Las Vegas Heist, Rio Renovation Progress, Las Vegas Spaceport & Venetian Going Union?

Hello and welcome to the MTM Vegas podcast. I'm Sean Kummer, your host joined us always by Mark Ostriman. We have a great show for you. Sorry, the podcast version has been on hiatus for a few weeks due to a demanding schedule, but we are back with regular releases of the podcast. We never stop doing the show on YouTube and you can watch this show along with all the visuals at youtube.com forward slash miles to memories. That's our preferred way to get it, but we will continue releasing it here in audio form for you. We combine our two shows on YouTube each week into one podcast here and this week's show was great. There was a crazy $1.2 million heist at Circa. Other casinos may have fallen victim. We'll talk about that. Plus, Green Valley Ranch announced a big transformation for the property. A new Bellagio documentary talking about the fountains has come out. A spaceport has been announced for outside Las Vegas. Another new train proposal has come in and Rio. We finally found out more details about the Rio renovation, including an old name coming back to help bring the property new life. All of that coming up and more. As a reminder, you can find all of our Vegas content that's posts, podcasts, and videos at MTMVegas.com. Thanks so much for listening. Let's hit it. So Mark Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg apparently want to get into the octagon for a UFC fight in Las Vegas for charity Dana White. The president of UFC says this would be the biggest pay-per-view event ever. Would you pay $100 to see them go at it in the ring? I guess when you have more money than God, this is what you do. You decide you want to fight each other because you have nothing better to do. It's weird. I think it'd be as spectacle for sure. I don't know if a ton of people would want to watch it because it's two just like nerdy science guys fighting, but I think they both have like martial arts backgrounds and expertise and stuff. So maybe it'd be really cool. I think just the spectacle of it people would pay. I wouldn't pay $100, but I'd go to like a bar or something that was hosting it. Yeah, at least it would be for charity. So the money would go to somewhere good, and you know, for all those people who hate one or the other, which is many people out there, you know, they get to see the other one get beat up. Well, did you see that video of Zuckerberg in like some fight that he got like taken out or something? Everybody was like jumping on like, look at this guy doesn't always do it. I don't know if the other guys really good or not. Like you don't know unless you're in that world. So I think it'd be interesting to see I don't know who do you think would win. I'll go with Elon. I got to go Zuckerberg. So we'll see we put it out here on the line. We'll see who wins. Like a friendly wager. Bellagio released the first part of their documentary about their fountains on Twitter. And I guess there's going to be multiple parts. And the first part was kind of cool. It's short about a minute and a half long. And I see this as like their plea to the government to say, please don't make us get rid of our fountains. They talk about all their sustainability efforts with water and how, you know, the fountains are fed by an underground spring. So it's a little different than some of the other water features we've talked about getting removed. But this seems like their plea to be like, leave our fountains alone. Yeah, I never really realized I never looked into it, but that that comes from their own wells and, you know, it's self-sustaining. They're not taking it from anything. So that's kind of cool. But also that water could be repurposed for something else. So you still have that conversation for sir, but I definitely don't want to see green grass there unless like, what if they brought a drone show instead of fountains? How cool would that be? A drone show with them. I mean, these are the most famous fountains in the world. Or at least that's what they say in the documentary. But I agree with that. They're very famous. Yeah, can you imagine just like a whole giant lawn of fake grass replacing it? No, no, no, that wouldn't be very good. But I'm all for drone shows added to that. That would be kind of cool. Yeah, that would be something unique. And you know, when I saw this in the show notes and said, documentary, I was like, oh, cool. You know, sit back and watch us a bit. And then it's like a minute and a half. You're like, okay. So it's like a 30 minute documentary. They're breaking up into like 20 episodes or, I don't know, but we'll stay tuned. And we'll put a link to the first part. And you get to see more. It's kind of cool. You see some of the tech behind it as well. The company that designed it. And you know, these fountains are all over the world now. Obviously, wind palace in Macau has them. There's amusement parks that have them. But this was the first real installation of that size. So it really is special in that way. And still is like so iconic from movies like Oceans 11. And I think it's just iconic part of any person's visit to the strip. I think everybody, that's one of the things that like you do on your first trip to Las Vegas. You have to go see those found. Yeah, I love just walking by at night when they're going and you get like a little bit of wind breeze from them. So it cools you off. Maybe a little bit of a water hitch as well, like a mist. So it's kind of, you know, it's always something worth doing. Even if I don't stop and watch, it's still cool. Like when you're doing something else to peak over and see it happening, or if you have a room with a view that's always cool. So, you know, I don't make a point to go watch them every trip, but I definitely see them every trip. So it's always something that's very Vegas, for sure. Yeah, and so many hotels have views of them. One of these days, I'm going to do a video of all the different views from the hotels. I have put a job in meaning to do it. So hopefully I'll get to that soon, where you can see them used from all the different. I do have the Cromwell one. Yes, it's very unique because it's very, you know, much lower. Yeah, it's, it's lower though. Yeah, you got to like stand in the back of your room. So you're not really in your room seeing it, but you're like in the corner by the bathroom, but it is a cool view. So yeah, hopefully I'll get that soon. This week's station casinos announced a transformation. They call it an elevated transformation for Green Valley Ranch. And this seems very similar to what they did with Red Rock. We covered on the show previously. They're buffet closed. It was sitting closed forever. And then they started construction, although they didn't really announce what they were doing. Although now the first part of their transformation has opened. It's a new bar called Polaris, which opened, I think Friday, so just a couple of days ago. And they're also going to add a couple restaurants from Blue Ribbon, a new sushi restaurant, a new Mediterranean restaurant, new High Limit Table area with single zero roulette and High Limit Slots area. And then they're going to be redoing the pool as well. They're lush backyard pool deck. They say they're going to give that a refresh. So I don't know if this is like a full property transformation, but it's a blessing kind of like what we saw at Red Rock. And that's what's coming to the old buffet area at Green Valley Ranch. Yeah, I wonder, you know, there's not a lot of zero single roulette wheels in Vegas. So I wonder what the table men would be. You know, it's not on strip. So the high limit might not be as high as you would see on strip. So maybe hoping for during the day, $25, probably a stretch, maybe more like $50. But if you play roulette, that, you know, that edge that you get off of that single zero is probably worth going out of your way to get there. So that's kind of cool. I mean, it looks modern, it looks fresh. It looks kind of like everything else to me, but it definitely looks like a step up from what you normally see. Yeah, there's no accident that that single zero roulette is in the high limits room, right? They're going to have a higher limit. They're not going to put that out on the $5 tables if they even have, they don't probably don't have $5 tables anymore. But, you know, the sushi place, the Blue Ribbon Sushi. That's been at Red Rock for quite a few years now, very popular. So you're seeing them sort of mirror the Red Rock and Green Valley resorts. They've always sort of been, you know, mirrored. They're very different in some ways. But you're seeing them kind of dig into that high-end resort feel with ease. And that's good as, you know, Durango opens and that's going to be competition among the station casinos with the high-end stuff. So yeah, it's good to see Green Valley Ranch, my local casino just not far from my house get some love. And it's always been a place I loved. It's about 20 years old now and it still holds up really well. The hotel is great. That area and where the pool is is great as it is and now all the cabanas and everything will be refreshed. It's a really nice place. Like if you ever, if you're from Las Vegas, you want to do a staycation. It's one of the places I would recommend. And if you're looking to get off the strip to have kind of a resort-y type feel with a nice casino with some good restaurants and a really nice pool area, it makes a good stay there as well. A good alternative to somewhere like Lake Las Vegas. Would you say this one or, um, would you put above one or the other? They're very similar. I haven't stayed at the M. I've stayed at Green Valley a couple of times. I like Green Valley Ranch. It's attached to the district, which is like an outdoor shopping mall. So in addition to what the restaurant you have in the casino, you have a bunch of shopping and everything else. The sports arena where the Silver Knights play is just, you know, a five minute walk away. So there's a lot more around there, I would say. What's that? The Dollar Loan Center. Thanks for making me say that. I've boarded it. That was a subconscious thing. I didn't even mean to avoid it and somehow I managed not to say the name. But yeah, there's a lot more in that area. So I think if you really want to do a staycation, it's good. Of course, M Resort is nice. The rooms there look really nice, but it's just a little bit more isolated with a less around there, at least less within walking distance. I mean, you go right out of Green Valley Ranching. Like I said, you have a whole district, right? And it's doorstep, movie theater, all of that there as well. So check it out, but just wait a couple of months till they get all this stuff finished. I'll make sure I get over there and update you guys on construction. So Vival Vegas wrote about this in Rumbar at Mirage. They had announced like this transformation of it into a Bruno Mars venue. And then I guess they sold it to Hard Rock and that all went away. But they built this staircase down like a private entrance for Bruno Mars before they changed direction and everything else. I love Easter eggs like this in Las Vegas, often like maybe dig up some other Easter eggs. Like I love over on Koval, if you walk on the backside of MGM, there's some walls that have like this bronze lion in the middle of the brick wall. Those are the original walls from the MGM Grand Adventures theme park. There's just a few of them. They're behind the convention center. So stuff like that in Las Vegas, I really love and so you know, next time you're in the VIP area at Rumbar, just look at that staircase and know that Bruno Mars was supposed to, you know, have a secret entrance there, kind of a cool little quirk. Yeah, it is cool. You know, where the $250,000 one, it seemed pretty, like a pretty basic, I was expecting like a spiral staircase or something really cool. And it's just like, here's a concrete staircase, you know, up a alley or whatever. So I don't know where that number came from. It seems a bit high, but it is cool to see that like he had a way to get in out quickly, which makes a lot of sense. And you know, there's still opening it at what Bellagio is that where they're going to be doing it. No. So I'm sure it'll be really cool. I love the name, what pinky, pinky out or something like pinkies out. Yeah, it's going into the Bellagio now. So they kept their partnership with Bruno Mars, obviously didn't keep Mirage, but Rumbar is such a cool place. And I haven't had the opportunity to hang out there too much, but I love the vibe there. Kind of like a teaky-ish place and you know, they did made it an ultra lounge, so they did renovate it not too long ago, but it is a cool place, cool location near the strip. I wonder how that's all going to change, obviously, with the transformation to Hard Rock, because it seems like that whole area is going to get redeveloped. So whatever is there, probably not going to stick around, but hopefully they get some cool venue strip side when they do this whole renovation in 2035 or whenever they actually start construction on it. Does that, it's always kind of crazy when you're like, you know, you redevelop something, you put all this money into it and then you sell and it's like it's going to get torn down. Like it was just kind of money thrown away. I'm sure they weren't thinking like, hey, we're going to sell right away and it just kind of happened or whatever, you know, it wasn't in the plans maybe when they launched this thing, but think of all the money they poured into it and you're never going to recoup that and you know, they probably, it was probably banked into the price of the purchase and now Hard Rock is kind of like eating that because they're going to be redeveloped or whatever down the line, but it's always kind of funny to think about that. Yeah, so much money spent in Las Vegas on redeveloping venues. If you think about places like, you know, MGM Grand, because I've had such a history there, I used to work there and just how many of some of those spots where there's restaurants are, how many times those restaurants have turned over and redeveloped and redecorated. I mean, so much money goes into the investment and the infrastructure, you know, I'm making these spaces nicer and keeping them modern and all of that and, you know, you got to have money to invest. But, you know, like we said, maybe not so much on the outside of the buildings, but they keep dumping money into the inside of the building. So that's good, I suppose. We're finally one step closer to consumption lounges coming to Las Vegas. We talked about the first cannabis-friendly hotel in Las Vegas and now we have two lounges in Clark County approved, Planet 13 in Thrive, Cannabis. And these are not approved like with zoning and everything, so they still have to do all of that, but they're approved by the state to start operating. So they're looking at different kind of ideas from like a nightclub to more chill lounges. Neither one of them seem to commit to exactly what they're going to build, although we suspect based on their hints in the article, they'll be open by the end of this year thinking October November timeframe. So not quite there yet, but this is the next step in the approval. So all of you guys look into consume and lounge. It's coming very soon. But yeah, I'm kind of surprised these haven't already rolled out, you know, you think that this, when they legalized it, that this would have been like a forefront type of thing, opening it up in certain areas. And you know, we talked about the hotel that's opening up and how they didn't really have anything that you could do in public, you have to do it in your room, which kind of defeats the purpose. Like you think you'd want to go stay at this hotel, hang out in the bar lounge or whatever. So I am surprised it's taken this long to get a couple open, but it's good to see it, you know, because that's going to be a big part of the tourism, I think going forward. Yep. The Amsterdam coffee bar experience coming soon or coffee shop experience coming soon to Las Vegas. So it'll be interesting to see how that all happens. No booze there. So we don't get people too crazy, but this is coming and it's going to be just to start one up in the north as well, but you'll have quite a few of them. I'm sure within about two years, you'll see them just about everywhere. So they're not going anywhere fun fact, it's not even legal in Amsterdam. That's what's funny. Now on to pizza mark, a happier subject for you. Did you see that $100 pizza at Napoli, Pizzeria, the LV Foodie shared this video. And basically what is it like a 37 inch pizza or something insane and you can put four different pizza, you know, specialty pizzas within this pizza. I mean, I guess it's just a super large pizza, right? I mean, it's a hundred bucks. I thought you would know. You're the expert. It looked like they cut it into four huge slice things. I'm like, I mean, maybe if you got, you know, ten people, five, ten people to eat this thing, it would be worth it. But like they didn't like cut it into squares almost to be able to pick it up and eat it and share it. And I don't know what they say. It takes like 14 minutes or something crazy, like not very long to cook this thing. I feel like it probably needs to sit in there and bake a little bit more, but funny enough, I shared it on Twitter to Friday the pizza man who's in the Detroit area and was on like the one bite and in best pizza and Michigan, all that stuff. A really great guy. And like, when are we going to see this in your pizza place? He's like, how about never? Yeah, a little bit gimmicky, but I guess it's the perfect party pizza, right? You just need an extra wide front door to be able to get it through or else you're going to, you're not to bring it through the back because or else you'd have to tip it in and then you're trying to get in your uber. Like, hey, sir, can you open the trunk? We're going to put this pizza in there. Yeah. So let's check it out credit to LV Foodie for, uh, for sharing that. And then finally, let's end with this, the Las Vegas spaceport. That sounds kind of cool, right? There's actually 12 approved spaceports around the United States. I found from this article, but the SEC approved this company to be able to sell stock in building a spaceport, quote unquote, the Las Vegas spaceport, but it's in prump. So I don't get too excited about that, but they say it's going to be for space tourism. It's going to be for education. They're going to have some things. Yeah. And of course, the other tourist aspects of prump might play in here. You know, you can have some fun in prump and go to space. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I love that they're like in 10 years, you could go to Mars and stay at the hotel. Like, this is a, I'm like, what? Like, this is like the Simpson's Monterey episode, right? Where he's selling stock in this spaceport. Yeah, I could see like, you know, the flights that go up. So you get like zero gravity or something. I could see that maybe that being what they launch from here. And you know, and all that news that's been in the Titanic sub and stuff, I'm going to let people test us out for a good long while before I get my butt in that seat. So what, you know, early adopters are not for this type of stuff. So let's wait a minute. But I mean, it'd be cool. I don't know if it will happen. It feels kind of all net arena-ish, but we shall see, especially in prump. Yeah. I mean, it's cool though. Space tourism isn't the thing in the future, right? It's not for the everyday person. It's going to be expensive for the foreseeable future. But the prices will keep coming down and it seems like there is this rush to build spaceports or to get the zoning and the approval for spaceports all over the country. Because, you know, they think this is the next thing. I just think the word spaceport is kind of cool. So Las Vegas spaceport has a cool, you know, ring to it. But it's in prump and they're just selling stocks. I guess if you want to invest in it, they're going to be selling that pretty soon. Coming to an MTM Vegas of the band-in properties in the near future. Yeah, there we go. How do you do a walkthrough video? So Mark, a lucky traveler won $1.3 million on the Wheel of Fortune slot machines at the airport. These look like really old Wheel of Fortune machines. I wonder if this is one of those cases where the progressive has to hit before they are able to pull them out. But $1.3 million, that's better than the million dollar win that we talked about last week, where the guy was betting $500 a hand. Yeah. Yeah. And the weird thing is I've heard from people that they think the machines at the airport are better than you'll get in the casino and stuff. And I think we've talked about this before. But I have a lot of questions like, did they win this as they landed or are they flying out? And which would you prefer? Would you rather be like, hey, I got a ton of money. Let's go have some fun in Vegas. Or would you rather be like, good thing I'm leaving. So I don't blow all this, you know, that'd be pretty dangerous. 1.3 in your pocket just to have your whole weekend in Vegas ahead of you. Can you imagine like all the trouble you could get into knowing that? Yeah, better, better to have it on the way out so you can go home and be responsible. I'd probably like just book a flight and turn right back around and say, I'm getting back. Hey, I won. I'll see you guys later. Have a good time. Speaking of the airport, I just got back to Las Vegas after big on for seven weeks. And I was walking around baggage claim and who do I see? But none other than Chris Angel welcoming me back. That wasn't the real him. I thought like his show was doing so poorly that he was now Tom Hanks living in the terminal. He was on the Las Vegas strip this week. The Venetian and the Palazzo now owned by Apollo have decided that they're going to start negotiating with the unions or they're not going to try to block the unions. Now Venetian Palazzo were owned by Las Vegas sands. Sheldon Adelson was very sort of, I don't want to call him anti-union, but he didn't get along with the unions too well. And he managed to keep them off these properties. These are the last two on the strip that are not unionized. So they are now going to vote for union organization. Most likely will become union shops for the culinary union bartenders, union teamsters operating engineers local. So four different unions coming in. I think this is just an inevitable sign of progress and not a surprise. Apollo has worked with the unions and other properties before. I'm all for the unions coming in just so we can get the mobsters back to save Vegas. Can we do that? There you go. I don't know, but you know, at least we'll have a high paid bartenders and cocktail servers. It's been an interesting thing over the years with these battles, with the unions and the casino companies. Of course, with that trop stadium deal, a lot of the sort of rumors around that were that the culinary union helped to get that blocked because that land was owned by station casinos or Red Rock Resorts, who has been anti-union and tried to prevent the union from organizing in their casinos. So a lot of power here. Yeah, I wish they, you know, I know the union doesn't really control hiring and all that stuff. But the fact that they don't have enough people in the union or at least people that want to work these jobs and they're still short-handed in so many hotels and casinos and stuff is kind of blows my mind. So I wish they'd focus something on that, like put the energy into that somehow, recruiting people into the area even though that's not like their main thing. Unless it's just companies saying they're short-handed, but are keeping it that way, you know, to save money, which wouldn't surprise me at all. All right. So let's talk trade in for a second and not the bright line high speed rail from Los Angeles or your favorite city Rancho Cucamanga to Las Vegas. That was hopefully still moving along. They're still working for funding to get that started by the end of this year. So we'll keep an eye on that. But the Utah Department of Transportation put in for a grant. I think they got $500,000, which isn't a lot of money. Well, you're talking about trains to look into bringing rail service back between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. This was actually offered through 1997 and in the press release, they note that it takes about six hours to drive between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. And the train will take seven and a half to nine hours. So what the heck are they doing? I mean, do we really need another slow Amtrak route coming back? And it's not like they have a ton of stops. I think they had like, and they listed like maybe two or three stops that they would add. So where are you losing the time here? And, you know, you've had your run-ins with Amtrak, that's a best case scenario. If a freight train or something along those lines, it's a complete mess. So unless you're getting a dedicated route with a high speed train, I don't see really the point of it. Yeah, it's a strange one, but yeah, there would be stops in Mesquite, St. George and Cedar City in between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. But again, it's going to take you seven and a half to nine hours. It's a beautiful drive through Utah and, you know, they have higher speed limits, like 80 to 85 in certain areas. So with that, I would either fly because it's like a 45 minute flight or drive. I don't know that I would take the train on this one. Yeah, if they could get it down to, you know, three and a half, four hours, something like that, then I could see it being plausible. Because by the time you go to the airport, go through the security, all that stuff, even a 45 minute flight is like three hours. So you could just hop on the train and go. And it's nice, you know, I enjoy riding on trains. If you got to get work done or something, I could see why somebody would prefer it over-driving. But still, you know, until they get that time done, I don't really see it as a viable option long-term. Yeah, now I guess the good side of this is it could be done quicker because this is just using existing rail lines and stuff. So we'll keep an eye on that, but still holding out for Brightline in that high speed rail to Rancho Cucamanga. Yes. Keep saying it. Let's just the rest of the show. So fourth of July is coming up. And there's events all over the city. I found a cool resource of Agas Family Events.com that lists all the fireworks shows. They even list like where a good place to stand is, like for example, the strip fireworks, being on the bridge between Horseshoe and Bellagio. A lot of good stuff for parks and stuff. So I'll put that down in the description. But Cerca released information about their star-spangled glamour event. This is going to be at Legacy Club, 7 to 10 pm on July 4th. $125 a person, but it does come with food and open bars. So and it seems like it'll be a full menu of cocktails there. And of course, those views from Legacy Club perfect to see the fireworks next door at Plaza. So yeah, this looks like a cool event, but there are fireworks all over the city, Red Rock, and Green Valley Ranch Resorts on the strip, all around in like local parks as well. So tons to do in town. Yeah, I think the Cerca deal, if you can get tickets to that is a great offer. Food is probably going to cost you 30, 40 bucks wherever you eat anyway. And then drinks, especially in the Legacy Club, are, you know, a beer is like 10, 12 bucks. So a mixed drink, a specialty cocktail, you're looking at $20, $20, $25. So it wouldn't take much to get that money back if you're having a couple drinks. In the view there is spectacular. You're going to have like a bird's eye view of everything in the area. And I'll say, you know, that's a great resource that you mentioned. Also consider rooftop parking structures. Those are always good views for this type of stuff. So, you know, that's a good one for Bellagio Fountains too, but it works just for fireworks as well. For sure. So hopefully everybody has a great time out there. And if you do go to the Circa event, let us know, hit us up on Twitter. So Vegas Confession shared an interesting $20 steak special. Now, you know, this has been a thing that's really sad over the last few years. We've lost a lot of the good value deals. Old Vegas, you used to have graveyard specials everywhere. Usually good deals. I know South Point still has some. There's still some here and there, but it's not like what it used to be that steak and eggs downtown at Binions overnight used to be amazing. But this local bar, Jackson's bar and grill. Now, I think this place used to be called Wully Bullies way back in the day, like 20 years ago. I've been to this place quite a lot. Yeah, it got bought out and then the owner named it after his nephew or something, but it's been around a long time. But I didn't know they had this $20 ribeye special. It's 24.7 and it includes a drink. It looks pretty good for the price. I mean, I don't know what the quality of the meat is, but Julian and Vegas Confession said it was pretty good. So if you're looking for it, it's on Flamingo, just a couple miles west of the strip. Yeah, it's a good one to keep in mind. You know, Ellis Island's one that gets a lot of fanfare and talk. So this is something I didn't heard about before either. And it looks like a massive steak. And like you said, you don't know what kind of beef they're using what cut, you know, if it's a good cutter or not, but it looked fine and for 20 bucks, can you really complain, especially when you're getting a drink too, like it'll soak up the booze. That's what you need. And you long time Las Vegas locals was that woolly bullies? What was the name before it was Jackson's? It had to be 15, 20 years ago. Let's see if we can get somebody out there who remembers that Flamingo and Jones. But yeah, give it a try. I might go over there one of these days and try it out if I'm in the area. So Mark Meltzer wrote a couple weeks ago on karaoke on the strip. I think this is an interesting topic because back in the day, a lot of the casinos on the strip had karaoke, especially like the 90s and the 2000s. I used to go do karaoke when I was in my early 20s at the E-strat, which, you know, I wasn't the greatest singer and it was more about having fun in the characters that you would get. And as you got closer to like midnight 1 a.m., it got pretty funky in there. So, you know, it's a good atmosphere for karaoke. But there's a, we don't want the smell or just the singing. It's getting fun. The singing, the people, the smell, the everything. This is mid 2000s stratosphere. So yeah, good times for sure. But there's other places. There's the piano bar at Harris. I saw that actually a few weeks ago when I was there. They have earlier in the night. They have karaoke. The barbershop at Cosmo has a karaoke band where you request songs. I don't know, does that count as karaoke mark where they're a band and you request the song and then they sing it? I think that's cheating. Oh, you know, when I was first reading through this, I figured like you get to sing with the band. And I was like, that's the best karaoke ever because, you know, you're up there like a real performance. But yeah, that's, that's lame. I don't know. And I've never noticed, you know, at Harris, I've gone by the piano bar of bajillion times and it's always been doing pianos. I've never actually seen the karaoke. So I was kind of surprised by that one. I don't know. Maybe it is you go up and sing with the band. Maybe I misread that. People can let us know. There's also private karaoke at On the Record in Park MGM. We talked about their speak easy. They have a lot of cool stuff there, but you can actually rent karaoke booths like you could do in many areas. And then the other kind of interesting ones, Ellis Island is known, of course, for karaoke for a long time. And Katzmi Owett, Neonopolis, I went there a couple years ago, a really, really cool venue. And it's just for karaoke, but it's just like this, I don't know, very strange place. Seems like a cool place to go watch people sing. So karaoke lives on in Las Vegas. That's like 24 hours a day too, Katzmi, all right? And then I think that they have a camera so you can watch it at like any point online and they have a big one, what, New Orleans as well. So that's kind of funny. If you board it like three in the morning, just pull that up and check it out. It's a really neat venue. And the favorite place I've gone to karaoke anywhere in Las Vegas. So check that out at Neonopolis. And I'll put a link in the description. Mark Meltzer has a great list of everything you can do if you're looking for karaoke on your next trip. So did you see that dreamscape is back in the news with Rio? We've been asking when they're gonna start this transformation. They closed off the buffet. We know that's gonna be a food haul, but they finally announced this week that they've partnered with four luxury, you know, design firms for the transformation and that they're gonna take control of Rio fully by the end of this year, that they're gonna renovate completely the 2500 guest rooms, 150,000 square foot casino. And they're gonna have the 220,000 square foot of meeting convention space. I'm not quite sure if they're changing any of that, but I think it's just all gonna be refreshed. They're also gonna redo the pool area and they hired a fancy architect for landscaping and everything else. They're redoing the front entrance. So it does look like we're gonna get a pretty big redo of the property, but there was no mention of hired at all. So I wonder if that deal's still on the table. Yeah, it's kind of weird. And there, you know, there's not a lot of, it seems like their announcement from a couple of years ago, like they're just like, hey, this is what we're going to do. You know, no specifics or anything like that, but I wonder, you know, now that we've heard about the A's and the rumors out there and all that, were they holding off all of this, hoping that they're getting the stadium and working out a deal there and maybe that's what they were sitting on their hands for a bit for because they didn't want to get started on stuff and then have to redo some of it or reconstruct areas because of the ballpark. So I wonder if that played a role, but yeah, we need to get this thing going. It definitely is a property that needs some love and attention and it'll be cool. And if they can make it a cool pool area, that's another thing we've seen in Vegas. There's a lot of pool areas over time have become less and less like amazing and more standard. So if they could do that, I think that would be a big draw. And one of the firms, in fact, the firm leading it up is Marnell companies and that had been rumor that they were involved but they are the company that originally built and owned Rio. So everything comes full circle and I think they're looking for a festive theme, lots of colors, but very modern. So with the limited information we have, you know, we don't really know, but these are pretty high-end firms. So that's what you should expect. That looks your experience. That is what they announced previously. But again, we don't know if the Hyatt thing is still on the table because there was no mention of Hyatt at all in any of this, but assuming that they still have that contract going, we should start seeing some construction by the end of this year. And, you know, Caesars has got long gone. They're nine dollar rooms. I'm sure maybe rooms will go up to 20 bucks now. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah. Maybe we'll get some pillows. Let's get some, bring some pillows in. That's number one. Go to Walmart, buy some pillows. First order of business when they take over. Buy the pillows. Ha, ha, ha. All right. Our big story this week is Casino Heists in real life. Apparently, this group of people have been going and stealing money from Casinos by convincing employees that they need to go get the money. We talked about that story in Colorado last year where this happened. And apparently it happened at circa just a week or so ago. And they stole $1.2 million convincing and employees somehow that they needed for fire equipment. They needed this money and they brought it down. The person took it. Somehow, and they haven't released this, they tracked them and they were able to make an arrest in this case. But what's been breaking in Vital Vegas has covered some of this. Some of it's confirmed some of it's not. But that perhaps five other Casinos were robbed just in the last few weeks by this group of people. So we still don't know a lot about it, but apparently several Casinos. Derek Stevens came out, said he can't comment on it. But it's pretty much confirmed that it happened at circa for over a million dollars in sane. Yeah, I mean, and they got 850K of it back. So at least they got most of it back. And you know, I don't know if the story helps like the lady that got conned out of the money, like usually they'll get some outpouring of public attention and say, you know, you can't fire, we're normally. If you walk off property with a million bucks, even if you think it's a thing, if you're scammed, you're probably gonna get fired. So maybe she'll get to keep her job. You know, it's kind of crazy. It's like those phone scams we hear about where people say they're the IRS semi-target gift cards. And you're like, how could anybody fall for this? But your brain works differently when you're in that situation. I know you've talked about on the show, your dad's situation having to have, or at least I think you have, almost getting scammed for something similar. So they know how to work it. And they'll try enough people until they get there. But when you rip off five casinos, why aren't you getting out of country, you know, going to somewhere that they can't extradite you and living off your millions? Like how greedy are you? And just to show you how serious they really are about this, Las Vegas locally leaked a memo from MGM resorts to all their employees talking to them about safeguarding from this scam. So I have to imagine these companies are going back, redoing all of their, you know, their rules and how they handle this stuff and how they handle requests like this. You would think with that amount of money, you would have to have, you know, double or triple redundancy people signing off on stuff, but apparently not before now. And clearly these guys are professionals. They figured out the system, they're targeting specific employees and you know, they know how it all works. But it's crazy to think that they could pull this off over and over and over again. And the circuit case was just the first arrest. So we don't know, you know, if it's gonna happen again, apparently according to Vital Vegas, there's been several other attempts that were unsuccessful even since they made the circa robbery. Yeah, and it was really blows my mind is that it's circa happened in three different chunks. Like it wasn't like a one time thing. So the fact that somebody walks out with a bag of cash three separate times, some three separate occasions and it doesn't, you know, the numbers don't jump out to the accountant and nobody sees it on video. Like, okay, so should you just go work for Casino for a couple of years and then walk out with two million bucks and then get the heck out of town. Like that's insane. You think that there's all these steps and rules and you know, all these double checks, triple checks and seems like somebody can just, if you're high enough up, you can just walk out with money and it blows my mind. Yeah, I think we'll see a lot of changes to the whole thing now. Would it happen in Colorado? They're like, oh, that can't happen here. And then five Casinos, apparently, we'll see if we'll ever get the names of them. And again, that's not confirmed. But we do know circa is confirmed. That was already put out in place. We know MGM is trying to safeguard against it. So yeah, it's just another insane story. And I wonder if this is like a ring of people or just a small group or, you know, if the guy who got arrested was just like a low level person and we still have this crime ring. I'm sure there's a lot that they are cold and close to their chest, but it'll be interesting to see as this develops. And like you said, they were able to apparently just track the guy's car. So that makes me think that he wasn't the most sophisticated person. I don't know, that's a little suspicious. But we'll see if there's like a bigger thing to discover here as they do the investigation. And I feel like I read that his bail was 25 grand. So, you know, if you're stealing millions of dollars, I don't think your bail is going to be 25 grand if you're higher up in this arc of criminals, you know. So who knows what actually is going on? And, you know, Vegas news, they always kind of hide this stuff from us, which is sad to say. Thank you for listening to this episode of the MTM Vegas podcast. Don't forget to check us out on YouTube. YouTube.com forward slash miles to memories and MTMVegas.com for all of our Vegas content. Thanks again for listening. Talk to you next time.