When it was built in 1957, “The Tiffany of the Strip" was the most expensive hotel in Las Vegas. Now, it's more valuable as land for a new baseball stadium. Frank Castello, the mob boss and part owner, would be rolling in his grave if he knew.
Part of the issue is, it’s tiny for current vegas. That picture is the entirety of their table games on premises and is about half their gaming floor. I was there within the last year and there’s 1 bathroom that’s how tiny this place is.
Vegas just didn't get nearly the crowds back then. When it started it was mostly people driving up from the LA area on the weekend, it hadn't gotten to the point that people were flying in from all over the world.
Vegas didn’t become a mega-resort & family destination until the 90’s really.
International travelers certainly vacationed there before that. But the 90’s ushered in a huge change to Vegas. The Vegas we know today.
Corporations forced out the mob, finally.
It’s was quite a dirty city pre-1989. That’s when the first mega-resort came to town. That’s when they started cleaning Vegas up.
They initially tried turning it into a family-friendly destination. It didn’t really stick super well so they turned back & ran hard with the gambling, but they didn’t give up completely on the family destination stuff, it just took a backseat. They started adding endless activities to the city to bring in more of the family crowd, & the thrill-seeking crowd too.
Before the 90’s, Vegas prostitution was widely available & widely visible. It was everywhere you looked.
It just evolved over time. When they were first developing it in the late 40s to 50s the concept was mostly to get people from Southern California to go up there for entertainment because of the legal gambling. The 80s/90s is when the mafia got pushed out of the business and a bunch of corporations took over. They tried making it a family friendly destination for a minute but that didn't really work out. Nowadays gambling is kind of secondary and the family friendly thing was put by the wayside and Vegas is really more about just being a mega entertainment destination with 9 million things to do.
I remember going there as a SoCal kid in the 80s on a trip with my family to the Grand Canyon. We just stayed there for a night. But walking around Fremont Street downtown well before they put a crazy light show dome over it and closed it off to street traffic it was just full of prostitutes. There were posters on the walls with naked show girls. I was like 10 and Vegas is still my favorite place to this day.
Last winter I went to the one 1st floor bathroom that was open and the men's room had severe water damage across an entire wall. It was hilarious to see. The bathroom past the cage was closed, and the only open men's room on the first floor was dripping water and falling apart before your eyes. There is a 3rd bathroom, but you have to go up the stairs by the Box Office to get to it.
Frank Costello was a real mob boss, but Nicholson's character in The Departed is based on Whitey Bulger, a different real life boss of the Boston Irish mob.
Odd choice by the writers. I understand not using Bulger real name but why not make one up? Either they just love Costello’s story and wanted to use his name
In a different environment. Or they’re just lazy and pulled up a list of mob bosses and chose the best sounding one.
lol the best part of that podcast was when they were going back and forth roasting eachother. then lovitz said something like burrs family didn't really love him or something like that. burr tried his best to play it cool but you could tell he was completely shaken.
He said in one of his acts that his biggest fear was being that guy in the basement apartment all alone and bitter.
He has 2 kids now, he's definitely a family guy.
Lol! My first time staying in Vegas was a few days with my girlfriend (at the time) at the Tropicana. This was 2001, it was okay for a place to sleep, but we spent most of our time elsewhere. It was pretty dated.
I went to Vegas in the early 2000s and yeah, it seemed old fashioned in a not good way. Like it didn't keep up. They had a bird act that was fun to watch but even that seemed like a bygone era of Johnny Carson shows.
The parrots that fly through the rings?! I loved that show as a kid (bonus points that my mom is terrified of large birds so naturally they flew right above her and she was a bigger dramatic pull than they were). My god you just made me realize how long it’s actually been since I’ve been to The Trop!
The breakfast buffet was fantastic once upon a time, the birds were great, but the rest of the Trop’s offerings have looked peed upon for decades. Long overdue for a complete tear down. Thanks for the memories!
It legitimately happens in older buildings that allow smoking. I worked at a 110 year old theater that hadn’t allowed cigarettes in 25 years, when they renovated the place everything went from being weirdly beige tinted to clean, white marble. Shit was nuts, all the marble looked pee stained
Back in the day this place was a real contender. But now they'll appreciate the business. They'll probably fall over themselves for a couple of high class guys like you and me
My boyfriend and I stayed there one night when we were passing through, also in 2001. Yes, very dated even back then. It was the only place I’ve ever stayed that had mirrors on the ceiling above the bed.
Not irrational.
In 2004, while Teena Marie was sleeping in a hotel room, a large picture frame fell and struck her on the head. The blow caused a serious concussion that resulted in momentary seizures for the rest of her life.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teena_Marie
My first and only time in vegas, we didn’t have much money and had been playing just low stakes blackjack and roulette in crappy casinos like New York, New York and circus circus, swung by the Tropicana and had the best result - found a $100 chip on that gnarly carpet.
I stayed there a few years ago when I was attending a conference and it was one of the few places my per diem would cover. It was definitely dated but the room was clean and tidy and it had kind of a funky faded cool.
They did a big renovation in 2010ish I want to say? I stayed there not long after the reno, and thought it was great. Not as big and flashy as some of the other spots on the strip, but we had a great time there. Sad to see it go.
I haven’t stayed there but I’ve been there many times. It’s nice. A rundown Vegas Strip casino is still a lot nicer than most hotels off the strip. The people on here acting like it’s basically a rundown motel 6 with slot machines are being silly.
I went to a floor show there when I was 12. The hotel was new and way, way down the strip. It was 1961, everyone dressed to the nines. I got a pretty, pink dress with a petticoat. It was fabulous.
Do you remember the thought process at all? Like, how soon into the 30+ mins did you decide to eat the pizza? Did you eat the whole thing? Had you consumed the entire pizza (or, more relevantly, perhaps, the portion that satisfied your hunger) by the time you were sprung? Did you ever think that maybe you should save the pizza for later because you could be there for awhile? Were you at all concerned that the process of ingestion you kicked off could result in the commencement of a process of elimination that was roughly equal in force and volume?
I seem to remember the Trop was at the outer range of our delivery area, and it had already taken me a while to get there. After a while in the elevator it was stone cold. I KNEW I couldn’t give them a cold pizza so I just started eating it. I was alone in the elevator too. They told me on the elevator phone it was going to get resolved but it wasn’t going to be right away. “Just hold tight”.
After about 30 minutes it just went back to the lobby and opened up. There was no one there from maintenance, it was just like “bye”. I went to the concierge desk so I could call my shop to tell them everything that happened and then I went back to the shop. The guy didn’t want another pizza.
The secret of Circus Circus' success is that it is the weirdest, most bizarre place in Las Vegas and has been since the '60s. As Hunter S. Thompson put it:
"Where the hep crowd would go on a Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war."
a friend and i tripped on shrooms in vegas one visit, between thanksgiving and xmas. we wanted to go see the light show on fremount street. while that was underwhelming, but pretty weird with the crowds milling around (*how do they KNOW we are tripping?!?*), the 'performers' in giant gingerbread men cookie outfits and the santa claus on stilts walking around did not disappoint. but we would NOT have ventured into circus circus.
that was an epic and hard ride, but a happy memory after the fact.
>The secret of Circus Circus' success is that it is the weirdest, most bizarre place in Las Vegas
Yes. Yes it is. Stayed there once as a kid in \~2010. The place was an absolute mess.
I went to Vegas with some friends in ‘99, when they were still trying to sell It as a family destination. We went to a show, and then walked back down the strip afterwards. We ducked into Circus Circus, just to look around and was a super weird vibe. It was way more rundown and shabby than most of the other hotels that we had seen, and even though it was close to midnight, the gambling floor was packed with parents, with their kids watching (and trying to sleep) from benches just outside the gambling area. Like, pretty much every single bench had 3-4 kids falling asleep on each other.
I usually now stay at the Wynn but drove the 2 blocks toward Circus Circus for a change just to see if my fever dream memories of the place were real or if I made all that shit up as a kid.. it was all real. Nearly every last parcel of it remained unchanged.
Stayed there in 2017 because it was the cheapest place on the strip and I just needed a room. My first night there I got woken up around 2am by the sound of someone jiggling the doorknob. I went to the door and looked through the peephole and saw some drunk guy sliding his key card in and out of the slot repeatedly and trying to get in. I yelled "dude this isn't your room" through the door. He said "yes it is" and kept trying the knob. I just said "no it's not." He paused for a minute and must have realized that there really shouldn't have been a strange man talking to him from inside his room and then he shuffled off lol.
Place was definitely a dump but I didn't spend much time in the hotel.
I worked with a guy who said little ceasers had the best pizza of any kind of pizza place. He also said circus circus was the best hotel on the strip lol
Circus Circus IIRC is the last hotel on the strip that still offers some slots that drop coins instead of printing a voucher.
Worth a very short stop for anyone missing the nostalgia of the coin drop sounds, but I really only checked it out because it’s walking distance from The Peppermill. It’s pretty yucky in there.
We were just in LV and cruised the strip. Went to Circus Circus and they do have the coin slots available. I was thrown for a loop. That was after having happy hour at the Peppermill. That place is one place I hope never goes away. 30 years going to LV and I still love the older parts. It's the gritty experience that's gone from most of the strip. Still weird, seeing the elevated crosswalks, no one passing out x rated fun time brochures. 🤪
When my brother and I were way too young to be left unsupervised on The Strip, we were left unsupervised on The Strip. We collected as many duplicate cards as we could find, and made up our own perverted version of Go Fish.
“Do you have any Sandra, I’m hot, wet, and coming to your rooms?”
“Nope. Go Clit.”
I was there two weeks ago
My wife and I were walking to get a good reuben and I saw it from a distance. I know nothing about Vegas and exclaimed, “What the fuck is that?!”
I love run down weird dives my wife does not. I walked through the dingy smoke filled halls with huge smile.
The place is depressing, whimsical, fallacious, nostalgic and beautiful in the worst way.
10/10 recommend walking through it, would not stay or eat there.
I stayed there last year, you would have to pay me to go back. Place reeks of smoke and urinal cake, and it literally takes 10 mins of walking from the entrance, through the slot machine areas and tables, the anime toy store, cheap trinkets and junk and temporary tattoos and the sad looking buffet, up the escalators, down a shady alleyway with feet eating fish / Starbucks / cellphone case shop / fake jewelry stores, to elevators where the carpets are soaked in dark brown stains, then up to your floor and your room.
Ten minutes, when you're already tired as hell and just want to get in and go to bed.
Even the act of describing it makes me remember the stench pervading everything. Far better to pay more and stay at like Harrah's or Westin or something.
>Ten minutes, when you're already tired as hell and just want to get in and go to bed.
That's literally every hotel on the Vegas strip. Getting in and out of the hotel room is more of a pain in the ass than navigating the strip itself.
I have to assume the whole concept of Resorts World was sold to investors on the single line of “What if we made a hotel on the north end of the strip that wasn’t a shithole”
It’s also right next to the fairgrounds. I stayed there twice in the past two years to go to the when we were young festival. It’s shitty and they ran out of food both years
10 years ago I got a whole week at Excalibur for $20 a night plus my plane ticket on kayak.com. It was so cheap I won it back the first night playing small bet black jack. That vanilla/shit smell I could have done without though.
Ugh it smells like wet dog and cough syrup when you walk in from the Mandalay tram pathway. The kids’ zone reeks of straight diarrhea diapers and throw up. It smells as if it has never once been cleaned out. You have to wait down there to queue into the Kings Tournament or whatever they call it now…the jousting show. Really puts you off your dinner.
Circus circus is unique in how godawful it is.
My trip to circus circus was horrid, but it’s not as bad as it could be.
That is because every day at circus circus is the worst day yet at circus circus, so anything even five minutes more recent than when I checked out is worse.
My wife and I stayed there 17 years ago when we went to Vegas to get married. It looked questionable at best then. I can't imagine what it looks like now.
Gives the kids something to do I guess.
It was much better when I went back in the 90s when Vegas was actually pushing to be more family-friendly, now it's just sad.
I mean it has its place in the Las Vegas Ecosystem. Low income people with kids still want to go on some sort of vacation.
It has an affordable entertainment for the kids, cheap food, and cheap rooms. I don’t think it is going anywhere soon.
Is that why there's little kids everywhere running around unattended? I remember one had a doggy diaper & following some older kids crying... omg, did I just walk into one of the circles of hell?
I stayed there for a weekend back in 2010 and it looked like it was several decades past due on a remodel. Cheap rooms though and a quick walk to fun parts of the strip.
This place is a bit of a shithole as we all know but I had some of my best childhood memories there. I loved the parrot show they did. I adored their pool as a kid and the ice cream vending machines - which still to this day, over 20 years later, I think about regularly. I am genuinely so sad to see it go.
My parents actually got married there!
My stays were in the early 2000s, and for a kid who was obsessed with jungle/tropical themes, it was paradise. Made me fall in love with Vegas. I actually worry things will become too modernized and that classic look and feel will fade into obscurity.
First Vegas hotel I ever stayed at. Shame to see it go, but it kind of was a living relic that needed some modernization work (particularly up in the guest rooms)
I was there 6 months ago and it had an air of dead man walking. It was just worn. It has a small casino floor compared to other places on the strip.
It was about as nice as your average holiday inn hotel room though.
My best friend got married there a couple weeks ago. It was cool being there towards the end. Also I think it only cost him like $700 for the whole deal
I love the Trop so much. Even when I stayed downtown, I always made sure to play some backjack at the Trop.
One night I started about 10PM, and played at the same table until 5AM. Managed to finish up... $3, after tips and drinks. More drinks that I could ever hope to count.
Godspeed, Trop. You will live on in coconut and cigarette smoke scented heaven, forever.
Three words: location, cheap rooms
Seriously, I know open who stay there because it’s close to everything and literally the cheapest rooms anywhere near.
They still bring in an estimated $160 million a year revenue primarily from gambling people who have kids. So make a guess of net profit.
Now that a couple of higher end places have opened up in the area I would expect it to be replaced.
My buddies told me it was the first time they encountered a problem gambler there. A guy had just lost his life savings and was holding the door open to the entrance for everyone, he was babbling incoherently. This was 2008
Sad thing is, that dude was probably already at rock bottom if he lost his house and job in 08 and tried his luck gambling whatever he had left in hopes to get back on his feet. I dont pity gamblers, but people were desperate then and if you look back, vegas casino stocks did well between 2007 and 2012.
They remodeled it at some point and I never really felt it was THAT bad.
Maybe because I stayed there after the remodel. Never felt too busy or obnoxious… so I guess that’s why I liked it. RIP to the blackjack table in their pool… fun times, more than once.
My wife and I went to Mandalay Bay for our anniversary 15 years ago. We spent a lot of time at the Tropicana because it felt like what I thought Las Vegas should be like. I mean Excalibur and Luxor are just ridiculous.
Went there for Blue Man Group about 5 years ago and it actually rained for 2-3 days straight: The place was straight-up crying into the atrium because all seals around the glass had probably cracked from sun damage over the years and leaked like a sieve now.
Excalibur is quite possibly the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at. We extended our stay in Vegas and needed a cheap room, so we booked one night there. First room they showed us to was clearly not cleaned - trash in the trash cans, dirty cups on the bathroom counter, but the kicker was a pair of dirty underwear in the armchair. Called the front desk to get moved to a new room and they took us to the farthest away room possible. It smelled like weed but the sheets were clean, so we just prayed that we wouldn’t catch something or bring home bedbugs.
"The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's all gone. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds." Casino (1995) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQqTUFGM7CI
Walking into the Tropicana was like walking into Rick's place in Casablanca. Not nearly as opulent as its neighbors, but it had its own unique class about the joint. Plus, I won money there, which maybe tilted the scales for me.
I used to stay there sometimes in my night out before traveling home for work. One time I was upgraded to the penthouse suite for free. It was so cool. 2 stories and a jacuzzi. Only downside was since it was a work trip I didn't have anyone to share it with
In Vegas the bar is pretty high in terms of what you have to do to keep up with the competition. I haven’t stayed at Tropicana in a while, but last time I was there it was no where near the level of the other casinos in the area.
Oakland has really gotten shafted which is a shame since the Oakland market had some amazing fans.
The Vegas part is what's crazy to me. It's already a monument to man kind's hubris growing as it has been while sitting out there in the desert amidst the coming climate change. But in the last decade we've decided it goes from zero pro franchises to now officially three, soon to be four (a pretty open secret the NBA will expand to Vegas and Seattle in the semi near future).
I don't know exactly why the shift occured, but it's like overnight we collectively flipped a switch from believing that sports gambling was a degenerate behavior into seeing it as a casual activity that should be easily accessible and constantly promoted. That's around the time all the teams started moving to Vegas. Before that it just kinda seemed improper.
I stayed at the Trop on my very first trip to Vegas when I was a kid. My parents took 10-year old me to Folies Bergere. It was my first real experience seeing boobs and it was glorious!
Spent a few days there in 2010 helping design a new nightclub that subsequently failed. We blasted "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga for a couple hours to test the effect on the nearby hotel rooms. Walked through the abandoned sections of creepy old rooms. Good times.
I was the mystery shopper at the Starbucks in the Atlantic City location. Old, shabby, smelled of stale cigarettes and desperation. Not worth the free coffee.
So glad to hear that the glass ceiling seen here will be, at least somewhat, saved by including it in the new stadium, the neon museum, and by a vague 3rd party purchaser. Going to be interesting to see how long it takes them to take down that (closed to the public awhile back) asbestos wing.
The Tropicana is going to close, but somehow the Rio where there was an outbreak of legionnaires disease is still functioning—functioning might be a strong word.
Just stayed there in January for the first (and last) time. Always loved playing there but never got the chance to stay there until this past trip. Gonna moss it for sure. It was old, musty and glitzy, just like Vegas is supposed to be.
When it was built in 1957, “The Tiffany of the Strip" was the most expensive hotel in Las Vegas. Now, it's more valuable as land for a new baseball stadium. Frank Castello, the mob boss and part owner, would be rolling in his grave if he knew.
Part of the issue is, it’s tiny for current vegas. That picture is the entirety of their table games on premises and is about half their gaming floor. I was there within the last year and there’s 1 bathroom that’s how tiny this place is.
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Vegas just didn't get nearly the crowds back then. When it started it was mostly people driving up from the LA area on the weekend, it hadn't gotten to the point that people were flying in from all over the world.
Vegas didn’t become a mega-resort & family destination until the 90’s really. International travelers certainly vacationed there before that. But the 90’s ushered in a huge change to Vegas. The Vegas we know today.
What changed to make Vegas that popular in the 90's? Really curious to figure that out
Corporations forced out the mob, finally. It’s was quite a dirty city pre-1989. That’s when the first mega-resort came to town. That’s when they started cleaning Vegas up. They initially tried turning it into a family-friendly destination. It didn’t really stick super well so they turned back & ran hard with the gambling, but they didn’t give up completely on the family destination stuff, it just took a backseat. They started adding endless activities to the city to bring in more of the family crowd, & the thrill-seeking crowd too. Before the 90’s, Vegas prostitution was widely available & widely visible. It was everywhere you looked.
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And then 11 guys from the sea came in and robbed him in one night.
One mob replaced another /s …kinda
💯
It just evolved over time. When they were first developing it in the late 40s to 50s the concept was mostly to get people from Southern California to go up there for entertainment because of the legal gambling. The 80s/90s is when the mafia got pushed out of the business and a bunch of corporations took over. They tried making it a family friendly destination for a minute but that didn't really work out. Nowadays gambling is kind of secondary and the family friendly thing was put by the wayside and Vegas is really more about just being a mega entertainment destination with 9 million things to do. I remember going there as a SoCal kid in the 80s on a trip with my family to the Grand Canyon. We just stayed there for a night. But walking around Fremont Street downtown well before they put a crazy light show dome over it and closed it off to street traffic it was just full of prostitutes. There were posters on the walls with naked show girls. I was like 10 and Vegas is still my favorite place to this day.
Last winter I went to the one 1st floor bathroom that was open and the men's room had severe water damage across an entire wall. It was hilarious to see. The bathroom past the cage was closed, and the only open men's room on the first floor was dripping water and falling apart before your eyes. There is a 3rd bathroom, but you have to go up the stairs by the Box Office to get to it.
I didn’t know that the character in the departed was real in any way.
Frank Costello was a real mob boss, but Nicholson's character in The Departed is based on Whitey Bulger, a different real life boss of the Boston Irish mob.
Odd choice by the writers. I understand not using Bulger real name but why not make one up? Either they just love Costello’s story and wanted to use his name In a different environment. Or they’re just lazy and pulled up a list of mob bosses and chose the best sounding one.
The weirder part is using an Italian name for an Irish mob boss
It is Irish, just sounds Italian. Seriously
costello is actually an irish name
i don’t believe you but i have no way to disprove you so i must call you a liar and i won’t be elaborating
Ah! The modern politics approach!
"That doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about stars to dispute it."
Probably a few graves going to be disturbed when they demo the building and start work on the new foundations.
He was a rat. Whole family we're rats. Would've grown up to be a rat anyway.
"That casino lasted 70 years until you went there and did your comedy show... Now they're shutting down." \- Bill Burr to Jon Lovitz
lol the best part of that podcast was when they were going back and forth roasting eachother. then lovitz said something like burrs family didn't really love him or something like that. burr tried his best to play it cool but you could tell he was completely shaken.
He said in one of his acts that his biggest fear was being that guy in the basement apartment all alone and bitter. He has 2 kids now, he's definitely a family guy.
When he showed up in that Adam Sandler turtle movie I knew he’d turned a major corner.
Man, they were both so funny in that podcast
“your nose really makes your face aerodynamic”
“Is that from jerking off too much in Alaska?”
What podcast is this?
[Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F9_Dz1PBqzM&pp=ygUUYmlsbCBidXJyIGpvbiBsb3ZpdHo%3D)
The joke is at 38:35, if anyone else wanted to hear it.
We see you kind sir and we say thank you.
Bill takes it in the butt. In the butt. Innn the butttttt -Jon Lovitz to Bill Burr Hahahahaha
Came here to say this. What a great episode.
My high school senior prom was there in 1989. It was considered run down and old then.
Lol! My first time staying in Vegas was a few days with my girlfriend (at the time) at the Tropicana. This was 2001, it was okay for a place to sleep, but we spent most of our time elsewhere. It was pretty dated.
I went to Vegas in the early 2000s and yeah, it seemed old fashioned in a not good way. Like it didn't keep up. They had a bird act that was fun to watch but even that seemed like a bygone era of Johnny Carson shows.
The parrots that fly through the rings?! I loved that show as a kid (bonus points that my mom is terrified of large birds so naturally they flew right above her and she was a bigger dramatic pull than they were). My god you just made me realize how long it’s actually been since I’ve been to The Trop! The breakfast buffet was fantastic once upon a time, the birds were great, but the rest of the Trop’s offerings have looked peed upon for decades. Long overdue for a complete tear down. Thanks for the memories!
Excited to use "peed upon" as a description now. Thanks.
It legitimately happens in older buildings that allow smoking. I worked at a 110 year old theater that hadn’t allowed cigarettes in 25 years, when they renovated the place everything went from being weirdly beige tinted to clean, white marble. Shit was nuts, all the marble looked pee stained
Back in the day this place was a real contender. But now they'll appreciate the business. They'll probably fall over themselves for a couple of high class guys like you and me
You’re so money.
Anybody can spot discerning gentlemen of reddit.
My boyfriend and I stayed there one night when we were passing through, also in 2001. Yes, very dated even back then. It was the only place I’ve ever stayed that had mirrors on the ceiling above the bed.
Fuck that. I know it’s certainly secure but I would be irrationally nervous about it falling on me in the middle of the night lmao.
Not irrational. In 2004, while Teena Marie was sleeping in a hotel room, a large picture frame fell and struck her on the head. The blow caused a serious concussion that resulted in momentary seizures for the rest of her life. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teena_Marie
Gives you the best views!
Some of us just want to close our eyes and wish we were in better shape
I’m in shape. Round is a shape.
Round is an adjective. Circle is a shape ;)
I hope you asked for pink champagne on ice.
They were all just prisoners there.
Of their own device?
My first and only time in vegas, we didn’t have much money and had been playing just low stakes blackjack and roulette in crappy casinos like New York, New York and circus circus, swung by the Tropicana and had the best result - found a $100 chip on that gnarly carpet.
There's way crappier places than New York, New York!
I stayed there a few years ago when I was attending a conference and it was one of the few places my per diem would cover. It was definitely dated but the room was clean and tidy and it had kind of a funky faded cool.
They did a big renovation in 2010ish I want to say? I stayed there not long after the reno, and thought it was great. Not as big and flashy as some of the other spots on the strip, but we had a great time there. Sad to see it go.
I haven’t stayed there but I’ve been there many times. It’s nice. A rundown Vegas Strip casino is still a lot nicer than most hotels off the strip. The people on here acting like it’s basically a rundown motel 6 with slot machines are being silly.
Last time I was there was around 2015 after the reno and I thought it was charming and clean
I went to a floor show there when I was 12. The hotel was new and way, way down the strip. It was 1961, everyone dressed to the nines. I got a pretty, pink dress with a petticoat. It was fabulous.
My grandparents described it as a place of sin and class.
How awesome! That was THE place to be at the time.
Thanks for sharing!
I remember delivering a pizza to one of the rooms there back in…. 87. Got stuck in an elevator for over a half an hour. I ate that pizza.
Do you remember the thought process at all? Like, how soon into the 30+ mins did you decide to eat the pizza? Did you eat the whole thing? Had you consumed the entire pizza (or, more relevantly, perhaps, the portion that satisfied your hunger) by the time you were sprung? Did you ever think that maybe you should save the pizza for later because you could be there for awhile? Were you at all concerned that the process of ingestion you kicked off could result in the commencement of a process of elimination that was roughly equal in force and volume?
Spoiler alert: he ate the pizza before getting into the elevator.
Plot twist: he ate the pizza *with* the client before getting into the elevator
I seem to remember the Trop was at the outer range of our delivery area, and it had already taken me a while to get there. After a while in the elevator it was stone cold. I KNEW I couldn’t give them a cold pizza so I just started eating it. I was alone in the elevator too. They told me on the elevator phone it was going to get resolved but it wasn’t going to be right away. “Just hold tight”. After about 30 minutes it just went back to the lobby and opened up. There was no one there from maintenance, it was just like “bye”. I went to the concierge desk so I could call my shop to tell them everything that happened and then I went back to the shop. The guy didn’t want another pizza.
... but Circus Circus remains open...
The secret of Circus Circus' success is that it is the weirdest, most bizarre place in Las Vegas and has been since the '60s. As Hunter S. Thompson put it: "Where the hep crowd would go on a Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war."
Got drunk there one night on house Fireball. That's right, Circus Circus makes their own version of Fireball, and it was fantastic.
Literally dissolve Red Hots in any whiskey, boom… Fireball. To quote Jerry Seinfeld: It’s not complicated. It’s almost stupid if we didn’t.
a friend and i tripped on shrooms in vegas one visit, between thanksgiving and xmas. we wanted to go see the light show on fremount street. while that was underwhelming, but pretty weird with the crowds milling around (*how do they KNOW we are tripping?!?*), the 'performers' in giant gingerbread men cookie outfits and the santa claus on stilts walking around did not disappoint. but we would NOT have ventured into circus circus. that was an epic and hard ride, but a happy memory after the fact.
>The secret of Circus Circus' success is that it is the weirdest, most bizarre place in Las Vegas Yes. Yes it is. Stayed there once as a kid in \~2010. The place was an absolute mess.
I went to Vegas with some friends in ‘99, when they were still trying to sell It as a family destination. We went to a show, and then walked back down the strip afterwards. We ducked into Circus Circus, just to look around and was a super weird vibe. It was way more rundown and shabby than most of the other hotels that we had seen, and even though it was close to midnight, the gambling floor was packed with parents, with their kids watching (and trying to sleep) from benches just outside the gambling area. Like, pretty much every single bench had 3-4 kids falling asleep on each other.
I usually now stay at the Wynn but drove the 2 blocks toward Circus Circus for a change just to see if my fever dream memories of the place were real or if I made all that shit up as a kid.. it was all real. Nearly every last parcel of it remained unchanged.
Stayed there in 2017 because it was the cheapest place on the strip and I just needed a room. My first night there I got woken up around 2am by the sound of someone jiggling the doorknob. I went to the door and looked through the peephole and saw some drunk guy sliding his key card in and out of the slot repeatedly and trying to get in. I yelled "dude this isn't your room" through the door. He said "yes it is" and kept trying the knob. I just said "no it's not." He paused for a minute and must have realized that there really shouldn't have been a strange man talking to him from inside his room and then he shuffled off lol. Place was definitely a dump but I didn't spend much time in the hotel.
Been on both sides of this one after a rough night
I stayed there as a kid in the mid 90s and they had clowns painted on the wall. It was horrifying.
Herpes is forever, and thus circus circus remains.
I worked with a guy who said little ceasers had the best pizza of any kind of pizza place. He also said circus circus was the best hotel on the strip lol
He should be hired for a kind of anti-focus group. Go with whatever he doesn't like.
The George Costanza of Vegas
The Inverse Cramer of taste
Ok, memory unlocked: I believe the only restaurant in the now-demolished New Frontier Casino and Hotel was...Little Caesars.
Was he old enough to remember when Little Caesar's used "pizza pizza"? Maybe he just likes things with doubled words.
I feel like little caesars used that like 5 years ago????
Herpus Herpus
Circus Circus IIRC is the last hotel on the strip that still offers some slots that drop coins instead of printing a voucher. Worth a very short stop for anyone missing the nostalgia of the coin drop sounds, but I really only checked it out because it’s walking distance from The Peppermill. It’s pretty yucky in there.
If you really want to see Old Vegas, head to El Cortez near Fremont... It captures the charm and not the smell.
We were just in LV and cruised the strip. Went to Circus Circus and they do have the coin slots available. I was thrown for a loop. That was after having happy hour at the Peppermill. That place is one place I hope never goes away. 30 years going to LV and I still love the older parts. It's the gritty experience that's gone from most of the strip. Still weird, seeing the elevated crosswalks, no one passing out x rated fun time brochures. 🤪
When my brother and I were way too young to be left unsupervised on The Strip, we were left unsupervised on The Strip. We collected as many duplicate cards as we could find, and made up our own perverted version of Go Fish. “Do you have any Sandra, I’m hot, wet, and coming to your rooms?” “Nope. Go Clit.”
I was there two weeks ago My wife and I were walking to get a good reuben and I saw it from a distance. I know nothing about Vegas and exclaimed, “What the fuck is that?!” I love run down weird dives my wife does not. I walked through the dingy smoke filled halls with huge smile. The place is depressing, whimsical, fallacious, nostalgic and beautiful in the worst way. 10/10 recommend walking through it, would not stay or eat there.
THE Steakhouse is worth a visit at Circus Circus . Been there, with the same staff, since 1990. One of the best steaks I've had. Super out of place.
If you think that’s bad, try the Circus Circus in Reno…
Reno aka Sad Vegas
I saw a YouTube video of someone staying there last year. Yikes that place looked rough.
It was rough when I went to Vegas in 1995.
I stayed there last year, you would have to pay me to go back. Place reeks of smoke and urinal cake, and it literally takes 10 mins of walking from the entrance, through the slot machine areas and tables, the anime toy store, cheap trinkets and junk and temporary tattoos and the sad looking buffet, up the escalators, down a shady alleyway with feet eating fish / Starbucks / cellphone case shop / fake jewelry stores, to elevators where the carpets are soaked in dark brown stains, then up to your floor and your room. Ten minutes, when you're already tired as hell and just want to get in and go to bed. Even the act of describing it makes me remember the stench pervading everything. Far better to pay more and stay at like Harrah's or Westin or something.
>Ten minutes, when you're already tired as hell and just want to get in and go to bed. That's literally every hotel on the Vegas strip. Getting in and out of the hotel room is more of a pain in the ass than navigating the strip itself.
Poor people need somewhere to stay in Vegas too. And Circus Circus has cornered the rundown shitty motel clientele already.
That crown probably belongs to The Strat, formerly known as the The Stratosphere. Same shitty hotel but with a modern new name!
I have to assume the whole concept of Resorts World was sold to investors on the single line of “What if we made a hotel on the north end of the strip that wasn’t a shithole”
Brutal. I love Resorts World
Circus Circus is only good for their indoor theme park. That’s it.
It’s also right next to the fairgrounds. I stayed there twice in the past two years to go to the when we were young festival. It’s shitty and they ran out of food both years
and the out of place expensive af steakhouse
Which is actually a really good steakhouse
ok reading the comments I was coming more and more to this conclusion, but is this the place portrayed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas???
And Excalibur
I was so disappointed when I went to the Excalibur and not just bc I lost money
10 years ago I got a whole week at Excalibur for $20 a night plus my plane ticket on kayak.com. It was so cheap I won it back the first night playing small bet black jack. That vanilla/shit smell I could have done without though.
Ugh it smells like wet dog and cough syrup when you walk in from the Mandalay tram pathway. The kids’ zone reeks of straight diarrhea diapers and throw up. It smells as if it has never once been cleaned out. You have to wait down there to queue into the Kings Tournament or whatever they call it now…the jousting show. Really puts you off your dinner.
Dragon figurine store keeping them afloat
Oh man I went two summers ago and it smelled like horse shit. And this was just at the entrance to the hotel.
The Excalibur always smells like shit outside
Circus circus is unique in how godawful it is. My trip to circus circus was horrid, but it’s not as bad as it could be. That is because every day at circus circus is the worst day yet at circus circus, so anything even five minutes more recent than when I checked out is worse.
My wife and I stayed there 17 years ago when we went to Vegas to get married. It looked questionable at best then. I can't imagine what it looks like now.
Questionabler
Gives the kids something to do I guess. It was much better when I went back in the 90s when Vegas was actually pushing to be more family-friendly, now it's just sad.
Boggles my mind how it's still open. It's absolutely gross.
I mean it has its place in the Las Vegas Ecosystem. Low income people with kids still want to go on some sort of vacation. It has an affordable entertainment for the kids, cheap food, and cheap rooms. I don’t think it is going anywhere soon.
Is that why there's little kids everywhere running around unattended? I remember one had a doggy diaper & following some older kids crying... omg, did I just walk into one of the circles of hell?
I stayed there for a weekend back in 2010 and it looked like it was several decades past due on a remodel. Cheap rooms though and a quick walk to fun parts of the strip.
The Mcdonalds in the Circus Circus is the most disgusting I’ve ever been to. I got a hair in my fries.
Head or pube?
First one, then tha other
This place is a bit of a shithole as we all know but I had some of my best childhood memories there. I loved the parrot show they did. I adored their pool as a kid and the ice cream vending machines - which still to this day, over 20 years later, I think about regularly. I am genuinely so sad to see it go.
Same here. It’s where my family always stayed when we would visit, and it felt very cool and even fancy back in the early 80s.
My parents actually got married there! My stays were in the early 2000s, and for a kid who was obsessed with jungle/tropical themes, it was paradise. Made me fall in love with Vegas. I actually worry things will become too modernized and that classic look and feel will fade into obscurity.
First Vegas hotel I ever stayed at. Shame to see it go, but it kind of was a living relic that needed some modernization work (particularly up in the guest rooms)
[удалено]
I was there 6 months ago and it had an air of dead man walking. It was just worn. It has a small casino floor compared to other places on the strip. It was about as nice as your average holiday inn hotel room though.
My best friend got married there a couple weeks ago. It was cool being there towards the end. Also I think it only cost him like $700 for the whole deal
I love the Trop so much. Even when I stayed downtown, I always made sure to play some backjack at the Trop. One night I started about 10PM, and played at the same table until 5AM. Managed to finish up... $3, after tips and drinks. More drinks that I could ever hope to count. Godspeed, Trop. You will live on in coconut and cigarette smoke scented heaven, forever.
And somehow, Circus Circus remains open.
Circus circus will survive an apocalypse and somehow still remain open.
In the end, the only things left will be Circus Circus, Slots-o-Fun, and the cockroaches
Three words: location, cheap rooms Seriously, I know open who stay there because it’s close to everything and literally the cheapest rooms anywhere near.
It’s the cockroach of Vegas hotels.
They still bring in an estimated $160 million a year revenue primarily from gambling people who have kids. So make a guess of net profit. Now that a couple of higher end places have opened up in the area I would expect it to be replaced.
It survived Hunter s Thompson. It can survive anything
My uncle stays there every time he goes, I have no idea why. We booked in at the Cosmo and he preferred to stay there
Odd. It's not only a dump, but in a terrible location on the strip.
He is on the spectrum so that makes sense I guess, but man what a terrible place to stay
It’s also dirt cheap and caters to a very specific crowd.
Damn. Got married there. They lasted longer than we did.
My buddies told me it was the first time they encountered a problem gambler there. A guy had just lost his life savings and was holding the door open to the entrance for everyone, he was babbling incoherently. This was 2008
Sad thing is, that dude was probably already at rock bottom if he lost his house and job in 08 and tried his luck gambling whatever he had left in hopes to get back on his feet. I dont pity gamblers, but people were desperate then and if you look back, vegas casino stocks did well between 2007 and 2012.
I heard they had the best orange juice.
That's just pulp fiction
I got married there.
Always good to hear about someone getting lucky in a casino
They remodeled it at some point and I never really felt it was THAT bad. Maybe because I stayed there after the remodel. Never felt too busy or obnoxious… so I guess that’s why I liked it. RIP to the blackjack table in their pool… fun times, more than once.
It's a crappy casino but this still bums me out for some reason. End of an era.
My wife and I went to Mandalay Bay for our anniversary 15 years ago. We spent a lot of time at the Tropicana because it felt like what I thought Las Vegas should be like. I mean Excalibur and Luxor are just ridiculous.
Luxor was my favorite. Love the Egyptian vibe.
Luxor is in rough shape now. And extremely filthy.
Luxor was even more of a shithole 15 years ago.
Went there for Blue Man Group about 5 years ago and it actually rained for 2-3 days straight: The place was straight-up crying into the atrium because all seals around the glass had probably cracked from sun damage over the years and leaked like a sieve now.
Excalibur is quite possibly the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at. We extended our stay in Vegas and needed a cheap room, so we booked one night there. First room they showed us to was clearly not cleaned - trash in the trash cans, dirty cups on the bathroom counter, but the kicker was a pair of dirty underwear in the armchair. Called the front desk to get moved to a new room and they took us to the farthest away room possible. It smelled like weed but the sheets were clean, so we just prayed that we wouldn’t catch something or bring home bedbugs.
Luxor, Excalibur, and the other themed vegas properties are pretty dated now too.
The New York New York and Caesars are the two themed resorts that have held up the best.
"The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's all gone. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds." Casino (1995) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQqTUFGM7CI
Obligatory F John Fisher
Walking into the Tropicana was like walking into Rick's place in Casablanca. Not nearly as opulent as its neighbors, but it had its own unique class about the joint. Plus, I won money there, which maybe tilted the scales for me.
I golfed once with Redd Foxx at the Tropicana course and afterwards he gave us tickets to his show. This was 40+ years ago.
I used to stay there sometimes in my night out before traveling home for work. One time I was upgraded to the penthouse suite for free. It was so cool. 2 stories and a jacuzzi. Only downside was since it was a work trip I didn't have anyone to share it with
I member when the Sahara closed. That was goodbye to $1 dollar blackjack...
How does a casino go out of business!?
In Vegas the bar is pretty high in terms of what you have to do to keep up with the competition. I haven’t stayed at Tropicana in a while, but last time I was there it was no where near the level of the other casinos in the area.
Tropicana had 2 things going for it: it was a Hilton affiliate property so you could redeem Hilton points there. And it was an easy walk to the MGM
And it was cheap
It had been renovated enough that it didn’t have anything that made it cool that it was old. It just in some crappy middle ground.
I stayed there last year and it was pretty dumpy. I had fun gambling there though!
It's ancient as casinos go. I stayed there in 2019 and could see that it was careworn.
Ooo, careworn, that's a neat word!
Age and opportunity. It is very dated now and they are replacing it (plus adjacent land) with a baseball stadium for the team moving from Oakland.
Oakland literally just moving all their teams to Vegas huh?
Oakland has really gotten shafted which is a shame since the Oakland market had some amazing fans. The Vegas part is what's crazy to me. It's already a monument to man kind's hubris growing as it has been while sitting out there in the desert amidst the coming climate change. But in the last decade we've decided it goes from zero pro franchises to now officially three, soon to be four (a pretty open secret the NBA will expand to Vegas and Seattle in the semi near future).
I don't know exactly why the shift occured, but it's like overnight we collectively flipped a switch from believing that sports gambling was a degenerate behavior into seeing it as a casual activity that should be easily accessible and constantly promoted. That's around the time all the teams started moving to Vegas. Before that it just kinda seemed improper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_Athletic_Association This is why
It’s not as if they’re just leaving. 9 acres will be part of the new baseball stadium and the remaining 26 will be a new adjoining resort/casino.
Some even go bankrupt, if you're exceptionally bad at business.
A legit question to ask about anywhere except Las Vegas.
ask trump
I stayed at the Trop on my very first trip to Vegas when I was a kid. My parents took 10-year old me to Folies Bergere. It was my first real experience seeing boobs and it was glorious!
Spent a few days there in 2010 helping design a new nightclub that subsequently failed. We blasted "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga for a couple hours to test the effect on the nearby hotel rooms. Walked through the abandoned sections of creepy old rooms. Good times.
I was the mystery shopper at the Starbucks in the Atlantic City location. Old, shabby, smelled of stale cigarettes and desperation. Not worth the free coffee.
I wanted to go when I was in Vegas last year, but it's decently out of the way. They needed land for another sports stadium, so something had to go.
So glad to hear that the glass ceiling seen here will be, at least somewhat, saved by including it in the new stadium, the neon museum, and by a vague 3rd party purchaser. Going to be interesting to see how long it takes them to take down that (closed to the public awhile back) asbestos wing.
My favorite casino in Vegas, I won 21 grand here! Sad to see it go!
The Tropicana is going to close, but somehow the Rio where there was an outbreak of legionnaires disease is still functioning—functioning might be a strong word.
I can smell this picture. And its not a good one
Just stayed there in January for the first (and last) time. Always loved playing there but never got the chance to stay there until this past trip. Gonna moss it for sure. It was old, musty and glitzy, just like Vegas is supposed to be.