Here’s some Vegas strip at night shots I took last night:
To get those shots I had to risk my life by heading out onto mean streets full of criminals, deviants, beggars, mafioso and pirates! Luckily I survived to see another sunset.
That’s a carousel in The Palazzo made of real flowers! Today we explored this and other ritzy casinos on the northern half of the strip. This is a world of poker machines on which you can bet $1500 per spin, of shops where you can buy cellphones that cost five figures, and of bakeries where a bog-standard croissant costs $8.
Of course being high rollers ourselves we blended right in amongst the Russian oligarchs, bored trophy wives, Chinese nouveau riche and American octogenarians burning away their fortunes before they die.
I find it amusing that the world of poker machines is becoming dominated with licensed machines. Bernard’s playing a KISS machine in that shot, but he just as easily could have been playing a machine themed around ZZ Top, Michael Jackson or even Dolly Parton!
The most common licenses are movies (Avatar, Godfather, Lord Of The Rings), TV shows (Walking Dead, Sex And The City, Batman) and games (Monopoly, Wheel of Fortune, Deal Or No Deal). These licensed machines are massive splashy things, often with cooperative multiplayer modes. It’s amazing how much technology and innovation has gone into creating machines designed to take money from the player!
This is not to say the more simplistic type of machine has been abandoned. Quite the contrary: they still represent the majority of the 100,000+ slot machines in Vegas. It’s just the themes are perhaps a tad more modern:
Today we played a different type of game involving a giant mechanical spinning wheel:
If couldn’t have been simpler: guess what number the wheel lands on. It was extremely addictive, and stupidly easy to play (the user interface was a work of genius). It was a lot of fun losing money playing this one!
Much walking, many casinos and many machines on this last full day in Vegas. Tomorrow we leave for state #3 of this western-US tour. What awaits us there?