Bellagio Conservatory Christmas 2012

While wandering around the Bellagio we usually end up in the Conservatory to see what magic the gardeners have brought. They change the decorations to match each season, and have quite a storage room of items, as well as a number of greenhouses to supply plants. There is usually a big tree for Christmas, and sometimes tall wooden soldiers and polar bears covered with carnations and penguins, lately they have added large toy trains with video cameras so that you can watch the train and then see yourself on the monitor as it goes by. I tried out the panorama setting on my new iPhone, it came out quite nice:


I'm surprised there is any floor visible, the crowds were so large and packed in. They sometimes have fountains that shoot big streams of water over the crowd, and several times had snow machines up in the top. We caught it one year when things were being changed, and I was surprised at how deep those areas are where the plants are placed, which lets them put really big boxed trees in.

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.

December in Vegas

The middle of December is a busy time in Las Vegas. The month started off with us participating in another Great Santa Run on a Saturday morning. The weather was nice, sunny with not much of a breeze and fairly warm. We don’t run at the Santa Run – most of the participants do a leisurely stroll around the one mile course. Some people do attempt the 5k run, but usually the rest of us get in their way and some get really frustrated at the crowds. Geez, if you want to run don’t do it at a fun thing like this. Everyone gets a Santa suit to wear, so it is strange being surrounded by over 10,000 Santas in red suits and beards. Some people wear similar outfits, and a lot of people decorate strollers and dress up their kids and dogs. This year a bunch of food trucks were out in the assembly parking lot, so food and drink was available. Gourmet food trucks have become popular in Vegas, with followers eagerly seeking their favorites. Later the NASCAR Champions drove their cars down the Strip before running at the speedway.

The next day was another running of our annual Rock and Roll Marathon. Last year it interfered with the cowboys in town for the rodeo, this year it was a year ahead of rodeo start to avoid that. The marathon started at 3:30 pm, with runners in a half marathon starting at 4:30 so as not to interfere with the fast guys. There were over 7,000 in the full and 25,000 in the half, so it was quite a crowd. Both routes started down at the south end of the Strip in front of Mandalay Bay, ran up Las Vegas Boulevard to Fremont Street, wound around downtown a bit and back down to end in front of the Mirage. There was a run through wedding chapel, with 30 couples getting hitched, multiple Elvi and lots of people in costumes. With the early winter sunset the course gave everyone two views of the big resorts, one in daylight and one after dark with all of the lights on. I used to say neon lights, but now almost everything has converted over to LEDs, with large screen video displays replacing all of the lovely old neon signs. And I do mean large screens – picture a high def TV over 100 meters across, sometimes in multiples across the front of a casino, all flashing with patterns alternating with videos of people inside having a good time.

The rest of the month is devoted to cowboys - the following week the South Point Casino hosted the World Series of Team Roping finals (still going on now), with over $6,000,000 in prize money, the top guys getting $1.75 million – some reward for all of that hard work. The National Finals Rodeo has most of its events over at the Thomas and Mack center on the University campus near the airport. There is a big Cowboy Christmas event at the Sands and the Convention Center.

The big resorts are catering to the cowboy crowd as well, with a lot of country and western entertainment available. Unfortunately Garth Brooks finished up his stay at the Wynn early, closing out after three years of shows, but Shania Twain started her multiyear events over at Caesar’s Palace (I hear it is rather impressive, from her entry on a flying motorcycle to riding in on a horse), and Faith Hill and Tim McGraw are at the Venetian.

The Miss Universe competition will be held at Planet Hollywood mid month, and December will end with our big New Year’s Eve party in every resort and out on the Strip. Best place to be besides Times Square, and a lot warmer too.

Venetian Christmas

Still working on my Christmas photos. After walking through the Palazzo we wandered into the adjoining Venetian, walking through the shops by the canal up on the second floor. (yes, the canal is above the casino, I keep waiting for it to leak onto the gamblers).

Not many decorations, just holly and red bows scattered around.

Mirage fish

Walking through the Mirage atrium we looked up to see a school of flying fish



And snowflakes. Well, it is winter and there have to be snowflakes somewhere, so Vegas snowflakes.

More Palazzo Christmas

The Palazzo is one of the newer resort/hotels in Las Vegas. That’s a hard sentence to write as almost everything in Vegas is new – anything that starts to get dusty gets blown up and replaced. City Center and the Cosmopolitan have been constructed since the Palazzo opened.

The Palazzo is owned by the Sands Corporation, which also owns the Venetian Resort and the Sands Expo/Convention Center in addition to other resorts in Macao, Singapore and other places across the US. Each property is set up as a separate company and run reasonably independently but reporting back up line. The Venetian, Palazzo and Sands Expo are all located together about mid strip, on the corner of Spring Valley and Las Vegas Boulevard. You can walk between them, but employees of one cannot participate in activities of the others. Combined the Venetian and the Palazzo hotels have over 7,000 rooms, making it the largest hotel in the world for number of rooms (oh, wait, just looked and a new hotel in Moscow has 300 more rooms, so it’s only second now). The Venetian in Macao is rated the largest hotel in the world based on square footage (almost 1,000,000 sq. meters). The Sands Expo is the second largest center in Las Vegas, at 110,000 sq. meters. I worked at the Expo for 2 ½ years and really liked being there.

Mr. Sheldon Adelson is the founder to the Sands Corporation, current CEO and largest stockholder, and because of his holdings is rated as the eight richest person in the world with a net worth of over $21,500,000,000 – that’s twenty one BILLION dollars (depending on stock prices). He is a long time Republican, and when President Bush came to Vegas he stayed at the Venetian (I did a write-up on that day, and how it took employees over an hour to get into the employee parking garage because of the security checks and car searches). Currently he is backing Newt Gingrich for president, he and his wife both donated $5,000,000 each to the super pac supporting Newt, with promises of another $100,000,000 if Newt gets the nomination. Mr. Adelson is also a devout Jew, and makes trips and donations to many organizations in Israel. When the Republican Caucus was held a few weeks ago it was on a Saturday, and the local Jewish organizations petitioned for a special evening caucus so that those that observe the Sabbath on Saturday would be able to participate. Supposedly Mr. Adelson was not involved in that request, but strangely enough the evening caucus was held at the Adelson Center and he and his wife attended.

I think the Palazzo is the prettiest property in Las Vegas. The lobby and entry is very impressive, and the waterfall area between the Palazzo and the Venetian is just magnificent. In addition to the large casinos there is a very big shopping center upstairs, and Venetian gondolas ply the canals up on the second floor between the shops in addition to being out in front of the building on the Strip. The Sands Expo has huge halls and the Venetian Meeting Tower has rather impressive ballrooms and smaller meeting rooms.

There are a lot of fancy restaurants and bars between the properties, with the Bouchon Restaurant being my favorite place for breakfast – I would highly recommend going there if you ever make it to Vegas. The Tao and Lavo nightclubs are very well attended and usually are written up for the movie stars and musicians that attend. The Canyon Ranch Spa on the second floor is rated as one of the best Spas in the world. Unlike other Strip resorts the Palazzo/Venetian/Sands complex fills all of the property area, so the swimming pools are located on the roof of the shopping area rather than down on ground level. There are a lot of pools scattered around, with a nice small one in the middle of the old Venetian tower and some really big ones in the main central area.

All rooms at the Palazzo and Venetian are considered suites, with separate sitting areas and very large bathrooms. We spent one Christmas Eve at the Venetian – usually the cheap rooms start at $179, prices going up if there are big conventions and on weekends, with a basic room rate around $500 on busy nights. There are larger suites and penthouse rooms as well if you are a high roller or big spender. But when traffic is slow the Venetian offers locals specials, and Christmas Eve filled the properties to only 10% of capacity, so it was a $79 night (plus the fortune we spent at the restaurants). Most nights the two hotels are usually over 90% capacity.

Gee, I sound like a commercial for that place, don’t I? (no, not getting paid unfortunately). Back to the Christmas photos. This is what the Palazzo lobby looked like back in December.


The central statue also was decorated.


And the other side of the lobby was celebrating Chanukah, I think it was the only place in the city with blue lights and a menorah.

Palazzo Christmas

Still on Christmas, this is what the Palazzo central courtyard looked like for the season

Wynn Christmas

Finally got around to pulling photos off my camera and getting them down to size. Here are some shots of the Wynn Christmas decorations.