Thanks, McCarran! and other airport musings

We arrived at our NYC hotel, the lovely Marriott East Side, late Wednesday and went to check in only to discover my driver's license was not in my wallet. They didn't actually need it, but I was lucky to have looked for it sooner than later. I had it going through security at McCarran and thought I'd returned it to my billfold, but it was neither there nor in my laptop messenger bag which, nonetheless, got a much-needed cleaning out.

I called a friend who was watching the dogs and the house and had him FedEx me my passport so I could get on tonight's flight home from JFK. And what is waiting for us in the mound of mail? That envelope with this return address:

My license! Mailed to me by the airport folks... at their expense!

Wow. I am quite impressed. I guess I dropped it and someone turned it in, which is so kind. I've been rescued from hours at the DMV! Hooray! I wonder if other airports do this. Whew.

Not a bad way to get this blog back up and going now after a layoff, huh? Miles, even, was baffled I wasn't blogging while we were traveling. Feh. Y'all can entertain yourselves for a few minutes, no?

Meanwhile, we arrived via Delta at the D Gate today and look at what we found:

It's like a bank of slot machines in "The Walking Dead." What happened? Are they replacing them? Eerie.

I'm eternally fascinated by what Caesars puts on their primo space because there's always some quirks. When I saw this...

...all I could think of was, "How come Al Mancini, John Curtas and Max Jacobson weren't invited into this portrait?"

But Miles had a better point: It took them less than a split second to replace the billboard with this portrait seeing how Rao's chef Carla Pellegrino -- one of the few female executive chefs in Vegas -- quit the restaurant just a few minutes ago. That's some mighty quick work there forgetting she was ever there. How terrific that they're back to an all-boys club. Think they actually reshot the photo or just used some PhotoShop?

And finally...

...there's something sort of desperate about the Mandalay Bay having to throw a free New Year's Eve party "free of cover charges or reservations." I mean, what does that even mean? Do I really want to be at a NYE party that even I can get into for nothing?

Turns out, it's also very, very misleading. Evidently, they've redefined "cover charge." If you go to the website for this event advertised on this billboard, you see this:

You see, you pay $50 in advance -- or $75 day-of -- for a "block party pass." With that, from what I can glean, you get to hang out at the Mandalay Bay Beach -- hence it is, in fact, a cover charge -- and you get five "signature cocktails" at any of their 12 event bars. It's hard to tell what else you get, but online "tickets" actually end up costing $57 when Ticketmaster's fee is factored in.

Oh, one more thing. Anyone wanna tell me what's wrong with the text here? Click on it to enlarge.

Lion King Closure Doesn't Make It A Failure

I must respectfully disagree with my colleague and occasional "The Strip" substitute host David McKee's current post seemingly seeking explanations as to why The Lion King is closing at the end of 2011, as if the decision announced Wednesday means it's a failure.

The only yardstick by which the tenure of The Lion King at Mandalay Bay can be judges a loser is by the standard that Vegas shows are supposed to last forever and ever. There are a precious few shows that do that, and TLK's 2.5-year residency here is nothing to scoff at or to autopsy.

Shows do run their course. This one, from everybody I've spoken to internally at MGM Resorts, has actually exceeded expectations and occasionally even set records. They signed it for a year, extended it twice. To me, it seemed risky -- very visual, which Vegas loves, but also very much a children's tale and one with a far-less-known score than Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys or Phantom. It's also really long and has an intermission, which was part of what doomed Avenue Q at Wynn. Yet it outlasted AveQ as well as Spamalot, The Producers and Hairspray. So there.

The other reason why TLK is far less responsible for its departure than other shows is, as McKee also noted, Cirque du Soleil has been waiting in the wings for a place to land its permanent Michael Jackson show. We do know the process here, right? TLK leaves at the end of 2011, Cirque overhauls the theater throughout 2012 (construction jobs, yay!) and the new show bows in 2013, as Cirque CEO Daniel Lamarre told Robin Leach last week.

One other thing. I suspect that Mandalay Bay, which has hosted Chicago, then MM!, then TLK, may no longer feel that the theater needs to be a Broadway stage given that in 2012, the Smith Center For The Performing Arts opens west of downtown and proper Broadway tours will start passing through annually, starting with Wicked in 2012. And while I still think there's a chance the Cirque-MJ show could land at Monte Carlo, the audience makeup I saw at Jabbawockeez on Saturday night must have MGM hearts dancing.

Anyhow, TLK has done just fine. And don't forget that had we never had it here, we wouldn't have had this:

A Cool -- as in FREEZING -- Video

Yes, this is a bit promotional. But it's also pretty fun to watch -- the folks at Minus 5, the frigid bar at Mandalay Bay, have created Lion King ice sculpture. I just got an email that they'll be unveiling an Oscar Goodman ice sculpture, too, next week. I don't know if they keep these sculptures around or what. Is Minus 5 going to become an icy version of Madame Tussaud's?



Also noteworthy is that this video was produced for 702.tv, a new Vegas video site from the Greenspun Media Group folks that received a load of hype in today's Las Vegas Sun. I haven't had the time to really explore it, but I will do so soon.

The Show is UP: Marie Osmond, Part I

Off to the tax lady now. Enjoy the show! Click on the date below to listen or right-click and save to your computer. Or subscribe (it's free!) via the iTunes link or via the Zune link. Enjoy.

April 2: Marie Osmond, Part I

She’s a little bit country and a little bit, well, you know the rest. But she’s also now a big bit of a Strip headliner. Marie Osmond, she of the gigantic gleaming smile stretched across the Flamingo, joins us this hour to talk about show business nepotism, performing with everyone from Groucho Marx to Snoop Dogg and the night she and Donny performed their Vegas show in the dark.

In Banter: Freaks at O'Sheas, MGM drama, Follies bye- bye, Vegas impersonator jailed in Suriname.

Links to stuff mentioned:

Tickets for the Donny and Marie show
The 2009 results of the R-J’s Best of Las Vegas survey
The VegasHappensHere.Com post on the mayoral chips for Airmen
The website for SeaWorld’s Military Program
Sites for Minskoff and Mandalay theaters, both of which now house The Lion King
KNPR, the Las Vegas NPR member station
A Las Vegas Sun piece on Freaks, a gross new show at O’Sheas
VegasHappensHere.Com on MGM making their payment
MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren’s letter to employees
News on Hooters, Riviera and Bally’s closing its sportsbook until September
Mike Weatherford’s coverage of the closure of Folies Bergere at the Tropicana
Gaming Today’s Monti Rock III on Bobby Slayton’s Trop deal
Norm Clarke’s coverage of the Toni Braxton impersonator jailed in Suriname

Ginning Up Controversy

Mayor Oscar Goodman is pipin' mad at President Obama and the local media is all over it. Here's KLAS's Eddie Lawrence, for example, and Ben Spillman of the Review-Journal.

Except that the premise of both those stories and Goodman's outrage are false.

Obama was responding to a question about corporate responsibility in an appearance in Indiana. Among the recent reports to catch notice was Wells Fargo's plan, later canceled after a public shaming, to go on a lavish junket to the Wynn after taking a huge government bailout. This was a so-called "appreciation" event, an effort to reward high-achieving employees. That seemed extravagant to some when the banks are taking huge publicly funded bailouts, so it fit the narrative of automaker CEOs flying private jets to their Congressional begging session and the like.

Here's what Obama said: "You can't get corporate jets, you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime."

Yet all of these stories make it sound like Obama offered a full-throated assault on the entire Vegas convention industry. He said nothing about holding meetings or conventions in Las Vegas. He spoke about this in the context of extravagances, of leisure activities. The Wells Fargo event wasn't a meeting or a conference. They weren't planning to do any business. They were going to vacate and indulge, presumably for a job well done even though it's hard for many to see who could deserve it considering these companies' dire straits.

I'm not opining about who's right or wrong here. Dave Schwartz of UNLV makes an interesting case in favor of such trips and John L. Smith in the Review-Journal yesterday was satirically brutal about the same.

But the mayor is complaining about something that never happened, and the local press is filling out the details by allowing the mayor to take the president out of context. True, Goldman Sachs, also a bailout baby, moved a business meeting at the Mandalay Bay to a Marriott in San Francisco out of fear of looking bad. But that's not something the president himself said and so far, it's one example and still within the banking sphere.

Funny thing is, in the process the mayor may actually be endangering the convention business himself. By ginning this up, by turning it into something Drudge-worthy, he's introducing to many meeting planners and companies a thought that hadn't crossed or become firm in their minds: "Will it look bad if we hold this thing in Vegas this year?"

Before the mayor's outrage, I suspect most folks knew that Obama was talking about junkets and excess. Now, I wonder if the stigma has been amplified 100 times over.

The Show is UP: Mamma Mia! Exit Interviews

This show was a helluva lot of fun to do. Those of you who missed the live version will have to wait till the annual August outtakes episode to hear me explode in a cursing fury at the &$*holes who do the show after us for talking loudly in the next room while we were in our closing minutes. It wasn't the first time and I was in no mood. But, hey, that's the kind of thing the live crew gets. But the podcast version is still great and you can hear it by clicking on the date below or right-click to download it and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Jan. 8: Mamma Mia! Exit Interviews

The skeptics – including Steve -- said it would never work. A two-act, full-length musical scored by decades-old pop songs telling a convoluted story about parenthood and spandex could never, possibly succeed in Las Vegas. But succeed “Mamma Mia!” did, emboldening another half-dozen or so musicals to believe they, too, were Strip-worthy, only to find out that what Mamma Mia did so effortlessly was actually quite a feat. But all good things must come to an end, and on Sunday, Mandalay Bay said goodbye to Donna, Sophie, her three possible dads and the rest of the cast. We, however, aren’t done yet. Tonight we have live in the studio Brad Grey and Tim Tucker, the only two actors who stayed with the show for its entire, record-breaking Las Vegas run.

In Banter: New Year's Eve fireworks sucked, CityCenter's hiring, Stratosphere's laying off, The Harmon's in limbo, Tamara's stalled and Paris' empty showroom is a blessing.

Links:

See Tim Tucker's website here
Hear Steve euologize Mamma Mia! on KNPR by clicking here
See more on CityCenter's Harmon stall here
See rants from Fox viewers about the lousy NYE fireworks here
See the last blog post about Tamara at Venetian, now stalled, here
See more about Stratosphere's restaurant woes here

Bye, Bye, Mamma Mia!

And so the most successful Broadway musical ever to come to Las Vegas closed last night with an excellent final performance in which the actors clearly were trying to control their emotions and get the job done. I snapped these above from the 15th row and was amazed at how well they came out. (Read my "Mamma Mia" Mea Culpa here, btw.)

They didn't make any statements at the end of the production, much to the disappointment of many in the audience, but there were some moments during the show when it the actors and actresses behind the roles seemed to be winking at us about the occasion.

They did, however, have a party. Of course. This time, it was up in the HoB Foundation Room.




Here's a pic that a friend shot of me. I know it's unflattering, but I'm sick and bloated from all those chocolate Santas that were supposed to ward off this cold, so...


I really wasn't feeling like sticking around, but I loved the show so much and I really wanted to see Tina Walsh, the original Donna in the Vegas production who is now Madame Giry in Phantom. She made it over after her show was over. (To bone up on why I'm so mad about Tina, read this old LVW col.)

Here she is with Carol Linnea Johnson, who closed the show in the role that Meryl Streep ruined.


Here's Tina being chatted up by Robin Leach and then posing with Tim Tucker, one of our two guests on "The Strip" this Tuesday night.



And here's a few of the other actors. First, there's Victor Wallace, who opened the show in Vegas as Skye, the boyfriend of Sophie, and later returned to the cast as Sam, one of Sophie's possible dads. Yes, in a six-year span.


And here's Robin Baxter, who played Rosie, one of Donna's two friends. She's very, very funny.


But, alas, the party must come to an end. I was reminded of this when I saw this...


...in the Mandalay Bay parking garage.

Good luck to the former cast. And thanks for a great ride.

This Week's LVW Col: The Lion King

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column, the first of at least two based on my NYC trip in December. Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Can You Feel The Length Tonight?

The Lion King has a shot at success here - but its running time could kill it

By STEVE FRIESS

My 9-year-old niece sat next to me at the Minskoff Theatre in New York City, utterly enthralled. Her widened eyes were glued to the visual feast before her, the mammoth puppets and the ebullient, multiethnic cast performing colorful, energetic song-and-dance numbers, the Elton John/Tim Rice score.

A few seats away from her, though, was a slightly different story. A middle-aged couple from Ohio watched at first attentively and then, as time went on, with some impatience. The woman, in fact, dug out her program and opened it to the page with the list of songs, trying to catch a little bit of light so she could figure out how many were left. I had made her acquaintance before the show started because she complimented my niece on her outfit, and so at intermission I wondered how she liked the show.

“Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said, “but maybe a little bit too long for me.”

The show, of course, was The Lion King, the production that aspires to be Las Vegas’ Next Big Thing when it arrives this spring at the Mandalay Bay. Along with the Cirque du Soleil Elvis-scored show coming to CityCenter, The Lion King is one of only two major entertainment premieres now on the 2009 calendar for the Strip. (Okay, there’s three if you’re willing to count that Scary Spice stripper show coming to the Planet Hollywood, but I’m not.)

Whenever a Broadway show is heading to Vegas, I like to get out and see it in its native habitat, New York. That way, I have a baseline to compare the quality of the performances and changes in the staging of the Vegas edition when it arrives.

And, of course, I get to begin to judge whether it’s going to succeed or fail in Las Vegas.

Read the rest HERE

It's official: The Lion King Coming To Vegas

Mike Weatherford had this scoop last week, but MGM Mirage announced for real today in this press release that Disney's Lion King is setting down paws at Mandalay Bay in May 2009 instead of replacing Mamma Mia! with yet another Cirque show.

You're going to read a lot of yammering about how this is part of a swerve back towards family-friendly Vegas which allegedly flamed out in the mid-1990s. And yet there's been more than enough geared to families -- four of the existing Cirque shows, all those magic shows, almost all those Broadway shows, all those roller coasters, all those animal attractions -- for some time. It's simplistic media shorthand to view Vegas offerings as one thing or another; there's no way for this city to be successful by catering to one sort of customer.

I suspect this will be a pretty smart fit for all the reasons that Phantom works: Everyone knows and loves the music and story. And Lion King has one more thing going for it; while there have been tours of the show, for sure, it doesn't feel done to death. There's no place other than New York in North America to see it, either.

The release says: "Mandalay Bay's production of THE LION KING will be virtually identical to the other companies seen around the globe and will be staged with all of the same spectacular music, sets, and costumes that have made it a worldwide phenomenon."

It's not clear whether there's any wiggle room in that statement to cut the show down from its nearly 3-hour original running time, intermission included.

Is There A 9/11 Room Rate Discount?

Here's this week's LVW column...

The price is … strange

Room rates take a curious plunge right around the anniversary of 9-11

By STEVE FRIESS

I am not one of those 9-11 conspiracy nuts. I have an eccentric British pal who does believe that George W. Bush, despite his incompetence at ordering in lunch, was behind the most horrific events of our time. This friend is constantly forwarding e-mails asserting that the Baltimore family behind Vegas casino implosions actually imploded the World Trade Center and made it look to the stupid people of the world as if some “hijacked” airplanes caused their fall.

I reject all this, so I’m sane, right?

Well, maybe. But I won’t hold it against you if you wonder about me after I tell you this:

I am a 9-11 Vegas-hotel-discount conspiracy nut.

Stay with me for a moment. Something weird is going on around here.

About a week ago, for reasons I can’t even recall, I took a look at room rates in September at the MGM Grand. I was surprised to notice that in the week of September 7, the resort’s rates fell to their lowest level of the entire month—$100 a night—on that Thursday. That Thursday is the seventh anniversary of the terror attacks. Every other Thursday that month, the rates were the highest of the Monday to Thursday rates. During that particular, auspicious week, the rates fall dramatically.

Odd, thought I. Could it really be that, lo these many years later, there’s still some residual impact on occupancy because people prefer not to travel or recreate on that date?

My brain said no, but my heart said yes, so the next thing I knew, I was obsessively scanning hotels.com to see if other resorts on the Strip saw similar dips on 9/11/08. Here is the list of resorts that see unusual room-rate drops on that Thursday: Luxor, Bally’s, Harrah’s, Bellagio, New York-New York, Treasure Island, Paris, The Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas Hilton, Golden Nugget, the Rio, Hard Rock, Wynn and Trump. There may be more.

The Mandalay Bay and Hard Rock were particularly startling. At Mandalay Bay, the room rate is $210 Sunday through Wednesday, then $120 on Thursday, a $90 drop. At the Hard Rock, the rates are $299 Monday through Wednesday and $109 on Thursday. That’s a $190 decrease! The Wynn is also kind of odd: The rate all that week and the week after is $499 per night except on September 11, when it’s $399.

Read the rest HERE

This week's LVW col...

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column...

Fee for all

Should cover charges in Vegas be equitable for both sexes

By STEVE FRIESS

Before you roll your eyes and groan, hear Adam Russin out. He’s not trying to get any money, he’s not trying to draw any attention to himself, and he’s absolutely, positively not trying to ruin your good time.

He just has a simple question that seems to have only one logical answer. And very soon, odds are good the state will agree with him, and a lot of melon carts will be upset.

Russin’s question: How can anyone seriously believe it is not discriminatory to charge a man more than a woman for the same access or service?

This spring, the 25-year-old New Yorker was staying at the Mandalay Bay for a bachelor party and wanted to go with his chums to the Moorea Beach Club, the resort’s topless pool. He was startled to find out that the pool charges men $50 for admission and $10 to women, so he filed a complaint with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission (NERC) demanding the practice stop.

Oh, boo hoo, you say. Everybody knows that these pools and clubs charge men more and that bouncers admit fewer of them in order to maintain a balance that makes the place a favorable flirting circumstance for members of both sexes. If they don’t have established prices like Moorea, then they run promotional ladies’ nights where women get in free or at reduced prices. It’s a marketing tactic as old as rum and Coke. But it might also be against the law. And a cursory reading of the text would seem to support that view. In 2005, the Nevada Legislature amended its nondiscrimination clause for public accommodations to include “sex” along with the race, religion, sexual orientation and all the rest. Weird that it wasn’t already in there, but that’s beside the point.

By public accommodations, NRS 651.050 is so expansive that Moorea could be included under subset (j) as “any park, zoo, amusement park or other place of recreation,” subset (b) as “any restaurant, bar, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, casino or any other facility where food or spirituous or malt liquors are sold, including any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment,” subset (m) as “any gymnasium, health spa, bowling alley, golf course or other place of exercise or recreation” or even, depending on the quality of the racks on display, subset (i) as “any museum, library, gallery or other place of public display or collection.”

Any way you slice it, Moorea is one, right? And if so, no matter how badly you want more exposed knockers at the pool, the law doesn’t allow you to engineer it through your prices, does it?

Read the rest HERE

Shark Reef prices going, uh, up???

Just last week, I columnized about revisiting the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay and puzzled over the fact that the price had risen since my earlier encounters there even though they'd lost their most significant attraction.

Well, guess luck, suckers? The price is going up AGAIN. Starting June 21, it'll cost $17 plus tax for non-Nevadan visitors, $14 for locals. This occurs the day after they unveil the newest attraction, the Komodo Dragon.

I know these are tough economic times for everyone, but/so I wonder if I'm alone in thinking that this just isn't worth it. Anyone else have thoughts on the Shark Reef?

Just In Time For Our First Anniversary...

Miles and I will be celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary this month with a vacation to Switzerland. (Yay, us!) But before that, I revisited our wedding for a special Vegas issue of The Advocate, the GLBT newsmag.

You can read that essay here. The issue covers all things Vegas, with an exuberant Bette Midler on the cover.

Also, I'll be appearing at The Advocate's issue party on Monday, March 10, at 10:30 p.m. at Ivan Kane's 40 Deuce bar at Mandalay Bay. On Monday nights, they have male burlesque dancers; the rest of the week it's ladies.

It's free and open to the public.

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?

Is MIX lesbolicious and I missed it?

It didn't take long to find something to blog about once I touched back down in Vegas. Waiting for our bags to arrive, I spotted this ad below for MIX atop THEHotel at Mandalay Bay.


It's really a fascinating approach. First of all, the use of the word "liberal" is politically provocative and goes in a direction that Vegas entities rarely go. Vegas, as we all know, is where lots of conservative and/or buttoned-up people come and do things they wouldn't do and/or would disapprove of back home. Also, stuff that would probably turn them off of a political candidate if they knew they'd done it. (Think about how viable a city council candidate in Dubuque would be if it turned out he was visiting strip clubs in Vegas, for instance.) The point is, Vegas is a place that gives conservative fly-over-nation hypocrites the chance to be hypocrites. Being here is a suspension of the insincere morals that inform their politics. So I wonder if many would actually want it literally spelled out for them that their behavior is LIBERAL.

But beyond that word -- for which there are many synonyms that could have just as easily gotten the idea across to the advertising audience -- is the whole motif of this ad. There are two hot babes bosom-to-bosom on the right. If you can't see it, take my word for it -- their tits are pressed up against one another. And then there are the three men on the left, strategically racially diverse, looking over with varying degrees of interest.

Wow. That's quite an ad, no? Almost enough to make you wonder if it's a dyke bar to which men are invited to gawk.

And just a P.S. that has nothing to do with this: When exactly did McCarran give up altogether checking to see whose baggage was whose? The metal rails and the entire pretense, never all that serious to begin with, was gone. It used to be one of the few airports I flew to that actually seemed concerned about making sure people didn't steal luggage. I wonder why any thief would bother robbing houses or people when they can just walk off with mystery packages at the airport whenever they want.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Wow!

I have two stories out today on this weekend's Rock, Paper Scissors national championships here in Vegas this weekend -- one for the Boston Globe and one for the Chicago Tribune -- and I'm leaving the house now to go cover the event for Monday's The New York Times.

Yes, Rock, Paper, Scissors is getting its close-up. There's $50,000 and a free car at stake at the thing at Mandalay Bay. Will probably use some audio on next week's "The Strip," too. These people take this stuff very, very seriously. Well, some do. Others are just here to enjoy their free Vegas weekend.

Gotta run. After that, I'll stop in at the Gay Pride festival at the Clark County Government Center today. Miles hates that stuff, won't go with. Will report back later with impressions.

Vegas, Disabilities and the Hard of Hearing (Like Me!)

The Department of Justice today released information on a settlement with two casinos, the Mandalay Bay in Vegas and the Circus Circus in Mississippi, both now owned by MGM Mirage.

The settlements are exhaustive and the Vegas end of it involves Mandalay paying a $30,000 fine (whoop-de-doo) and enacting a long list of physical alterations to accommodate people in wheelchairs that undoubtedly will be a road map for compliance used by every other property in the city. Accessible rooms must have 32-inch-wide doorways, public bathrooms have to be however wide, they must provide accessible rooms for most every level of room style, etc. The Alain Ducasse eatery Mix was singled out as needing to provide a way for people in wheelchairs to get to upstairs dining areas. You can read it for yourself at this link until May 5.

So here's my complaint: What about those of us with disabilities not related to being unable to walk? In all of this, the only thing that touches on, say, people with hearing loss, is a requirement that they provide visual fire alarms in rooms.

I go to a lot of shows. I estimate fewer than a quarter of theaters on the Strip offer hearing assistive devices for their patrons. Every single cinema and Broadway theater does, but in Vegas, almost nobody bothers when they're spending tens of millions building them to include this convenience for their deaf and hard of hearing audience members. The theater that Rita Rudner was in -- and now Roseanne Barr is chilling in for a time -- at New York-New York was the first I ever saw that actually had signage for it, and I think the Cirque shows may have it which is ironic because you don't have to understand anybody's talking when you see one of them.

What's more, some that do have amplification devices don't advertise it. You have to ask. And then the ushers and box office personnel typically are baffled and don't know whether it's available or not. Nobody's training them. And I'm a young, assertive New Yorker/journalist; most of those looking for such things are elderly and not terribly comfortable even asking in the first place.

I particularly loved this response from an usher at the Gordie Brown show at the Venetian: "No, we don't have that, but it's really loud." It would be funny if I didn't hear this answer almost every time the answer turns out to be "no."

Don't tell me what's loud and what isn't. If I could hear like you, I wouldn't be asking, y'know?