Las Vegas Free Attractions on the Strip (2 of 2)
Tourist traps for freeloaders? Why not? It’s eyecandy, it’s free, it’s Vegas.
Sure, on our way to Las Vegas, we think we’ll hit the casinos and clubs first thing. But once we get there – past the airport slots anyway, we almost always take a detour. Bets and booze get side-stepped when we’ve fallen trap to the most glaringly hypnotic thing to glue our eyes on: the biggest damn fuss ever made over skylines and replicas, caged fauna and controlled flora, light slash sound slash water shows.
For Las Vegas first-time visitors with time to burn, the itinerary of the first few days is to walk around, stare, gape, and pose for a photo. You can’t possibly not stop and stare at Parisian mimes, Buckingham guards, or Venetian gondoliers right smack in the middle of an American desert. At least, unless hot girls playing strip poker have already caught your eye.
Here, we’ve traced your Strip walkaround from Mandalay Bay to Wynn, and Las Vegas free attractions to grab your attention along the way.
Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, Tropicana, New York-New York, Aladdin, Bellagio, Paris Las Vegas.
Caesars Palace. Fall of Atlantis. It is a free show at The Forum Shops featuring sfx and animatronics of King Atlas, and his two kids in a fire vs. water feud as to who gets the throne. You’ll never pose by so many Classic Roman columns as the ones you’ll find on the vast outside, with faux-marble Classic Roman statues and Italian cypresses thrown in. There are replicas of Michelangelo’s David, and the Brahma Shrine, one of Thailand’s best-known Buddhist shrines.
Bally’s. Have a friend point and click as you jut out and shake your pelvis across the plaza leading to the entrance, with its neon-lit columns and cascading fountains. And let me tell you why: It was once the landing site of flying Elvises in the movie Honeymoon in Vegas.
Flamingo. Wildlife Habitat. Even if aviaries are all the same to you, this one does sprawl in a 15-acre tropical-Caribbean setting inside a hotel built with Bugsy Siegel’s mob money. A collection of over 300 birds, including live Chilean flamingos, African penguins, peacocks, and pheasants frolic in a rose garden and a grove of 2,000 palms, while swans, Mandarin ducks, Koi fish, and turtles frisk in ponds.
The Mirage. Volcano. A crowd favorite – a $30 million, 54 ft volcano spews fire up to 100 ft above water into a lights, water, and fire show, surrounded by waterfalls and palm trees. At the lobby is a 20,000 gallon aquarium with 60 species and over 1,000 kinds of tropical fish. Nearby is a walk-through bridge snaking through a tropical rainforest in a 90 ft, domed atrium.
Harrah’s. The palm-fringed Carnaval Court shopping complex is an indoor but outdoorsy setting a la street fair, where you will find performing bartenders a la Tom Cruise in the movie Cocktails.
Treasure Island. Sirens of TI. Off-Strip in front of the hotel is a free show in which a band of pirates known as The Bull is pitted against the barely clad, song-and-dance sirens of Siren’s Cove. Waterfalls and rock gardens surround the cove.
The Venetian. Streetmosphere. A canal featuring singing gondoliers meanders from the outside through The Grand Canal Shoppes, an Italian village-alike, where you’ll find strolling performers like Italian opera singers, glass blowers, flower peddlers, and jugglers. A host of replicated Venice landmarks includes St. Mark’s Square, the Campanile, and Doge’s Palace.
Wynn. Lake of Dreams. It is a free visual show projected onto a curtain waterfall cascading into a 3-acre lake, and can be viewed from Parasol Up and Parasol Down, which are an attracive display of parasols. Wynn Art Collection. Recently made infamous by Steve Wynn himself, who elbowed through Pablo Picasso’s Le Rêve and thereafter failed to sell it to Steven Cohen for a record $139 million, it also includes masterpieces by Édouard Manet, Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin. The artworks can be found all over the hotel, after the paid-admission gallery that housed it closed down.
And whatever you do, take time to gawk at the Ferrari-Maserati cars from the dealership near the valet parking, and inside the merchandise store, as I promise you there is much to drool over.
November 17th, 2006 at 5:20 am
i luv luv luv The Venetian and Paris Las Vegas. they’re my favorites. talk about free attractions, it’s kool enough to cruise around because they look rad inside out. i think i’m luvin’ Wynn, too, but still warming up to it.