Viva Las Vegas

Last week I was in Vegas for a physical therapy convention. A medical convention in the middle of Las Vegas...more specifically in our case, a bunch of overworked, overstressed, PT students loose in Vegas...good idea? Probably not. Our convention was at the Mandalay Bay and I stayed at the Excalibur with several people. If you've never been there before, the Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandalay Bay are all connected to each other, both on the ground and by tram. It's really easy to travel between them. So most of my week was spent between those 3 hotels. For those of you who don't have a good visual of the layout and need one, the Excalibur is the hotel that looks like a castle, the Luxor is the pyramid, and the Mandalay Bay is a big gold tower next to the pyramid. Odds are good that you've at least seen a picture of those at some point in your life. If not, I encourage you to google it.

This was my first trip to Vegas. So I was like a kid in a candy shop. Instead of going on and on about everything that I did and saw, it will probably be easier just to show some pictures and talk about each one. There's so much that I didn't get a picture of, but that's ok.

First, here is the Excalibur. It was strange to see it in person because when it was being built, my dad was contracted to take aerial photos of it. So I clearly remember these huge photos of the hotel in my dad's office. Obviously I was really young when it was being built. Last week I got to see it for myself.

I was probably most thrilled with the outside of the New York New York Hotel/Casino. As you can see, it's visually stunning.

The Bellagio water show is absolutely amazing. It is so well done and so beautiful. I regret that I only got to see it during the day. We didn't get to go back and see it at night like we wanted to, but I did get to see 2 different day shows. I posted a video for you to see a little bit of it.

In the MGM Grand there is a lion exhibit. Between 11 AM and 10 PM there are 2 or 3 lions in there at a time. There is a lion ranch about 11 miles away from the MGM where about 37 lions are kept. 2 or 3 are brought over for 5 1/2 hours every day. The environment that they stay in is pretty big, with rocks, rivers, trees, and 4 waterfalls. It is behind a very thick layer of glass. There is even one area where the floor is made of glass where they lead the lions to sit. You can walk underneath this area and look up at the lions, getting a good feel for just how big they are. The hotel explains that the lion environment is an odorless, sound-proof environment. The lions are relaxed because they can't smell the people and the only thing they can hear is the sound of the 4 waterfalls. We were lucky enough to walk by when they were feeding them (pictured). The trainers came out with big rolls of ground beef. There were 2 lions in the observatory at the time and each lion had a trainer that walked them around the glass of the environment, either throwing ground beef and sticking it to the glass so the lions lick it off the glass, or they put their hand out and the lions ate right out of their hands. I got some awesome videos of this. I posted one of them above. Enjoy.



I thought this was hilarious. So you know those claw games where you try to get stuffed animals? Well this is the exact same game, except you're catching live lobsters. Oh yes, you heard right. It's $4 per try to catch a lobster, after you catch one, it drops into a hole, and you reach in and grab it. Then you take it up to the chef and choose your side so he can cook it.




Yes, I also went to a couple nightclubs. One of them was LAX in the Luxor. This is a picture from the balcony taken that night. I'm somewhere down at the bottom of the picture. If you know me, you know that I'm not a clubbin' person. Actually these were the first 2 nightclubs I've ever been to. What a great first experience. One of the Pussycat Dolls was there that night also. Usher was going to be there the next night. Ludacris was performing there a week after. So it's a big name nightclub. I think there are 3 or 4 celebrities that have part ownership in it. These nightclubs were really really really ridiculously expensive. If you had a Luxor room key card it was free, but if not, it was at least $30 to get in. Yes, just to get in. Then drinks were more expensive than I've ever seen. Even being a bartender myself, I was blown away. We got 4 drinks and it was $44. At my bar this would have been about $20. Then we got kicked out of an upstair VIP area because apparently you had to buy a minumum of 5 bottles of alcohol to be up there. This would have cost at least $2000. Needless to say, we weren't up there for long.


My last night in Vegas I got the amazing opportunity to go to KA, one of the Cirque Du Soleil shows. My friend Ryan had received these tickets from a friend and didn't have anyone to go with him at the last minute. You couldn't get seats better than these. 4th row, dead center of the auditorium. These seats were $265 each. So being able to go for free was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If you go to Vegas, you need to see this show. It was so well done. Some of the stunts done were out of this world. To get a better idea, I recommend going to their websidte and watching a trailer of it. There's really no way to explain it.

Overall, it was a great trip. I wish my wife had been there with me, but now I know where to take her and what to do next time. Thankfully the other people I went with had been there many times and knew exactly what to show me. I can't wait to now take my wife and see the same expressions on her face as I'm sure I had when I saw these things for the first time.



The strip has a lifestyle that is different from any other that I've seen in my life. It's strange to be in a place where practically everything is open 24 hours a day. It's strange to see ads for companies that send women directly to you. It's strange to see the casino full at 2 AM and then again at 8 AM. It's strange to see people gambling in their PJ's. It's strange to get hit on by a hooker. It's strange to walk up to a table with $40 and walk away with $165. It's strange to walk up to a table with $40 and walk away 2 minutes later with $0. It's strange to never really know what time it is. It's strange to be able to buy a 44 oz alcoholic beverage. It's strange to see people walking around with a drink in their hand...everywere. In summary...it was strange...Fun...but strange.