Just to be clear, given the title of this post, we didn’t actually lose any wages. In fact, we never even figured out how to gamble, so in that regard we failed Las Vegas. I looked at the slot machines, the ones where you pull a lever, and of course they don’t take coins any more and I couldn’t make sense of the vocabulary in the instructions, so I didn’t even manage a 5 cent or 25 cent gamble, which I had thought I’d try.
Day 3 was mostly a quieter rest for us. We slept in, found some nice coffee, spent time reading / napping by the pool, had lunch by the pool, and didn’t stress ourselves much in any way. We did however plan to have the “Freemont Street Experience” in the evening.
The casinos and entertainment started long ago in downtown Las Vegas, mostly along Freemont street. Almost any movie from the 1990’s or earlier that features Las Vegas shows this original downtown area. In the 90’s and 2000’s they started building mega-casino resort complexes several miles to west, which you saw in my Day 2 photos. The older, earthier, more colourful downtown area continues to exist, reborn in some ways, but definitely more indecorious. At the edge of Freemont street we found “Container Park”, an area of little shops and eateries created entirely out of many shipping containers. This area felt quite a bit like our Broadway district in Saskatoon, or maybe West Broadway in Winnipeg. We had a lovely pizza supper there in the central park area and then wandered to the Freement Street Experience proper.
What is the Freemont Street Experience? I won’t say too much about the men and women one might see along the street, but imagine if you took a wide street, closed it to cars, filled it with people, completely covered a 4 block area with digital displays using 12.5 million LED lights and added a 550,000 watt sound system. O, and 8 ziplines that run overhead for the length of the digital displays. And non-stop people, bars and casinos. It’s definitely an experience. Be sure to play the last video (there are several in today’s gallery) for a little 3 second snippet of the overhead display in action.
I guess the videos don’t show in the slideshow, so here are today’s 3 videos.
First, a water fountain show along the new strip – the Bellagio Fountains.
Next is a Fire Breathing Mantis. On Freemont street outside Container Park we saw this large insect spewing flames to the tune of HandClap. Make sure you have your sound turned up. 🙂 Huh!
And finally, please enjoy a few seconds of overhead video from Freemont Street. It was much louder in real life!