You can take the man from Disney, but you can’t take Disney from the man. Brickey, you spoil us! This is incredible reporting. Thanks for bringing us along!
There’s a huge decommissioned animatronic dragon under the Excalibur bridge that my inner delinquent always wants to explore. The “troll house” is where Merlin would come out to battle it.
That backwards escalator ride...Chef's kiss! You also have SO many of those parks (MGM did a bunch of it) with adding a ton of amusement park attractions (but a LOT nicer that Circus Circus)! We used to LOVE going to the Treasure Island show...They'd sink the ship with the captain still on it!
Fun fact: Former Imagineer Bob Gurr designed the Treasure Island pirate battle show. I actually got to see it when I was a kid in its hay day. I remember it was so hot in Vegas a lady passed out from heat stroke (or drinking too much) and had to be carried out thru the big crowd. Vegas for sure tried to be a family friendly "Disney" like destination, but the magic was lost when guys on the strip handed me (a 12 year old) flyers for strip clubs and call girls lol.
On the road with Brickey! The extrapolation of Disney design is a fascinating topic B and I’m a big fan of this video and hope you have some others in mind.
Another creative and well done video. So impressed by your thought process and how you find the not obvious Disney influenced or themed places. I hope to someday cross paths and have a long discussion. I would learn a lot. Thanks. Awesome.
Fantastic insight as usual! I recently visited Vegas for a convention last September and totally saw how the thematic experiences in the hotels mirrored the Disneyland magic. I'm not big on drinking or gambling, but viewing Vegas through the lens of theme park entertainment truly changed my perspective. It’s fascinating to see how architects and artists in the '90s took inspiration from Disneyland to create these immersive environments. Thanks for shedding light on this connection!
That was a fantastic adventure! Never thought about the story telling of Vegas casinos, but I do now. Brilliantly executed. Thanks for sharing this with all of us!
I remember when all if these hotels were built. I’ve even stayed in a few. They really did transport you with their theming. Thanks for your analysis of them. Fascinating.
Great video Brickey! I lived in Las Vegas in the the early 90’s. I worked at the Excalibur. I worked at a sister Casino in Laughlin and transferred when it opened. The company CEO came from Disney. We had a lot of the same rules about facial hair, nail color and length, what jewelry we could wear. Working at the Excalibur in those early days was fun. It was something new. The Luxor had a Nile River boat ride for a few years. I rode it and it was fun and different. I bet someone has a video of it on RU-vid.
In addition to Discussing any-style theming, all these hotels usually had rides, theme-park-style shows, & roller coasters too! The new, at that time, MGM Grand had an entire theme park built next to it. There was a water park too on the strip. But, as it turned out, people didn’t want to spend their family vacations in “Sin City.” That’s where you go without the kids!
I love this. I was around in the 90s when these hotels were popping up everywhere and I thought this was the new way of designing Las Vegas that they were going to stick with , but I’m glad that they didn’t because it would look crazy if every single new hotel had a original theme in the same way.
Actually this was a business trip and I got up at 4AM and was filming by 5AM to have this video shoot completed before going to a convention for work work 😂
I love that you came to Vegas! I've lived here for 25 years and I'm from Southern California, so watching you go from Anaheim to Vegas was a great choice for me. Keep it up! Thank you so much for everything you do!
I love this video. From SoCal but have been in Vegas for 12 years. When I first came to Vegas in 1997 we stayed at Luxor and it was so jaw dropping back then. My reaction was that Vegas was an adult theme park. It really was back then. Love how you put this together and tied it back to Disney inspo.
The MGM grand is a sad shell of what it used to be. It was themed to wizard of Oz (thats why its emerald colored) and had animatronics, yellow brick road, there was a wizard of Oz themed dining area etc. It also had an entire amusement park.
Another hotel from the end of that era was the Aladdin. It had a fantastic Muddle Eastern theming inside, including its bazaar shopping mall. Unfortunately it came just before 9/11 when tourists decided they didn’t want to visit a Middle-Eastern themed casino/hotel. So it didn’t last long. While the Caesar’s Palace casino & hotel pre-dated the 90s, it got remodeled and a shopping mall was added at some point that has a lot of theming too.
Interesting how Las Vegas changed so much from the 60s Leaning from Las Vegas phase…So Las Vegas was inspired by Robert Venturi who was inspired by Las Vegas 🤔For instance Excalibur looks like a ‘Decorated shed’
Please check your facts: The Mirage Hotel, opened in 1989, is well-known to be the first “Vegas Strip Spectacular Hotel” with its erupting volcano! Then Excalibur, then Treasure Island with the pirate ships in 1993.
Nice on-location video, but though there might be minor quibbles as to what is the world’s first theme park, Disneyland isn’t part of the discussion. But Walt took it to a stellar level.
4:00 There was also a huge animatronic Dragon show that would battle with the wizard in the little troll house thingy with fire! Similar to the fantasmic dragon
“The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland.” - Ace Rothstein (Robert DeNiro) from the movie Casino.
Hey Brickey! Love seeing you here in Vegas! This is a great video! You left out what is technically the LAST of this style of resort, but it opened in 2000 and sadly most of its theming has been removed. The Aladdin... aka Planet Hollywood. You can see today that the facades on the sidewalk were built in this same style, and the sidewalk is raised up from the street level similar to NYNY. The Arabian theming was incredibly ornate at the time, but it landed a little too late for the family-friendly craze. It lasted about 6 years before they started rebranding to Planet Hollywood. Although most of the theming has been removed, there are still a few spots in the Miracle Mile Shops there that still have some of the 2000 era facades. (Near the rain storm show which has been preserved) I'm not sure how long you've been visiting Vegas, or if you ever visited the Aladdin back then? I would be happy to meet up and give you a tour of this and other things that no longer exist in Vegas. Lol It's a favorite topic of mine!
OK you just solved a major mystery to me. I never understood the look of Planet Hollywood. It’s so incredibly generic that when I saw it opened in 2000, and I only know this version, it even more cemented the notion the end of an era. I will now be looking this up to see what it was supposed to look like. Thanks for the history lesson ❤️
@HeyBrickey Yes! It was the end of an era in several ways. They had financial trouble the entire time, and they started making changes during the construction. It quite literally marks the end of the old style of Vegas showrooms. (I'm a theater nerd, and my channel focuses on Vegas Entertainment) They originally intended to build an old-fashioned showroom with tables and chairs... they built the shell of this room, poured the cement and everything... then opened the hotel before finishing it. It sat empty for a while before they decided to change direction, and they installed regular theater seats instead. Today it is the Criss Angel theater. It's an oddly intimate space that was intended to feel like old Vegas, but constructed in the modern era and was never used for its original intended purpose. There is LOTS of fascinating history about that building alone!
The Moat at Excaliber was actually a automated show duel between a dragon that would breath fire and a wizard would would come out of the little hut there. The dragon is still right there under the bridge to this day because of course it is. Just like the ships are still there for Trreasure Island or at least one of them.
When the Flamingo casino opened on December 26, 1946 it was compared to what Walt Disney might build nine years before Disneyland opened. “…the most fabulous gambling casino and hotel ever constructed…honestly, I don’t believe there are sufficient adjectives to describe this magnificent spa…it’s like a fairyland, a place that might have been dreamed up by Walt Disney...” Jimmy Starr in his “Daily Diary” “the most fantastic gambling casino” Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express January 6, 1947
Interesting that you indicate the Venetian as the one that didn’t stick the landing on theming, when it’s the one that has survived as the most luxurious and seemingly successful of these (especially more so than Excalibur, Luxor, and TI)
Paris may mark the end of the Disney-fied Vegas resorts. But it continued with the remodel of Monte Carlo into Park MGM. The nail in the coffin is the current end of the Mirage. This is significant because I think it is the Mirage which started the Disney-fying of the strip and not the Excalibur.
I was in Vegas from NYC in April for a convention. I went into NY, NY to "get a slice". You know, that which costs $1.50-3.00 in NYC. Not for $9.50 I'm not. See ya...
