It's not my Vegas anymore II

Last year after I went to Las Vegas for the first time in a decade to compete in the National Trivia League tournament finals, I wrote a blog entry about how it was no longer "my Vegas."  That was the first annual tournament.  The second annual version took place on August 27th and I was again in Las Vegas, for the first time since last year's visit.  Sadly, after we finished 3rd in the inaugural tournament, we did not do so well in our second effort.  But it was fun.

It also got me thinking about how much Las Vegas has changed, even more than I wrote about in last year's blog.  30 years ago, the hotels and casinos on the Las Vegas Strip were (as best I can remember):

Aladdin

Ballys Grand

Barbary Coast

Boardwalk

Caesar’s Palace

Castaways

Circus Circus

Desert Inn

Dunes

El Rancho

Flamingo

Frontier

Hacienda

Holiday

Imperial Palace

Marina

Nob Hill 

O'Shea's

Riviera

Sahara

Sands

Silver City

Silver Slipper

Slots O’ Fun

Stardust

Tropicana

Westward Ho

Today, the Aladdin is now Planet Hollywood.  The Barbary Coast is the Cromwell.  Boardwalk is now the site of the Mandarin Oriental, a five star resort but without a casino.  The Castaway (a personal favorite of mine) is now the home to the Mirage and Treasure Island.  The Desert Inn (once known as Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn) is the site of the Wynn and the Encore.  The Dunes is the site of the Bellagio.  The El Rancho (where I used to bowl in a league at their bowling center) is the site of the still unfinished Fountainbleu.  The Frontier is the site of the planned Alon Las Vegas.  The Hacienda is occupied by the Mandalay Bay and the recently rebranded Delano.  The Holiday is now Harrahs.  The Imperial Palace (once home to a gigantic private collection of Adolf Hitler memorabilia) is now the Linq.  The Marina is now home to the MGM Grand, which was once the name of the hotel now known as Ballys.  The Nob Hill is now known as Casino Royale and caters to low-rollers.  The Rivera was recently demolished.  The Sahara is now the SLS.  The Sands is now the site of the Venetian and the Palazzo.  The Silver City (once the only non smoking casino in Las Vegas) is now a shopping plaza.  The Stardust was demolished to make way for a new hotel/casino but construction stopped years ago.  Now the new owners hope to open a new property on the site sometime in 2018.  The Silver Slipper was demolished and replaced by a parking lot.  

In addition to all of that, the Strip is now home to these additional hotel/casinos:

Aria

Cosmopolitan

Excalibur

Luxor

Monte Carlo

New York New York

Paris Las Vegas

* * *

To offer some additional perspective, consider this.  On November 4, 1986, I was working part-time as a reporter/anchor for the only all-news radio station in Las Vegas.  It was election night.  It was the night that Harry Reid was first elected to the U.S. Senate.  I had covered his campaign during the primary and general election run-up but on this night I'd been assigned to cover the race to replace Harry Reid in Congress.  

As I was about to leave to visit the election night locations of both of the candidates for the Congressional seat, I was told that I had to go to a trailer park on Las Vegas Boulevard and cover a fire there first.  That trailer park was on the Strip, where the New York New York and Monte Carlo properties now sit.  Some of the land around it was actually empty at the time.

Fast forward nearly three decades and now there isn't an unused square inch of real estate in that block.  Technology has eliminated a number of jobs in the casino industry.  You don't see people walking around slot machine areas carrying belts of rolled coins.  There are no more change booths.  Slot machines accept bills and pay out winnings (or what's left of a player's initial deposit into the machine) on slips of paper that can be fed into another machine that will dispense bills and coins.  I wonder what the very nice change girl who "sold" me the roll of quarters I hit a royal flush with is doing these days.  She would have had to find another job once those machines took over and she was young at the time.

Since hotel coffee shops are a thing of the past, the number of food service workers isn't what it once was.  Never mind that food is now much more expensive in a hotel/casino.  Snacks at the gift shop are nearly twice what they cost elsewhere.  The room rate wasn't bad, but that resort fee of $29 a night sucks.  $29 a night for free wi-fi, local calls and the ability to use the spa where a 50 minute massage is $195.  The upscale Burke Williams spas in So Cal charge $119 for the same 50 minute massage.  I pay $49 for the same service at a local chain that's not quite so upscale.

In 2005 I paid $90 for a full hour massage at the Luxor Hotel spa.  So it isn't just inflation.  In fact, in those days there wasn't a resort fee and that $90 saved me the $20 spa use fee.  So under today's system where the resort fee is mandatory, that massage at the Rio was even more expensive in comparison to the 2005 experience.

It really isn't my Vegas anymore.  But I'll go back next year for the trivia tournament.