So as some of you should know, my wife and I took a vacation to Las Vegas last week, and everyone wants to know how it was. Well, it was fun.

First, I'd like to say something about pictures. We took a bunch of them, but we are horrible picture takers. I salvaged a few ,but only one picture turned out very good. That one was, of course, the one I didn't take.

Since this isn't English class, I'm just gonna write down my thoughts as they come to me, the stuff we did and the places we visited, as well as my impressions of the area (we stayed mostly on the Strip).

*First off, the Las Vegas Strip is fucking insane. We spent most of our time there, and there was near constant activity, even at 5 in the morning. Everything was done up to be impressive and larger than life. I can't imagine wanting to live here. We did a ton of walking, and a lot of it was because everything looked so close..."Hey, the X is just right there, let's walk over!". It wasn't close...it was just so fucking huge it looked close.

*The weather was great. Sure, it was hot as hell, but no humidity means you barely feel it. Bring sunglasses and drink tons of water, though.

*The monorail sucks. It just plain sucks. It's too expensive, and you need to walk through casinos to get there, and by the time you do, you've pretty much walked as far as you would have anyways, unless you're going very far. If you go, avoid it. Take the bus, or even spring for a cab (they're expensive, but the cabbies I met were all very friendly and helpful).

*We stayed at the Excalibur hotel, which had a castle theme. It was pretty spartan accommodations, but the place was nice, clean, and the staff was very helpful and friendly...they even paid to replace a shirt I tore on one of the lamps in the hall. In addition, they had a foot court right in the hotel with some decent cheap food, and they also had a sort of midway with arcade games and "carnival" games with a medieval theme. Plus a casino, of course. It seemed a bit shabby and they were trying to move away from the medieval theme, it was obvious, but it was still a good experience. I recommend it if you're looking to save cash, but it's not where I'd head to gamble by choice.

*Speaking of gambling, man, it really is everywhere. Everything in the Strip was designed to get you to a slot machine. There were even slot machines at the freaking airport. And while I don't really like slots, I spent my fair share of dollar bills because I was walking past a machine and figured "What the hell?" I also played a lot of poker (low-limit) and got my ass soundly beat, and tried a taste of craps and roulette (my wife threw down a random number and hit it on roulette). The big highlight was hitting pretty big on a Keno game, however, we won $300 bucks on our last day, which pretty much covered all we lost.

*Near us there were a couple of really cool casinos: The Luxor, which is the famous pyramid-shaped one (really cool), MGM Grand, which had a freaking lion habitat inside it (lions up close and personal! Yes!), and New York-New York, which had the obvious theme, a Statue of Liberty outside (and one made of jellybeans inside), and a roller coaster winding around the building. Honestly, NY/NY impressed me the most out of any other place I went, at least theme-wise. I wish the pictures I took of it didn't turn out like crap.

*Also in the area was a very awesome mall. Among the stores were a 4-story M&M's store, a 4-story Coca-Cola store, and a very large arcade owned by Sega, along with a store where you could buy Sonic-related merchandise, where I bought a shirt. Around the area were also various other stores, and near a movie theater there were people dressed up in costumes and performing. Here's one picture that didn't turn out completely crappy:

The guy dressed as Michael Jackson in the white is pretty cool, but that gold statue of him there on the right? That's not a statue, that's another performer. It took me a while to realize that. This kind of stuff was pretty commonplace on the streets.

*A bit north of us, that's where the really fancy stuff was. The fountains at the Bellagio were absolutely FANTASTIC, if you go do not miss them! One of my two big regrets is only seeing the one show. Here's a youtube clip, it does not do seeing it in person justice:

*The volcano at the Mirage was also pretty cool. We got a decent enough picture of it:


*We also saw the Sirens of TI show, which was exciting and all, but pretty disappointing in it's own way. From what I've learned, it used to be a battle between two pirate ships, with cannons, explosions, and one of the ships sank. That's still what it was, but one of the pirate bands was replaced with some scantily-clad "sirens", and the entire thing was sexed up. The gratuitousness of it really turned me off, and in fact that was something about the Strip that really irked me: there seemed to be very little for kids to do. In fact, only 2 places even remotely seemed to be trying to cater to kids (Circus Circus and Excalibur), and that's pretty sad if you're a tourist destination that wants to attract people. Perhaps the saddest part of this show was there were parents who brought kids talking up the awesome pirate show they saw the last time -they- were in Vegas. You could tell the parents were disappointed with what it became.

*I don't want to give the impression I felt it was seedy, mind you. Except for the people handing out the "escort service" flyers constantly, even the sexual stuff had an air of class to it, and I only ran into one hooker, or at least I was only approached by one.

*I think at the very north end, me and the missus had the most fun. Sahara was a pretty neat place, aside from the theme they had a few things on the wall describing the history of the casino and some pictures of the Rat Pack, plus there was a side NAScar area (hey, if you're into it). Circus Circus was very cool, they also had a carnival midway, where they had circus acts performing (free), and also an indoor theme park which was pretty amazing to look at (too old for it, though). Stratosphere struck me as an example in just how much you need a gimmick to stand out, the draw is a 100-story observation tower with some great views of the Las Vegas area...but is just looking at shit enough? Fuck no! They have RIDES that lean you off the edge of the tower, and you can even pay to JUMP OFF THE FUCKING THING...that's right, they put you in a harness, and push you off the side 1,000 feet towards a bulls-eye on the ground. I love the idea, but...well, no way I'm doing it (I didn't fit the safety parameters anyways, too big).

*We didn't partake in any of the fine dining for the most part (most of the cool places didn't believe in decimal points on the menus. Protip: If a place doesn't use decimal points, you probably can't afford to eat there), but we did see three shows. Tournament of Kings was a Medieval Times-style dinner show where you ate with your hands, watched the people fighting and jousting in the center area (dirt floor and everything), and cheered for your assigned king (we were assigned to the bad guy, the Dragon Knight). It was a fucking blast, and it even came with dinner. Afterwards some of the performers came out on their horses for pictures and chat, I shook a few hands...and unfortunately missed a great photo-op of an evil dragon knight holding a stuffed teddy bear.

*We also saw a comedy show called Defending the Caveman. It was pretty meh. Standard battle of the sexes comedy.

*The final thing we saw was The Lion King. My word, it was a spectacle to behold. Absolutely incredible, if you get a chance to see this, do it, particularly if you're a big Disney fan. There were a few things that bugged me ("we interrupt your villain song for a disco hyena dance routine"), but overall, it completely lives up to all the hype, and it was nice seeing how they made a cartoon work on stage, some of the work-arounds in certain scenes are very clever.

*On the last day, we took a tour of the Hoover Dam, and we got to add Arizona to our "state list" (remind me to start the "state list" topic someday). It was pretty amazing, but everyone's seen that. Below is something far rarer: a picture of my elusive self with my wife, wearing our souvenir T-shirts, at the Hoover Dam (I got mine from the Sonic store, she got hers at Excalibur).

We also saw some cacti gardens, which was also cool.

*Klimbatize was nice enough to offer us a ride to the airport on our last day, and it was good to meet someone else from the forums. Despite what you all said about him behind his back, he came across as a very great guy, we talked about stuff and crap, and then we put Vegas behind us.

Would I go back? Sure, but probably not for a whole week. It was kind of exhausting, ya know?

That's all. Thanks for reading. If I remember anything else, I'll post it, of course.

username wrote:

hehe. good thing you had fun man. sounds like all the vegas' trips i've taken. i just never wrote about them. except we normally stay at the tropicana. its near enough the strip and cheap enough to be good. not a great hotel, but decent

It was under renovation, so we didn't bother to go in. It was right across the street.

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The Luxor was truly my favorite hotel. Its just looks epic, inside and out. I'm a Criss Angel fan AND a Cirque de Soleil fan so I wish I could have seen the show there...sadly, cost prohibitive. Oh well.

The Luxor wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be, but still cool.

There was a 2 shows for $75 deal, and one of the options was for the Chris Angel show. We were gonna go, but the seats were horrible, and to be honest, he comes off like kind of a dick.

We got the Lion King tickets as freebies for a timeshare thing. They hauled us all across Vegas, then found out we didn't fit the criteria to hear the promotion. We still got the tickets, though.

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How did you like the Hoover Dam? I thought it was awesome to see, personally.

It was pretty impressive to see, yeah. Looked a lot more impressive in person than in the pictures.

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I got arrested at the Hoover Dam last September. My friend and I accidently parked where we weren't supposed to because of some sort of construction vehicle blocking the sign that told us not to. When you do that, the cops rush in, block the exit, draw their guns, and put you on the ground. After an hour and a half of questioning, they decided we were telling the truth when we said it was an accident. They did warn us though that if we make the slightest infraction at the Hoover Dam within the next year, we were going to be in front of a federal judge

The tour guide there said not to get separated from the group because then, the guys with the M16 show up and the rest of your day is very unhappy. I thought he was joking.

For the record, WAY too many "dam" puns.

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As a bunny, I hope you realize they have a special ranch for you out there.

Well aware. The missus protested.

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Where did you find that sonic shirt?

At said Sega owned arcade, there was a retail store with a bunch of Sonic-related stuff there.

SoldierHawk wrote:

Yeah, I mean the costumes are obviously African inspired, and some of the songs are Swahili, but you already heard those in the movie. It's just awesome in every possible way musical theatre can be awesome, especially if the guy playing Adult Simba is good.

Only Rafiki. They changed Rafiki to a woman, though.

Our adult Simba was okay, but our Young Simba was great. So was our Scar.

Shh. SH thinks she's at Dyslexia.com and we're all sufferers of the same problem.