I was having dinner with a friend tonight, and for various reasons the conversation turned to Las Vegas. We were discussing things like: could you make a go of it with a completely retro-Rat Pack themed casino? Vintage slot machines (or modern electronic reproductions of vintage slot machines), a 50s-style menu (lobster thermidor and baked Alaska?), Rat Pack impersonators giving nightly performances (that already happens to varying degrees at a lot of Vegas casinos these days)?
(I don’t know, but if I had a lot of money to burn, I’d buy the Sahara property and rights to the name and give it a shot.)
Anyway, the question came up: is there a list of Vegas casinos? The answer is obvious: this is the Internet, of course there’s a list of Vegas casinos. That’s no great shock.
More interesting is the list of defunct Vegas casinos. That has a few surprises. (I thought the Hooters Casino was defunct; actually, they filed for Chapter 11 and are up for sale. The Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel also didn’t go defunct: it was sold multiple times (more on this later), spent much of the early 21st century as a dedicated hotel for United and Delta air crews, and is now owned by the Clarion people.)
But my own personal favorite is the list of Las Vegas casinos that never opened. There’s some fun ones here, such as:
- The World Wrestling Federation/World Wrestling Entertainment had two casino plans, one of which was for the Debbie Reynolds property, and neither of which ever went through.
- There was a plan for a Titanic themed casino across from the Sahara, but the Vegas city council rejected it. (As my friend said, “How bad does a plan have to be for the Vegas City Council to reject it?”)
- One of the founders of U-Haul bought a hotel, renamed it the World Trade Center Hotel, and applied for a casino license. The application was rejected when two of his partners in the project were found to have criminal records; the gentleman in question died the following year in a car crash that was ruled a suicide. (All of this was pre-September 11th, by the way.)
- The Moon Resort and Casino, a proposed 10,000 room, 250 acre resort with a lunar theme. Proposed, but nobody seems to believe it will ever be built because there’s just not that much space available on the Strip.
Those are just a few of the high points. Just think, if things were slightly different, you could be booking a room in the Harley Davidson Hotel and Casino. Or the Montreux Resort (keep an eye out for stupids with flare guns).