What's New

Gee, what isn't new in Las Vegas? That they want to take your money and will do so by any means necessary. Cynical? Hardly. That is, after all, why this town was built, and don't, for a minute, think anything else.

Otherwise, everything is constantly new in Las Vegas. This town is afflicted with terminal restlessness and must keep finding new ways of attracting visitors who can then be relieved of their money. Heck, by the time we've finished writing this, everything we've written, everything in the entire town, will be outdated, changed, or somehow different.

Perhaps we exaggerate. But really, only a little. Hotels are routinely renovating, upgrading, redecorating their rooms, and changing their themes (because everyone knows that a Spanish theme will bring in more tourist dollars than a Mardi Gras theme -- that is, until they decide it's been long enough with the Spanish theme and then switch to an Asian one), and that's only if they aren't blowing up the hotel and starting over from scratch. New restaurants with celebrity chefs and big prices open, and longtime stalwarts with comfort food for the ages close. Shows that have been touted with enormous billboards and bigger budgets close in the blink of an eye. Please remember this and think kindly of us if anything in this book is inaccurate. Because that's why.

So, as we write this, what's new? Or even, what's going to be new?

Planning Your Trip

The iconic sign outside of the city reading WELCOME TO LAS VEGAS is a favorite photo op for many. And no wonder -- it fits in the frame a lot better than those gargantuan hotels. Unfortunately, snapping a shot has meant risking life and limb as the sign is right on the highway. To help prevent unfortunate starts (or conclusions) to a nice vacation, a parking lot is being constructed in the median just south of the sign. When this guide was published, bids were still being taken, but the hopes are that construction will be finished by late 2008.

Long the last best hope for smokers, Vegas is considerably less smoky these days. A recent ban forbids smoking in any place that serves food, such as a restaurant, supermarket, or bar with a pub menu. Stand-alone bars and casinos are exempt, which, in theory, means you can't smoke in a hotel lobby, but you can a few feet away in a casino. It's an interesting evolution for a town so dedicated to hedonistic pursuits.

Accomodations

This being Vegas, "top this" is the mantra. All sorts of significant new properties are due to open in either late 2008 or 2009, with still more coming in the two years after that, giving the city a massive wave of novelty unlike anything since the Strip started its process of reinvention in the late 1980s/early 1990s. It's going to be interesting to see how these properties do given the current economic issues.

There are already newcomers to the Strip scene. The latest entry is The Palazzo, 3325 Las Vegas Blvd. S. (tel. 877/883-6423 or 702/607-7777; www.palazzolasvegas.com). Operating along the lines of Mandalay Bay's THEhotel, it is at once a separate entity from, but tied into, the original Venetian. It contains another 3,000 rooms and is approximately 53 stories tall. In some ways, it may be even grander than The Venetian, though in other ways it's even blander. Along with it come new dining and entertainment options, plus still more shopping. Right next door, Wynn will be opening Encore, another billion-dollar-plus addition with 2,000 more suites, more casino, more restaurants, more everything -- except it's two whole stories shorter than The Palazzo. Due to open in late 2008, it will include not only entertainer Danny Gans (poached from Wynn's former property, The Mirage), but also a 40,000-square-foot nightclub -- in other words, about as big as the hotel's own casino. Bigger is, of course, better, and taller is better still -- so Donald Trump has decided he can't possibly be outdone in such matters, and therefore his Trump International, two towers of hotel rooms and condos, is 60-something stories. The town giggles delightedly over all this display of architectural macho.

For that matter, right in front of Trump's property, the New Frontier is making way for a project courtesy of the Elad Group. The new hotel will be called the Plaza, thus liberally borrowing the goodwill generated by fond memories of New York's much-loved Plaza Hotel (also owned by Elad). Whether the Vegas version will resemble its Manhattan sibling in any way remains to be seen. Elad intends to spend $5 billion to produce 3,000 rooms, plus 300 super-high-end luxury residences, a casino, theaters, and the rest. It should be opening in 2011.

Going for sprawl rather than tall -- though there is that, too -- the hefty MGM MIRAGE (which controls most of the properties on the Strip -- Harrah's controls nearly all the rest) is at the helm of the town's most ambitious project yet -- the massive CityCenter. Get this: It will contain (if it all comes to fruition) not just a 4,000-room megaresort and casino and all that goes with it (shops, restaurants, clubs), but also two 400-room boutique hotels (one being a part of the ultraluxe Mandarin Oriental chain), plus a couple thousand condo units and even more shopping, clubs, and restaurants separate from those belonging to the hotel complex. There will be 7,000 rooms total, plus its own people-mover, which is just as well since CityCenter covers more than 60 acres. With a well over $8 billion price tag, it's the largest privately funded construction project in U.S. history. Its opening in 2009 will make The Palazzo and Encore look like mere penny ante additions.

As if that wasn't enough for that stretch of real estate, hot on CityCenter's heels is its neighbor, the nearly $2-billion Cosmopolitan, which will include a Hyatt-run hotel and a big casino when it is complete in 2009. Assuming everything goes according to schedule, 2009 will bring yet another new tower to the ever-expanding Caesars Palace, at the cost of a cool billion. Also opening should be Fontainebleau, a $3-billion version of the famous Miami resort of the same name. Containing 4,000 rooms, theaters, restaurants, and the rest, it is being built on the site of the newer of the two El Ranchos (Vegas history -- it's complicated) right across from Circus Circus.

Not quite CityCenter but right up there in sheer size and scope will be Echelon Place, the $4-billion-plus development that is replacing the Stardust on the north end of the Strip. When it opens in 2010, it will have more than 5,300 rooms in four distinct properties -- Echelon Resort (a mega-casino-style place) and three boutique hotels with high-cache names: Mondrian, Delano, and Shangri-La (a high-end Asian hotelier) -- plus the typical casino, meeting, shopping, restaurant, entertainment, and other facilities one would expect in a place that will cost this much money.

On the drawing boards is yet another massive project; Station Casinos is dreaming of Viva, to be built at the former corner of Flamingo and Dean Martin, on the former Wild West site. Their modest proposal would be the largest hotel complex in Vegas, with 10,000 rooms and at least three casinos.

As usual, rumors fly about the fate of other venerable properties. At press time, the Sahara's new owner intends to give the place a top-to-bottom redo. Still up for sale, the fate of the venerable and rather shabby Rivera continues to hang in the balance. The Tropicana has been the subject of all sorts of plans for rebuilds, implosions, makeovers, and more, all of which have failed to materialize for various reasons, while the property itself sits in fading limbo. And who knows what Harrah's has in mind for that swath of property that runs from Harrah's to Paris? Surely envy over CityCenter is going to produce something equally grand. For the time being, figure that the Imperial Palace's budget Strip rooms are in peril, as are those in the former Barbary Coast (currently carrying the moniker Bill's).

Dining

The celebrity chefs continue to come to Vegas, making it one of the most exciting places to eat in the country. And those who are already here just open up additional places. The Palazzo has brought along all sorts of celebrity chefs, starting with another Emeril entry, Table 10, as well as a second Mario Batali eatery, steakhouse Carnevino, quite possibly the most expensive steakhouse in town. The latter gets to compete with The Palazzo neighbor, Cut, Wolfgang Puck's own much lauded house of beef. And Charlie Trotter has opened a haute cuisine seafood venture, Restaurant Charlie. And it's not just name chefs; Los Angeles's favorite paparazzi stalking spot, Sushi Roku, has opened up a branch in the newer part of Caesars Forum shops.

About Casino Gambling

Perhaps the oddest experience these days in Vegas is the quietest one. The volume in casinos has dimmed some -- notably, if you've been to Vegas before -- thanks to a gradual change in all slot and other gaming machines. Every casino has changed its machines over to a cashless system, wherein the payouts come in the form of printed slips you exchange at the cages. No more can you thrill to that distinct sound of coins dropping -- clinkclinkclinkclinkclink -- as you cash out on your slot (or poker) machine. These days, that sound is just a programmed audio track. And slots and other machines won't even take coins; gone are the days when one could dump that pocketful of loose change in a slot as one passed by. Meanwhile, many casinos, especially the ones belonging to "resort hotels," are easing up on the noise factor; there is considerably less bingbingdingdingdingdingding going on in the casinos, which is fine in terms of noise pollution, but still . . . gambling will never be the same again.

And more revolutions are on the way. Casinos in The Venetian and The Palazzo are field-testing portable devices that will allow you take the gambling experience out of the casino and in to any other public area of the building like the pool, some restaurants, bars, lounges, and more. Boy, as if the city didn't already enable gambling problems. The exact details on how these things will work are still a bit of a mystery, but the state has approved the technology, which may well be widely available by the end of 2008.

Another big change hitting casino floors in the near future is the concept of server-based gaming. Currently, each slot machine has its own computer, but in the future they will be "shells" run by one server computer (hidden, we like to imagine, in a bunker somewhere in each casino guarded by dogs and guys with sub-machine guns). Fantasy aside, the end result for you will be the ability to "download" any video-based slot or video poker to any console, eliminating the need to hunt for your "favorite" machine. This is already being tested in certain markets around the country, so expect to see it in Vegas at some point.

Vegas not fast-paced enough for you? Certain newer slot machines are now equipped so that if you are too impatient to wait for the reels to go through their entire spinning cycle, you can punch the "spin" button a second time, and it will go instantly to its final lineup. Doing this does not affect the outcome -- it was going to get to that position regardless. If you find yourself pressed for time and don't want to wait for results, try this option.

Shopping

With the evolution of the former Aladdin into Planet Hollywood now more or less complete, the owners of the attached shopping center have transformed it, in stages, from the Middle Eastern-themed Dessert Passage into the Times Square/Glamorous Big City-themed Miracle Mile. Can't this city leave anything alone? Wait, don't answer that. Anyway, $90 million or so later, it looks an awful lot like a generic fancy shopping mall, albeit one with all kinds of whiz-bang electronics and lights. It's keenly disappointing. We are getting tired of big and bland, but the list of shops is enough to keep us spending our hard-earned jackpots there.

Another high-end shopping experience is available for you now that The Palazzo has opened. The star of the retail show is a branch of Barney's New York, the boutique department store where pretty much every up-to-the-minute brand is represented, but there is plenty else to drool over thanks to the likes of Christian Louboutin, Bottega Veneta, and more. The coming of Encore will bring even more shops right out of the pages of Vogue.

Las Vegas After Dark

Broadway continues to stumble when making the transition to the Strip. Tony-winners The Producers and Spamalot both closed, as did the long-running Mamma Mia, though the Vegas-ized version of Phantom continues to bring in its phans. Still, the resort hotels aren't quite giving up on the thea-tah; The Palazzo is hoping for the kind of appeal that classic pop hits can bring (and that Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons have the same kind of support as Abba) as they present the award winning Jersey Boys.

Meanwhile, other hotels continue to bank on the ubiquitous Cirque de Soliel. Gothic magician Criss Angel, star of his own Broadway show Mindfreak, is pairing up with the po-mo circus troop, which is actually fairly inspired given both acts' use of surreal visuals. Criss Angel: Believe will combine Cirque's nonlinear, daydream spectacle with his own original illusions, ideally breathing new life into a nearly dead Vegas genre -- that of the awe-inspiring magician. Look also for Cirque to follow up its Beatles-salute LOVE with an Elvis-themed show due to arrive at CityCenter in 2009.

One good diva deserves another, or even two, and so the indomitable Bette Midler and Cher have replaced Céline Dion at Caesars Palace with their own annual lengthy residencies. Both are pure entertainers, through and through, and if the Divine One's vocals outshine those of Cher's, the latter makes up for it with Bob Mackie gowns that are stars in their own right. Both are producing the kind of shows Vegas used to be known for, quality music and dancing acts, though the prices are anything but retro. Speaking of retro, Toni Braxton is ending her run at The Flamingo to be replaced by -- wait for it -- Donny and Marie. Huh. And here we thought all the family fun was gone from Vegas.

Rumors

Vegas just loves gossiping about big plans and changes. None of the following is confirmable -- we can't even get most hotels to confirm their rates -- and much of it may have changed by the time you read this. But, this gives you an idea of the dreams this city dreams.

When this guide was published, it was announced that the Star Trek Experience exhibit at the Hilton would be closing by September, 2008. This has lead to a most delicious rumor. Vegas watchers have noted two things: the Star Trek ten-year contract runs out in 2008 and has not been renewed. And Michael Jackson's ranch Neverland was saved from a foreclosure-induced bidding auction by a last minute loan from . . . the company that owns the Hilton. Dots have been connected and -- well, who knows? Whether anything manifests, it seems reasonable to assume that something very, very interesting was discussed. By the time you read this, it could all be a foregone conclusion -- but still . . . isn't it interesting?