmas at Caesar's

We went to San Francisco to visit the boys last month over Thanksgiving, so for the Christmas holiday we just decided to stay here in Vegas. Since it’s just the two of us we thought that we would do something a little different – since over 30,000,000 visitors come to Vegas during the course of a year we figured we could play tourist too. A few years ago we did Christmas Eve at the Venetian, this year we did the far south end of the strip, and we spent two nights at The Hotel in Mandalay Bay. After the National Finals Rodeo is finished and the cowboys go home December is rather a slow month for tourists and the room rates drop really low.

Las Vegas is not really a town for kids, several years ago a number of resorts tried catering to children; the MGM was made up like a movie set, with Wizard of Oz characters roaming around, the Excalibur was built to look like a castle, Circus Circus aimed at the younger crowd with circus acts and a big arcade and Treasure Island was made up to look like a pirate fortress, with big game room, skeleton decorations and the big pirate battle out front with ships shooting at each other in the lake on the Strip. The resorts realized that filling the rooms with families and creating things for the kids to do did not directly relate to an increase in income. Parents tend not to gamble and drink while here with their children, and those are two areas that bring significant revenue into resorts. So over the years the kid themed stuff has been disappearing. Treasure Island is now renamed TI, with all the pirate stuff taken down. The ships still battle out front, but instead of pirates one ship has been painted white and is the habitat of the scantily clad Sirens, who defeat the bad guys in the black ship every evening. MGM dropped the movie themes, and right now is rebuilding the front entrance again. Excalibur still looks for families, but then it’s hard to rebrand a fairy tale castle into something else, and Circus Circus built the Adventure Dome out back, filled with amusement park rides, so you can still do some things with children. There used to be a big water park across from Circus Circus, but that was replaced with condos.

When we stayed at the Venetian on Christmas Eve a number of years ago (before the downturn) the occupancy rate was under 20%, so walking the canals and restaurants was an isolated experience. The Hotel had a 100% occupancy rate on the eve eve and over 90% on Christmas Eve itself, so things were rather crowded. But we booked early and got pretty cheap rates. It looked like there were a lot of families with multiple kids. All of the rooms are suites, with one large sitting room and a separate bedroom, so with the door between closed there was some isolation and room for two or three fold out beds for the kids, so it is more family adaptable than the single big rooms at the Venetian. It looks like The Hotel (yes, that’s the name) caters to travelers from the Pacific Rim, with many people speaking Japanese, Chinese, Hindu or Korean.

On Christmas Eve we wandered down the Strip to look at the decorations in some of the other hotels. Caesar’s Palace did have some decorations up, and the shopping center was rather crowded. Out front it was rather cold (at least for Vegas) but sunny, with one of the hotel towers shading the front drive from the low winter sun


Inside they did decorate the statues for the holidays


It wasn’t decorated for Christmas, but the ceiling over the card tables in the casino still looked nice


Wandering through the casino to the shopping center we passed a restaurant known by the Brits


The transition to the Forum Shops is rather dramatic


I always liked the ceilings of this area, they used to cycle between day, sunset, night, sunrise every twenty minutes, but now the lights are set for evening, I guess the lighting changes confused people


About halfway down one of the main halls is a large fountain, with the statues periodically coming to life and putting on a little play


There is a grand entrance at the end furthest from the casino, the way people walking down the Strip from the north usually enter


I’m still impressed by the circular escalators


No, didn’t buy anything there, just walked around. It was rather crowded, with a lot of people in the shops purchasing stuff.