In Vegas, Woe Is Thee Who Relies On Google Maps

Take a good look at the images in this post. Click on them to enlarge and look closer. You'll be utterly amazed. I am.

I know others have taken note of strange glitches of Google Maps -- I believe Excalibur used to show up in the middle of the Wynn Golf Course -- but this is just insane. On the map above, Aria is north of Cosmo, the Crystals is south of Veer and there's a make-believe road called Business Lane.

At least those places are in the right vague vicinity on that one. Treasure Island...

...is north of Circus Circus! How unfortunate for them!

I feel for anyone who went out to this lonely spot to buy Lion King tickets...

...or thought they'd find the Las Vegas Strip east of Hooters...

...or looked for the Palazzo south of The Venetian...

...or tried to decide why there are two Wynn Las Vegases so they could get to their table at Alex:

Anyone else stumped as to where they got the name "Emerald Green Golf Course" for Bali Hai...

...or when anyone has ever referred to Interstate 15 as...

...as either the Mojave Freeway or the Barstow Freeway?

As for Vdara, which is what I was looking up in the first place, it's particularly alarming that their own paid Google ad provides this map...

...putting the hotel, umm, east of Eastern Avenue. Also, Google thinks...

...Aria is there, too. Hmmm. That could explain a lot about the hotel's occupancy, doesn't it?

The Show is UP: Engelbert The Engaging

Miles is back -- though still feeling crummy -- and we have a winner -- actually two, sorta -- for the Cinevegas tickets contest. Also, find out what SLS Way was for and hear our chat with Engelbert. You know the drill: click on the date below to listen or right-click and save to your computer. Or subscribe (it's free!) via this iTunes link or via this Zune link. -sf

June 11: Engelbert Humperdinck

In our quest to cover all the classic old-timers of Vegas lore, one fixture we hadn’t yet caught up with was Englebert Humperdinck, the British chart-topper who was first brought to the Strip in 1968 by none other than Dean Martin. Humperdinck, now 73, talks about everything from Liberace to Lambert, recalls Howard Stern's playing with his hair, explains why James Blunt fits in the canon with Clapton and McCartney and discusses the fact that his rival, Tom Jones, has received a knighthood while he has not. Humperdinck performs in Vegas at the Orleans on June 11-14 playing his hits as well as the contemporary pop songs he covered in his 2007 album, “The Winding Road.”

In Banter: Danny Gans’ cause of death, the Cinevegas passes contest winner, the future of the TI, Steve’s show spree, changes at Peepshow, Robuchon’s odd discount and the Chippendales do Paris.

Links To Stuff Discussed:

Engelbert Humperdinck’s website
Tickets for Engelbert Humperdinck’s shows June 11-14 at the Orleans
The shirtless Engelbert Humperdinck “Release Me” video
VegasHappensHere.Com photos and links regarding the Treasure Island changes
Pictures of the Wynn Sky Casino
Joel Robuchon’s “discount” menus
VegasHappensHere.Com on the Peepshow changes
The YouTube version of the special video edition of The Strip from Bethlehem, Pa.
Hear the Gans death press conference

Pix I Forgot I Had, Re: TI

I totally forgot I had these on my camera, probably because they're not very good. But in light of how much interest there has been in this week's Strip Sense piece on the Ruffinized Treasure Island, I figured what the hell. Above is the rendering of what the Gilley's at the TI will look like.

And some folks were confused as to the references in the column to expanding the viewing area for the Sirens show. Well, here's what the boardwalk looks like now...


...and here's what they plan to do with it.


Work will be done, Phil Ruffin says, this summer when they drain the lagoon for a month for annual repairs and such.

Now I'm off to a busy day. I'm checking out three shows today/tonight in a feverish effort to fill in gaps in my Vegas show knowledge. And I'll be on Nevada Week in Review tonight talking politics. That show airs at Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at noon on Channel 10. The show's also available on iTunes.

This week's LVW Col: Phil Ruffin Reveals TI Plans

Here's this week's Strip Sense column from the Las Vegas Weekly. Don't skip the jump to the full column if you really want to know what all Ruffin's plans are for the TI. But here's one big hint: Mechanical bulls are BACK! Yee-haw! -sf

The Anti-Wynn

Phil Ruffin reveals big plans for that neglected niche: the mid-market

By STEVE FRIESS

I was a bit confused when I showed up at the Treasure Island on Monday for lunch with its new owner, Phil Ruffin, and his assistant told me on the house phone to meet the Kansas billionaire at Francesco’s Pizzeria. I asked her to repeat that a few times, certain I had misheard her.

You see, until a few minutes before, Francesco’s was not a pizza joint. It was a serious, high-end Italian restaurant that was named by Steve Wynn himself as a tribute to Frank Sinatra. Had they created a spinoff? “Oh, we closed that up a little while ago and opened up this place,” said Ruffin, 72, squeezing into a booth after apologizing for no apparent reason for wearing a suit today. “This place does triple the business.”

The new Francesco’s has been moved from “Upscale Dining” to “Casual Dining” on the Treasure Island website. It offers serviceable paninis and pizzas, nothing too fancy or expensive. Out went the heavy china and stuffy service, in came a lunch shift.

“People don’t want high-end these days, certainly not from this place,” Ruffin said. “We’re getting all kinds of business from the Venetian, the Wynn, the Mirage, from people who don’t want to pay $15 for orange juice.”

And therein, Phil Ruffin has found his niche in the Las Vegas universe. Let MGM Mirage, Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts, Harrah’s and even Boyd Gaming scramble after the ever-diminishing top end with their fancy suites, expensive restaurants and condo sales. Ruffin flirted with all that for years as he pondered what to do with the New Frontier site, bought in the late 1990s and always slated for some form of redevelopment. By the middle of this decade, Ruffin was facing a decision on whether or not to move forward with a plan to build a Swiss-themed luxury resort, the multibillion-dollar Montreux. Images were even circulated to the press.

Just before he had to pull the trigger, he realized the thing made no financial sense for one important reason: “I’m not Steve Wynn.”

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

TONIGHT: ALL JON VOIGHT! JOIN US!

I just got off the line after an astounding, incredible 90-minute interview with Oscar winner Jon Voight that went from the secret behind his "Midnight Cowboy" physique to Angelina Jolie's first film role to his Bush-Palin love. SO...we're playing all of it tonight in lieu of a proper episode because a sickly Miles remains out of commission anyway. Voight is receiving the Vanguard Award at the Cinevegas Film Festival later this month at the Palms.

Join us in the chat at LVRocks.Com to listen to the interview and discuss it. I'll be in chat, too. We'll get started at about 6:30 p.m. so we can fit most of it in. Otherwise, grab the podcast edition when it's posted by Thursday morning. Subscribe (it's free!) in iTunes.

Breaking: Ruffin May Pay MGM The Whole $775m

Yesterday, I interviewed Phil Ruffin for a New York Times piece we later decided not to write about the minor tempest over phone calls Sens. Reid and Ensign made to "encourage" major banks to lend $1.2 billion to MGM Mirage for the completion of CityCenter.

I was interested in Ruffin's take as a fellow in the process of buying the Treasure Island off MGM Mirage. He was supportive of Reid and Ensign's efforts to help MGM. "I wouldn't jump all over them," Ruffin said. "That's exactly what your senators are supposed to do." In fact, one reason the Times lost enthusiasm for the story was that Ensign cleared making these calls with the Senate Ethics Committee and other breaking news took precedence.

But in the discussion, I asked Ruffin about the revelation last week that he was having difficulty finding outside financing $175 million of the $775 million purchase price of the TI. He's putting $600 million in cash into the deal and MGM Mirage even offered him a $20 million discount if he could get outside financing so they could just have all the money now.

Ruffin: Isn't that the craziest thing? We’re putting up $600 million and they’re asking for the moon for the banks to put up $175 million. You ‘d think with that kind of equity, it wouldn't be necessary.

VegasHappensHere: Well, if you're having that kind of trouble on a relatively small loan, who could possibly buy any assets from MGM Mirage or Harrah's even if they were selling them?

Ruffin: It would be impossible unless you’re sitting on a lot of cash. The banks are too leery, they’re jumpy about Las Vegas.

VegasHappensHere: So would you just pay the whole $775 million in cash if they asked you to?
Ruffin: Yeah, I would. I would. If it would help them out, I might just do that.

Also, Ruffin said that in retrospect the decision to build CityCenter and put so much on that 67-acre property was clearly "a mistake. I like 'em. These are friends of mine. I think Jim Murren is a class act and Kirk Kerkorian is a friend. At the time when they started this project, condos were going like crazy and MGM had a very good retail set-up, the kiosks in all their hotels and so forth. Trump and I did the same thing and we had contracts on all 1,200 units. The markets cratered and only 30 percent have closed. The same thing happened in spades to them. But I think if you asked them now, they would say it was a mistake."

Somehow I'm doubting that. At least not now. Maybe in a decade when it all blows over.

Meanwhile, it's also worth noting that I called Harrah's senior vice president Jan Jones for her take on the Reid/Ensign phone calls. She said Harrah's has not asked the senators to intervene for loans but that they also aren't building anything and don't need the capital. But Jones agreed with Ruffin that Reid/Ensign "were just speaking out in favor of the biggest industry in the state. They weren’t asking for any special favors."

Jones also expressed frustration that certain anti-Obama forces want to vilify anyone trying to help out the gaming business. She makes this interesting point:

"It’s become in vogue to bash big business and it's always ben in vogue to bash the gaming industry," she said. "I don’t think they're thinking from the policy perspective. They’re thinking in soundbites. For some reason the word casino – probably mostly thanks to Hollywood's depictions of it – has a negative connoation, but when you really look at the direct and indirect employment numbers for this industry, they're much bigger than the auto industry. This is working class America."

EXCLUSIVES: Mystere to Extend 5 Years and More

My blockbuster interview with Phil Ruffin is finally up and a more traditional blog post with the show links and such is coming shortly. But there was a lot of actual news in that interview that I wanted to highlight. Here goes:

* Deal To Close On April 1. Ruffin says he's doing everything in his power to close the deal to buy the Treasure Island from MGM Mirage for $775 million by April 1. That's a bit sooner than the June 1 date first noted when the deal was announced.

* Mystere is Forever. Or Until At Least 2016. Ruffin says he is meeting with Cirque next week with the plan to extend the Cirque du Soleil production, which has three years remaining on its current contract, for another FIVE years. That would keep it running for at least 23 years. Ruffin says occupancy remains at 85 percent.

* The Buccaneer Cafe? While Ruffin had heretofore insisted he had no specific changes planned for the TI, he's now pondering carving some space out of the lagoon for a streetside cafe of some sort. "You start walking at Circus Circus past the Frontier land, past the Fashion Show Mall, and then as you go down the casinos – Treasure Island, Mirage, Caesars, there’s no place for them to sit and eat. There should be something like that out there.

* A Bentsen-Quayle Moment In The Mirror. Ruffin says he was ready to sign off on the financing to build the Montreux, a luxury Swiss-themed resort on the Frontier property, but backed out at the last minute. Why? "I’m no Steve Wynn. I’m not at that level. He’s way above me. I didn’t think I could" build something as beautiful that would get Wynn's room rates. And to make the deal's math worked, he needed to make that kind of money.

* Thanks, But No Thanks ... To Harrah's: This exchange was fascinating.

Ruffin: I would not buy a Harrah’s property.
Friess: How come?
Ruffin: Because they have that Total Rewards system. And they can move those customers to wherever they want to move them to. So let’s say Paris is doing $100 million a year. They can take those customers away from me damn near overnight. Friess: But MGM Mirage has a rewards program, too.
Ruffin: Yeah, but we’re patched into that.
Friess: And Harrah’s wouldn’t allow you to…
Ruffin: Well, we didn’t approach to Harrah's.
Friess: Do you think that makes it harder for Harrah’s to sell of one of their properties?
Ruffin: I do, I do.

* No Leaky Ship. Ruffin disclosed that the Frontier hotel had 169 roof leaks when he bought it. How many does the TI have? "None!" he laughs.

* The Check Is On The Wall. This isn't in the interview, but it's too good a detail not to mention. There's not much on Ruffin's walls. But one thing caught my eye: a framed check for $171,953,438. “That’s my check to the IRS last year,” he says, “so don’t let anyone ever tell you the rich don’t pay taxes.” Hear that, Mr. Mayor? That's enough for three mob museums.

The Strip is LIVE @ 6:45 p.m. PT w/ Phil Ruffin

We've got a newsmaking chat with soon-to-be Treasure Island owner Phil Ruffin coming up tonight. I hesitate to even hint at some of the stuff he told me in this conversation until at least I've aired the audio. But it's so good, I'll probably post something more specific on Wednesday.

Still, if you want to be the first to hear it, join us live at LVRocks.Com from 6:45-8 pm for the live chat and streaming audio.

Show's UP: A Very Wynning Xmas

Merry Xmas and Happy Hannukah everyone! Hear the show by clicking on the date or right-click to download it and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Dec. 25: Wynn's Encore, Part I

This is Steve Wynn’s week, no doubt about it. On what is traditionally one of the slowest nights in Las Vegas and in the middle of the worst recession in generations, he opened the doors to his $2.3 billion expansion, Encore. The results were a flood of curious explorers that led to bumper to bumper traffic on the Strip as far south as the Mandalay Bay and a line all the way into the Wynn casino. In honor of that milestone, over the next two weeks we’re presenting our interview earlier this month with Wynn in which he talks about everything from the shape of the buildings to the original plans for the Encore TV commercial.

In Banter: Encore, snow, Criss Angel, City Center, Elton John.

Show links:

See Encore here
See pix of the snow in Vegas here
Read CityLife's cover of Criss Angel here
See the breaking news about Elton John here
See the L.A. Times' glowing review of Encore Las Vegas here
See the video for Richard Cheese's"Christmas in Las Vegas" here
See Steve's coverage of the Treasure Island sale here
See the Vdara sign photo here

MGM Mirage Firesale Begins!

As my colleague Robin Leach correctly predicted last night, MGM Mirage announced this morning it is selling the Treasure Island for $775 million to reclusive aging billionaire Phil Ruffin. I can't find how many acres the TI sits on -- this and several other sites say 100 acres. If that's so, that's $7.75 million an acre for the land alone, a heckuva deal seeing how there's a decent business standing on it at the moment, too. Ruffin himself set the record by getting $35 million an acre out of the Elad suckers for the Frontier property about 20 months ago. So is $7.75 million the new watermark?

This is actually pretty good news for the mid-ranged property inasmuch as Ruffin got high marks for bringing peace and stability to the disastrous New Frontier in 1999, at least before he flipped it. It was razed, of course, to make way for a whole lotta nothing.

Wall Street was happy with MGM, rewarding the debt-larded behemoth with a 18 percent surge in stock price at the opening and its highest price in a month. You can read the press release here. I especially love Ruffin talking about the TI as being in "pristine condition," as if he were buying a rare coin.

The TI's employees probably can heave a sigh of relief not felt in the rest of the MGM Mirage universe, where just last week the Bellagio let go all part-timers at the front desk for the rest of the year. That is, until Ruffin flips the place. Which he's bound to do. But until then, the TI is the crown jewel in his collection of Marriotts. How fun for him.

On the downside, the TI is a resort that is easily forgotten and benefits greatly from its crossmarketing angle with the other MGM Mirage properties. It's unclear how it'll do without that network. In fact, Steve Wynn all but acknowledged to me at one point that the place was the bastard child of his creations, the one he did in a hurry with a lesser budget.

No word on the implosion date, but it's said Mystere will continue to play twice a night on the site even after the rest of the place has been demolished.

So, folks...what's next? Is it tasteless to talk about Monte Carlo in the context of a fire sale?

MGM Mirage On Fate of Fountain Coins

It seems the Wynn Las Vegas response that the coins are in some cases not cleanable is somewhat backed up by this response from Alan Feldman, the spokesman for MGM Mirage, who finally came back to me with a comprehensive response to the question asked by podcast listener Naomi in Israel weeks ago about what happens to the coins tossed in Vegas fountains:

Steve:

Well, as you may have surmised by now, this was not an easy question to answer.

While most of the coins end up with charity, they have to go through a major cleaning process. Some are simply too dirty or damaged to salvage and are destroyed.

TI discards everything they clean out of their Pirate Cove area as the coins are simply too dirty to recover. The same for Circus Circus Adventuredome from the water rides they have.

The Mirage has in the past given the coins from the water feature near the people mover along the Strip to Shriner’s and Red Cross. They did not have an amount; they simply gave away the coins. My contact there said it was difficult to find an agency to take the coins because they had to be cleaned first.

Bellagio gives coins from their front feature to Habitat for Humanity, however our contact at HFH is saying the company that cleans the coins charges them 50%. As I recall a past conversation Bellagio, the Red Cross asked us to stop giving them the coins about a year ago, because the company they were using to process the donations, was going to raise their fee.

In 2007 approximately $22,000 was given to Make-a-Wish of Southern Nevada from the water features at New York New York.

Mandalay Bay and Luxor give theirs back to Voice, our company’s Foundation, where the monies are disbursed to charities throughout southern Nevada under the direction of a board made up entirely of employees. Last year, we deposited more than $33,000 into the Voice account from the fountains at these properties.

I know this isn’t a detailed accounting, but it’s what I was able to pull together in between calls on the fire and economy slipping into recession.

Any thoughts, folks?

BREAKING: Mystere's Days Are Numbered!

It's just a matter of what that number is and that I don't know.

However, a key source has informed me of the Cirque du Soleil-MGM Mirage plan for Vegas. In it, there is a plan for one new Cirque show every year for the next four years. One of those four happens to be planned to come to the Treasure Island, which means Mystere will go bye-bye.

Mystere just renewed their contract for two years, which makes sense seeing how the first two shows in that plan would be the Criss Angel one at Luxor this summer and the Elvis one next year at CityCenter.

The big speculation should be which other property would get the fourth new show in the plan. Mandalay Bay is supposed to lose Mamma Mia! in early 2009, but MGM Mirage folks keep telling me they don't want Cirque there and, anyhow, would they leave that room unassigned for two years? That's a lot of Liza Minnelli concerts! The only other properties they might consider would be Monte Carlo and Excalibur, and I suspect Cirque is too high-brow for the X. Lance Burton, though, ends his contract in 2009, I think. And something tells me that place could use a new lease on life.

Anyhow, Mystere is now locked in to complete 18 years at least, and that is an astounding success that is unprecedented for Vegas. That is, until "O" eclipses it. Because, you know, "O" is forever.

I'm also told that the Mystere cast has been informed that the show's mortality has been vaguely decided. But you, of course, heard it right here first.

What you may see if you try to book...

The systems at the affected hotels seem to be working sporadically. But as of 6 pm PT, these are screen shots of what I found when I tried to book. Signature seemed to be working OK, for now. Earlier I had not included Mirage, which is the other property on the OPERA system, but just now I tested their site, too, and as you can see they're in the same boat.

Click on the pic to see the images more clearly. I am awaiting reax from MGM Mirage PR. Kinda interesting how each site has different kinds of errors.

BREAKING: MGM Mirage Reservation System Crashes For Bellagio, Four Others

Right now, if you try to book rooms online at the Bellagio, Beau Rivage, Treasure Island, New York-New York or Signature at MGM Grand properties, you probably cannot. And if you have a reservation, prepare for a very cumbersome check-in process. For at least two days, guests have had to have their rooms checked in by back-of-the-front-desk reservationists who manually place them in their rooms and create their key cards. Guests must leave cell #s at the front desk, at least at Bellagio, and are called and sent to a ballroom to get their keys when they're ready.

The trouble stems from the new OPERA reservation system that the company has been transferring over to for the past couple of years. Apparently the addition of the New York-New York may have overloaded it and caused the system to crash and has limited the number of reservations who can access it.

The inconvenience is costing MGM Mirage big bucks. At Bellagio, for instance, some guests are getting comps worth hundreds for the messiness they've encountered.

Developing...

Breaking: LV Sands May Want Mirage, TI

I interviewed Las Vegas Sands Inc. COO and president Bill Weidner for a while today for a few longer-term stories, but I asked about Kirk Kerkorian's bid to buy Bellagio and CityCenter. One real possibility is that MGM Mirage could be sold off piece by piece, so I asked him if the owner of the Venetian and Palazzo would want, say, Mirage and Treasure Island -- the stuff across the street. His intriguing response:

"It all depends on what the values might be. We have lots of our eggs in Asia, we have lots of growth coming out of Asia. We think there will be more venues to develop in Asia. We want to position ourselves to be the people for those types of developments. Our fundamental strategy still remains filling the pipeline with future development and building our value from the ground up."

So it's sort of a "sure, maybe." But if it was a definite "no" or even unlikely, he would've clearly said so. Can you just imagine what a stick-in-the-eye it would be if Sheldon Adelson ended up controlling the Mirage, the groundbreaker that arch-enemy Steve Wynn built? Man, that would be cruel.

The audio of this interview will go up later this week in the podcast feed. Weidner talks in detail about Macau, about Palazzo, about why they knew the Las Vegas Monofail wouldn't work and about why Adelson gets the smallest salary of any Strip bosses. If you're not already subscribed through iTunes, click here and join the party.

I stand corrected or bu hao

A few weeks ago in this space, I wondered why Las Vegas casinos don't have foreign-language mirror sites. I had noticed shortly thereafter that the Bellagio does, in fact, have Chinese, Japanese and Spanish mirror sites. See the screenshot to your right.

Then it was pointed out to me in an email from Jenn Michaels, vice president of corporate relations for MGM Mirage, that two other MGM Mirage properties also have Spanish language sites -- Circus Circus and Treasure Island. I honestly didn't even look at those sites because they're not hotels I would associate with international travel and at least with the TI, you have to really look carefully to find the link. But Michaels also noted that by the end of the year, MGM Grand and Luxor also will have Spanish-language mirror sites. Wroth she: "This is an evolving area for us. Historically, international business has represented a small percentage of business to Las Vegas and to our properties. That number is certainly growing and as it does we respond."

I asked her what's taken so long given all the marketing efforts in Asia, and this was her answer: "To be honest, it’s just a matter of us catching up to the need. We’ve gone, in 7 years, from being a company with 2 properties to one with 22 properties, and we’re trying to manage that process. We know we have a lot of work to do on this front, and we look forward to getting it all done as we move forward."

Meanwhile, I also picked on the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for failing in this regard. It is true that LVCVA.Com does not have any foreign-language mirror sites, but VisitLasVegas.Com, which I discovered the other day when Gregory sent me checking out the Vegas Visionary, does have links for Spanish and Chinese.

Still, where's Harrah's, Wynn and especially the Venetian on all of this?

And on a more arcane point (to Western readers), one of my Chinese friends reminded me that the title of the first post on this matter was incorrect. "Bu Yao" means "don't want." I meant to say "don't have" which would've been "mei you." Dui buqi.