My previous post from our trip to Las Vegas was starting to get a bit long, so I thought I’d post it and pick up the details from the weekend in a separate post. We still had Saturday and Sunday to enjoy our mini vacation and we had lots on the go. We were visiting Las Vegas’ most recent attraction - The Sphere - and then we spent a day exploring the Arts District, where the locals hang out to get away from the Strip.
For those that have not seen it, the Sphere is a $2.3B concert venue with what must be the world’s most amazing LED display. Here’s a view from the Strip as we explored Saturday morning. So cool…
We slept in a bit on Saturday morning. I had a very late, if profiatable evening, but I still needed some sleep. Our big plan for the day was to go to the Sphere and see their show, with dinner at Tao (our favorite restaurant in Vegas) later that night. The show at the Sphere wasn’t until 4:30, so we had most of the day to explore.
By the time we got going, it was actually pretty close to lunch time. We took the monorail from MGM Grand up to the Linq Station, which put us out onto the Linq Promenade, a series of shops and restaurants in behind the Linq casino and under the big ferris wheel. We needed something to eat, and as we had not been eating very well on the trip so far, were looking for something more like a salad. Tough to find in Vegas…
We ended up in an Italian restaurant that made a pretty great Greek salad, which hit the right notes. We had some lunch, then kept wandering. We headed north up the Strip, with no real plans in mind. We walked past the Palazzo, crossing over the pedestrian walkway which gave us a pretty good view of the Sphere, our destination for later in the day.
You have to imagine it moving - the “live” nature of it is so fun.
The live emoji is pretty fun.
The variations seem endless - they can project basically anything onto the outside, with surprising resolution.
We ended up crossing back over Las Vegas boulevard and headed into the Fashion Show Mall. We didn’t really need anything, but we thought we’d browse and see if anything caught our fancy. Nothing did really (other than some gelato), but there was a cool F1 simulator that we watched for a bit, but at $45 a lap, it seemed a bit much.
After that we crossed the road back over to the Wynn and wandered the hotel for a bit. Much like the Bellagio, they put on a pretty amazing display in the lobby. It’s always worth checking out.
After a short stroll around the Wynn, we still had about an hour to kill, so we headed back over to the Palazzo. The route that you take to walk to the Sphere is through the Conference Center that is split between the Palazzo and Venetian, so it put us close. We ended up finding my new favorite bar in Las Vegas! It’s called Flight Club, and it’s a darts-focused bar. They’ve done it up beautifully with lots of dark wood and a great vibe. And it’s the first bar I’ve seen that has properly built out the infrastructure for playing darts in a casual setting.
Each section of the bar has a dart board with seating and a place for people to gather. This is such a great idea.
We had a couple of drinks, enjoying the atmosphere, until it was time to head to the Sphere. The Sphere Experience is a show they have designed to show off this amazing new venue. It’s made up of two parts - a set of interactive exhibits in the lobby of the venue, and then a 50 minute film that’s designed to show off the visual and audio capabilities of the venue.
While the security screening was annoying, it’s about what you expect for a high profile venue like this. Here’s the crazy stats on the place:
The 18,600-seat auditorium is being marketed for its immersive video and audio capabilities, which include a 16K resolution wraparound interior LED screen (the largest in the world), speakers with beamforming and wave field synthesis technologies, and 4D physical effects (yep, the seats shake). The venue's exterior also features 580,000 sq ft (54,000 m2) of LED displays. Sphere measures 366 feet (112 m) high and 516 feet (157 m) wide. The arena cost $2.3 billion, making it by far the most expensive entertainment venue built in Las Vegas. (Credit)
It’s a big concert venue that promises to provide an absolutely unique experience. And after seeing it, I can easily imagine how great it would be,. U2 opened the place with a 40-night residency, which I would have loved to have seen. But it wrapped just before we got there, and when we checked prices, the cheapest seats were going for $575 a piece. That’s a little rich…
Back to the narrative…
We got inside and wandered around the “interactive exhibition”. This was the least impressive part of it. They had 5 “robots” that you could interact with, but they seemed a little cheesy. It was pretty clear it was mostly scripted, and the people controlling the experience i’m sure were driving everything. It wasn’t for me.
The lobby is visually quite impressive. Lots to see and lots of space to wander.
There was also the option to get a “digital avatar” created. They do a 3D scan of you and add it to a video. We waited in a short line (thankfully) and got it done. It was pretty underwhelming, but here you go…
I hope the future is a little more impressive than this video.
Within the lobby area, the most impressive part of the exhibition was this huge “holographic” display. It cycled through a series of really cools images and videos, and was a good 20-30’ high. Sadly, every photo we took did not really turn out. but itwas seriously impressive to watch.
The frequency of the projections must have been such that it messes with taking photos. All the triangles in the image were not there when you looked at it in person.
The venue itself (as a venue) is really well done. Lots of places to get food and drinks, and lots of space to fan out. Our seats were in the 400 level so we made our way up some very large escalators to find our seats. It was pretty close to show time, so we went inside.
I cannot begin to describe this show properly. Or the venue for that matter. Here’s a photo that does not do it justice.
You’re literally sitting inside a sphere. The seats are steep - almost vertigo inducing. And while that screen looks small now, it ends up wrapping almost all around you.
The film they commissioned to show off the venues capabilities certainly does that - it’s jaw dropping. The premise is good - some astronauts being sent off to colonize a new planet wake up after a long trip, and the computer tells them about the planet they just left. The file starts off on the small screen, then after a short time just explodes around you. It’s really, really good. The visuals are stunning, the sound amazing and they even do the haptic feedback through the seats to give you a good shake and let you feel the rumble. It’s pretty amazing.
Justine took a snippet of video from the movie. It won’t do it justice, but you get a sense.
I won’t go into any more detail, but if you end up in Las Vegas I suggest you go see it. It’s worth the money and it’s like nothing you’ve seen before.
Once the movie was over, we made a dash for the exit. We only had a couple of hours before dinner, and we needed to get back to the hote to change. I booked us an Uber, which worked out quite well. On the way out, we walked past the Sphere and could get quite close to it. What surprised us was that the LEDs on the outside are not actually all that close together. Yet the resolution it provides for the animations on the surface of the Sphere look amazing. Such wizardry.
You can see the size and density of the LEDs that make up the Sphere’s exterior.
We took a bunch of photos of the various fun things projected onto the Sphere.
Our Uber driver got us back to the hotel for a quick change, then we hopped back on the monorail to head back up the Strip to the Venetian, and our dinner at Tao!
Tao is an Asian-fusion restaurant in the Venetien that’s been a Vegas staple for years. I think I’ve been going there for at least 15 years, and I introduced Justine to the place on our first trip. We try to go every time we’re back, and this trip was no exception. Our reservation was at 8:00 (to give us enough time after the Sphere show), and we ended up having lots of time. So we wandered the Venetien for a bit before heading inside for our dinner.
Tao is part restaurant and part night club, so it has a really interesting atmosphere. It’s a bit loud, but it adds to the charm. We had another great meal - a bit of a lobster theme this time - and it was close to 10:00 by the time we rolled out of there.
The Venetian has what is probably my favorite poker room in Las Vegas. I understand they are doing a full renovation, which will be interesting, maybe the next time I am back. So i decided to stay and play for a while and Justine hopped on the monorail back to the hotel. I had a very successful evening at the Venetian, wracking up a profit of over $500 in a few hours. The most memorable was hitting quad 10s (four of a kind), which won me a high hand bonus of $200. That doesn’t happen often.
I wanted to take the monorail back to the MGM rather than walk all the way back down the Strip. So I left the Venetian and took the train back. I wasn’t quite ready to head to bed, so I wandered over to the MGM poker room and played a bit longer. I had another good run, winning another $400 and giving me a profit of about $900 for the night. Hotel almost paid for! It was a pretty late night, so I dragged myself back to the room and headed to bed. We had one day left to enjoy (or so we thought).
Panoramic view from our balcony.
One of the wilder displays on the Sphere.
Sunday was to be our last day in Vegas. Our flight was not until about 9:30 p.m., so we had a full day ahead of us. There were two things that I wanted to do with the day - play Top Golf and check out the Arts District.
So that’s what we did. We slept in as late as we could, with our 11:00 a.m. check out time. We got packed up and dropped our bags to store them for the day.
Our 24 hour pass for the monorail was still good until about 1:00, so we hopped on the train and took it to the far north end of the Strip.
The monorail’s northern terminus is near the Stratosphere hotel and tower. I’ve not been into this one - thi sis the closest I’ve been.
We still needed to head further north, so we got off the monorail and walked over to catch the “Deuce”, the bus that runs up and down Las Vegas Boulevard. It would get us up into the Arts District neighborhood, which is close to the old downtown Las Vegas and Freemont Street. The Arts District is apparently where locals hang out, away from the Strip and the tourists.
Which sounded like a great ideal. The walk from the monorail to the bus stop was only 5 minutes or so, and a bus came fairly quickly. It headed north about 15 minutes (give or take), and we were really guessing on where to get off.
We passed by a sign indicating we were in the right neighborhood, so we hopped off the bus to explore. I did not get it quite right, and the area we were in was pretty quiet. We did see an old motel that had been converted into artist studios, but we needed to head in a different direction.
We backtracked a bit, and eventually found ourselves in an area that looked more like what we needed! There was a very lively pub/restaurant, with a decent crowd doing Sunday brunch, with lots of loud music and a great atmosphere. We were in the right place.
We found the Arts District!
We eventually found the main drag, and before long made our first stop at Hop Nuts Brewery. It was just past noon and they had just opened for the day. There were one or two other groups, but we were able to grab a flight to try and sit outside on the patio.
Sadly, the weather had turned on us and it was no longer sunny and warm. The clouds had started to move in - and there were dark storm clouds forming out over the mountains.
The beer was pretty good. Not the best I’ve ever had, and many of their beer had very similar flavours. But still, it was nice to sit there and enjoy the early afternoon and watch the locals.
We didn’t stay too long at the brewery, and eventually continued exploring. A couple of shops down was an “Antique Mall”, and large indoor shop filled with a bunch of small vendors. The place was a gold mine! So much cool junk that no one needs. But still a lot of fun to explore. If you were outfitting a bar in your house, you could have picked up a ton of cool signs and decorative items, many original, some even from the old casinos in town. There were a lot of old PLayboy magazines from the 50s and 60s, some wild vintage clothing and lots of taxidermy animals. It was an eclectic collection to be sure.
So much junk - and a few treasures.
We wandered the “mall” for a while, coming back outside to more gloomy skies and it had turned cold. We were starting to get hungry and noted a couple of more breweries a little further down the street. One also had a pizza place inside, so that was the winner. We went inside and the place was packed. It turned out that the owner was a Purdue alumni, and as Perdue was playing in the NCAA Tournament, all the local Purdue fans were out in force. Justine managed to snag us a table in the midst of the fans, we ordered some beer and a pizza and watched the game!
We watched the Purdue game, and Purdue won easily, making the fans happy. My Duke Blue Devils were playing next and we watched the first half of that game before deciding that we needed to move on. It was time to head back south to the MGM again, as we wanted to play Top Golf!
As we came back outside it was still a bit dark and stormy.
Our walk around the Arts District.
We hopped back on the bus and took it all the way south on the Strip to the stop just outside the Park MGM, across the road from the MGM Grand. For those that have not done it, Top Golf is a fancy driving range that has a series of computer monitored targets out on the fairway.
They have a bunch of games that you can play and it’s a lot of fun! Justine doesn’t play much golf, but seems to enjoy doing this. We don’t play any of the more advanced games - you just hit the balls, see where they end up and see how the scores tally. They have a bunch of bars and food, with servers that bring everything you need to your little area.
We decided to play for an hour, which was lots - plus we were getting close to the end of the day. I was a little wild and erratic, but I did hit a bunch of good shots. The accuracy of the computer scoring leaves something to be desired, but it is still a lot of fun.
While Top Golf was fun, it was also where our weekend went off the rails. As mentioned earlier, our flight home on WestJet was scheduled for 9:30 p.m. Part way through the day, we had received a notice that the flight had been delayed to 10:30. That was not a good sign. As we were about to start our session at Top Golf, we got a notification that our flight had been cancelled, and that the flight they had re-booked us on was not until Tuesday! That was going to be a problem.
We played out our game, but with this hanging over us, it wasn’t as much fun. We then headed back to the hotel where our bags were, reclaimed them and Justine spent the next 2 1/2 hours on the phone getting things sorted out. They put us up in a hotel not too far from where we were staying, so we took an Uber over there and got checked in. After a lot of convincing, Justine managed to get us booked onto a flight on United through Denver, leaving at 6:00 a.m. the next day. Much better than the original plan, but still meant we were missing a day of work. As we had a very early start to the day the next day, we just called it a night and got no real benefit from our extra night in Vegas.
On the plane the next morning, with one last view of the Sphere.