Strip in 10 Years, Circus Circus Nostalgia, Sphere Costs More, Secret Spots in Vegas & More!

Hello and welcome to the MTM Vegas Podcast. I'm Sean Kumier, your host, joined as always by Mark Osterman. This show is coming out a little later than normal. It was in the queue to get released and didn't go live. And I apologize about that. We do have a great show for you. As a reminder, you can watch this show along with all the visuals that go with it at youtube.com forward slash miles to memories. We record two shows each week and combine them into this podcast. On this week's show, we discussed a lot, including comparing the strip from 1994 versus today, the North Strip Taco Challenge, what exactly they did at Excalibur and New York, New York. Y Circus Circus is perfect nostalgia. We update you on Fountain Blue and MSG sphere construction. Four seasons residences are coming to Las Vegas. Tom Brady might buy the Raiders and we update you on the A's ballpark. There is so much in this show. I apologize again about the delay and hope you really enjoy it. 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. I hope you enjoy the show. Let's get it. So Mark, did you see the strip aerial? It was shared by Maverick helicopters and then someone shared the historical shot of that in 1994 to today. And it's funny because on the strip, you still have all these same big buildings in a lot of cases, but it's amazing at all the little stuff that changes over time. Yeah, 1994 looks pretty boring to be honest. Like you think a lot of people were still going to Vegas back then, but it's just so, you know, they're less developed and it's so much open space, which kind of blows your mind with compared to how much, you know, just 30 years later where we're at and how much has changed. But yeah, you basically had a really long walk in between casinos back then. And where were all the screens? I mean, what would we do without them? What do people do? As I've talked about on a couple of shows, I was on the strip a lot last week and I did share a lot on Twitter and other parts of social media about what I was doing. But what I did from when, because I was on the North strip, I finally went down and did the North strip taco challenge, not that this is an actual thing, but we know that tacos El Gordo is very popular. And there's another popular spot, Tacos El Pastore, which has grown in popularity around Las Vegas recently, just next door. So I had limited capacity for eating tacos because I couldn't eat 100 of them. So I just chose those two places. But I decided to compare past door tacos at each one, as I know a lot of people do it, because El Gordo, a lot of times has huge lines. Although during the midweek this week, I didn't find lines there, which was really nice. I was able to walk into either one of these places. But even towards the weekend, like on St. Kudemayo, both of these places had lines out the door, which can stink. But a lot of times El Pastore, you can get a shorter line, get in there quicker. But I have to say, tacos El Gordo doesn't have quite the spice that the other one does, but it's overall a better taco. And I'll also say, Mark, that neither one compares to a random taco shop in Mexico City. That's what I was going to say. How does the El Port Pastore taco compare to Mexico City, which is the best tacos I think you can have anywhere, really. Yeah, past door tacos come from Mexico City. And if you've ever been there, you know that there's just random taco shops all over the place. And then if you actually look up some of the better ones, I mean, just out of this world tacos. And I'm sorry to say tacos El Gordo. I've never felt that it does live up to that. But it is a really good taco. Tacos El Pastore, which is the name of the other taco place, which is a little confusing, is pretty good as well. So they're both decent tacos, but not compared to Mexico. And the other thing about El Gordo, if people want to be a little bit more adventurous, is get the lingua taco, which is just cow tongue. I've been getting that for years. That's been my go to there. And it's absolutely the meat is so soft and succulent. It's delicious. That's my favorite taco there. So I did have one of those as well in addition to the pastore tacos at either place. But yeah, if you're, it really tastes good, Mark, it's not anything crazy. Like it sounds. Yeah, just tongue, right? If you did, yeah, if you just give it to somebody and you don't tell what it is, they probably would think it was great. But so what's your favorite taco in Vegas period strip, off strip, whatever? I think tacos El Gordo. I haven't been to every taco shop. And there's a lot of people in the comments that have mentioned other ones. So I'll have to like kind of maybe try out some new ones because I feel like the taco scene has really exploded the last few years. So I'm sure there's probably better options than tacos El Gordo. But I've been going there for 15, 20 years. Basically, they have a location on the strip, but they opened a new one on South Las Vegas Boulevard at sunset where you can go. And they've also had one in Cheyenne in the 15 for many years that I used to go to all the time. So, but I feel like there's got to be better ones out there. And the other thing about Vegas is Biria tacos, which is usually goat, but now they have beef Biria too, which is like a stew, which has constimate on the side. That's become really big too. So there's Biria places all over the place. So I'll have to report back on more of that. I did share on Twitter this week. I went down to Excalibur in New York, New York to check out the change in the landscape. Let's call it the removal of the water. And I am pleased to say that the grass beneath the Statue of Liberty, the fake grass looks pretty good. I actually thought it fit in well. It doesn't look weird that it's grass. I mean, it does. But like if you just forget the fact that there was water a lot of times over the last few years, it's been drained anyway. So it never looked great. It doesn't didn't look like it used to look way back in the day. They had removed the boats, a lot of the theming. So I think it looks fine. Like I looked at it from a few different angles on the escalators down on the ground. I thought it looked great. Then I walked across to Excalibur to figure out what they're doing there where the old Merlin show was. We had talked about that there was sand there a few weeks ago, but clearly they were doing something else. And I figured out what they're actually doing there. And it's, it's, yeah, it's just rock. They're putting rock in there. Okay. And, and excited. Yeah. I think they should have Japanese gardened it with sand and like gone out there and raked it every day. It went cool, except for the windstorms of Vegas would make it unbearable. I'm sure most of the time, but you know, it is what it is. Rock, I guess. It just doesn't feel right. I mean, sand, I was able to accept, but is it like a lava rock or like a brownish rock? What kind of rock is it? So they have like reddish brownish rock and then white rock. There's like these, they're putting them in decorative, almost like flower like patterns on both sides. So I'll throw up some video for you, Mark, right now. But you know, it's okay. It doesn't look good. It looks cheap drink. It doesn't really fit in with the, with the castle aesthetic. I mean, I guess the grass, fake grass wouldn't either, but I feel like that would have looked better than this does. But maybe people like it. It was cool to see the guy operate the machine. They have this big stacks of rock like out on the street and then this giant hose and this guy holds the hose and like the rock just spews out and he puts it in the different spots. I had never seen it like those mulch. The people that do the mulch and they just spray it everywhere kind of like that. Yeah. So that was kind of cool to watch because I got to see them do it. One side of it was already done. They were doing the other side. I got to see the moving walkway there completely gone. You know, it's, it's there. It's just completely blocked off, never going to open again. I thought that one might have a chance to reopen as basically the last sort of moving walkway in Las Vegas. Maybe there's another one that I'm forgetting about, but that's completely gone. So even in fact, one section of it, they have it completely, they put a permanent block on it like a gate and then the other part, they just have the, you know, out of order part, but that's never going to open again. I used to love as a kid just riding that moving walkway into Excalibur, into the casino, never to happen again. That's sad. I wish they'd like do something and started Murrling like have a dune sand worm coming out or doing some kind of show down there. You know, it's, it's such a cool area to look down into for a show. It would be awesome if they did something, but you know, like we've seen in Vegas, nobody's going to spend money on that type of stuff. So one by one, they go away, but you know, in like 15 years watch, we'll be doing a show where we're talking about all the free stuff in Vegas again. Let's hope so. One other thing I did this week was at circus circus and the guy, we, you know, we covered a couple of weeks ago that they had finished the painting, the ongoing drama of this painting, but they actually hadn't. And so we showed a picture from the north side where it was completely done, but on the south side, the side facing resorts world, it still had the green primer on it. But, you know, that would be done in a few days. No, I mean, I'm not, I'm not doing, I just want to be accurate with what we said before, but I got to see it in person, got to see the front because they also painted some of the, the walls on the front side too in the same pink. It does look very vibrant and nice. And you know, you go inside, they still have all those coin slot machines. Feels like they've actually expanded that area a little bit over the last couple of years. So, and that's always busy. It's great. It's so great to hear. But the main reason to go there, my daughter was staying one night with us at win. And I wanted to, she loves the circus circus midway. We took her there in Reno last year and just decided to take her to the midway circus circus. I grew up there in the 80s, like going there all of the time. And the great thing about it, perfect nostalgia, because it looks exactly the same as it did when I was a kid, which, you know, is not necessarily a positive thing. But also in the case of being nostalgic, taking your kid, it's not a bad thing either. Yeah, I've always enjoyed that area. You know, the problem has always been just maintenance and upkeep and having all the games working, which, you know, half the time there, half the machines are down or whatever. But I was kind of surprised that the price, what would you say, like $2, 250 per game, for the most part, is what you were seeing, which, you know, back in the 80s, probably 50 cents. So they haven't changed anything. They just raised the prices a lot. Yeah. So you have to get a card now, which, you know, back in the day you just give them cash and the card, basically 100 points is a dollar or whatever. Basically it's $2.20 and $2.50 for the point values that you get on your card for most of the games. So the games like the racing games, the horse racing, the camel racing, those were like 250. Some of the other ones were 220, like the ball tosses, the ring toss, stuff like that. Word to the wise, when you take a kid there and I didn't think about it. So we got, we did a few games and Ellie didn't win anything. And then she was just like heartbroken. And so, you know, maybe start with like one of the races with it's not busy and you can just buy two entries and then you can get a stuffed animal. Because once she got the one, she was half, she was perfectly happy, but she got a little mad at us at the beginning. But we spent $30 there and we're able to, you know, 40, 45 minutes. It was fun. She got to do all the different ones. But, you know, they have the camel race from back in the day. They have several different versions. They have the shooting gun game, you know, with which is always fun with the water. The Midway acts are only on the weekends right now. So we didn't get to see any circus acts, but that's all still there. The carousel bar that used to be there is, you know, full of machines. On the top level, it looks like a closed off snack area. The McDonald's that they used to have there is gone and it's like a generic area as well. And as for the casino at Circus Circus, a lot of modern machines, very low ceilings and that area, you know, where you walk from the front to the back is just full of all the carpet shops. The carpet is not as good as the carpet. It's lots of fun, which by the way, it's still there. Most of it. They've replaced some of it, but it's still still there. But I always found it weird how circus circus has all these random shops like tattoo parlor and just, you know, they had like a manga comic store and, you know, in that area as you walk from like the strip side all the way back to the adventure dome. It's still such a weird property these days. There were a lot of people there, so I guess people enjoy it. Yeah, I remember playing game, you know, years and years ago with my wife and I won like a basketball. It was like a college basketball. And I'm like, what the heck am I going to do with this? I can't get it. I'm not going to get it on the plane. It's not even a team I like. So I just walking around and I find any random kid and I'm like, here, do you want a basketball and then I'm sure their parents like, what am I going to do with this? Thanks a lot, guy. And I do wonder if they could do a modern version of this with some of the nostalgic games and do it better if they renovated it. It is a very unique place stuck in time. You know, it's good for kids. I didn't want to say good for kids and surprising to me is how good the pool at win Las Vegas is for kids because, you know, there's always these lists of the best family friendly pools and, you know, Mandalay Bay, I always say is the best family friendly pool with a wave pool and lazy river. But when has this really big pool has these two like side sections that are connected by like a almost like a lap area. It almost looks like a big barbell from the air if you look down on it. But it's just said in the gardens, very peaceful, a really fun place to swim. So I wanted to highlight that because I didn't really ever think about that as a family friendly pool. Took my daughter there, changed my mind completely. I almost like preferred almost over any other pool in Las Vegas. Yeah, and everybody watching is like, Oh, thanks. Now we're going to have all these kids here screaming while we're trying to relax at the wind pool. They'll be $800 a night there. But no, no, it's interesting. I've never actually spent any time at the wind pool. So interesting to hear glad to hear it. You know, there's so many pools in Vegas can range so so much. And I don't even really love the Mandalay pool that much, even though it's really is a good one for kids because it's just so packed and there's no space anywhere to relax. Half the time we end up like back behind tents laying on the sand back there and stuff because there's just no room and they're funneling all these different towers and hotels into it. It's just too much. Yeah, there's nothing relaxing or calm about the pool at Mandalay Bay. It's overrun with people. But if you're talking about amenities for kids, you know, they like they don't really have water slides there, but they do like the lazy river and the way they will. I feel like MGM has a great pool with a lazy river. There are some that have water slides or small water slides, but in circus circus has a water slides now at their pool area as well. But this is just a cool place for kids to swim. The pools are heated, so you're not dealing with the cold weather. All of my other stays at wind had been like kind of in the winter and even though they have, you know, one pool open during that period of time, I just was never motivated to swim there. But I swim there a few times this week and it's just so relaxing out there walking around in the gardens and they do have an adult pool as well with an outdoor casino so you can stay away from the kids if you want. But there's plenty of space. It's huge. So you can gamble while sitting in pee. There you go. I mean, isn't that the biggest wave mark? Isn't that the biggest wave? Alright, so we talked a few weeks ago about speakeasies and maybe we'll do a speakeasy walk or crawl or something at some point. But I came across this article on Vegas Eater, 19 secret restaurants in Las Vegas. We won't cover all of them, but there are quite a few that I hadn't heard of or some other interesting ones. And some of them are speakeasies. Some of them are hidden restaurants. Some of them are restaurants within restaurants. Let's start here, the underground at the Ma Museum. I feel like this is a speakeasy everybody's heard about. It's at the Ma Museum so it makes perfect sense. If you're going to go there, you should obviously go to the speakeasy, right? Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the one we talked about a couple weeks ago at Absinthe. It's there and everybody kind of knows it's there, but it's a little bit hidden. I'd say even like, I don't remember what the name of the bar is, but at Meow Wolf, if you're not paying attention, you're not going to see it. And it's around the corner. It's actually a really cool place, unique drinks and stuff like that. So I think every bigger attraction has something like that these days. Now there's another interesting one, Capo's Restaurant and Speakeasy. It's been on my list to go to for years. I've driven by it a bunch of times. This is an Italian restaurant on West Sahara. But the cool thing is to get inside. You have to knock on the door. A mobster opens the door, asks what you're doing there. And they also have like the speakeasy bar, but also a full restaurant. It's a little bit off-strip, but not too far off the strip. And certainly one I think would be worth exploring. It reminds me of back at the Tropicana had the mob experience back in the day, like maybe a decade ago. And they had, you know, it was like these sets of mob street. It was like a live action sort of entertainment thing, but there was mobsters everywhere. They would interrogate you. They would threaten you. That's always fun. Sounds like a good night out. Now Resorts World, they have that famous here Kitty Kitty Vice Den, right? That bar that's off of their food court. But now they, you know, that used to be a shop in the front of there. And now they've converted it into like a tea place or something. So you have a hostess stand outside. And it feels like it took away a lot of the allure of what that was. Because it felt like just a shop where you could buy like Kit Kats from Asia or different stuff. And then you stumbled into the Speakeasy. Yeah, I agree. You know, that's got the whole thing of Speakeasy is something that it doesn't look like something. So if you add a host stand outside, then you're like, okay, well, it's just a back room or a back bar area. It's not as special. So I wish they would have left it the way it was. But I'm guessing that store wasn't making them any money. So they're like, we should put something in here that might actually get some revenue besides the Speakeasy. Now, here's one I really didn't know about Moss Portfavor, Takeria Yitakila. They have a restaurant in the front and then they have the Speakeasy in the back. And you wander over this mysterious door, it says, and then go down these like tunnel basically with like rocks in a cave to get to their tequila bar in the back. Another cool spot. Yeah, I'd actually heard about this. I didn't know what it was called or anything. But when we went to Golden Teakey, a local, it said, Oh, there's a really cool Speakeasy in that same strip mall, you just have to go like here. And we didn't, you know, we were, it was later in the night, we didn't really pay attention to what they said. So the next day we get there, my buddy's like, yeah, I don't remember, there's a Speakeasy here somewhere. I'm like, Oh, I'm not going to go knock on every door and try to find it. So definitely want to go check it out. I mean, that's a good one to combo right there. I think if you're going to that area, you mean Golden Teakey's one of the best bars in Vegas, in my opinion, check out the bathrooms there apparently. Yeah. Yes. If you like adult visual. Yeah. Ghost Donkey. So there's a few at Cosmo, obviously some of these are known, some of these are not Cosmo. Is Cosmo just all Speakeasy's? It's like 47 Speakeasy's on this list. Well, I mean, some of them are some of the like secret pizza was on this list, which is yeah, Speakeasy, right? Beauty and Essex and the barbershop, like the barbershop just looks like a barbershop, right? But in the back, it's a club and everything else. A ghost donkey is the one that's in their food hall. And I guess you look for the donkey door, a door with like a donkey illustration. And then you go back in there. But yeah, it was sort of interesting to see all of those on there. They, they, four on the list of 19 were at Cosmo. Yeah. And I think that the ghost donkey is the one that the Mezcal bar, right? Which I sent to my buddy who's big into Mezcal and I can't, I don't like drinking burnt rubber. So it's not my thing. But I know he's going to be super upset because he spent so much time at Cosmo last trip. He's like, it's my favorite place. And I don't think they ever made it in there. There's a couple interesting places at Park MGM. You have Best Friend, which looks like a convenience store on the front. If you've ever seen this place, it's sorted by the strip entrance to Park MGM, just outside Edelie. And but you go back and you have a full restaurant there. So not as much as Speakeasy on the record, which is their like record bar place. It's like a nightclub. I haven't been inside there, but it looks really cool. They also, if you look for a wall of cassette tapes, they have the vinyl parlor, Speakeasy that you can go to. So another just interesting thing. It's cool how you have so much sort of hidden beneath the surface all around Las Vegas these days. The coolest one I saw on this list, Yapquiba Sushi. They have a hidden room in the back that you can recall request. Only two tables. They serve a five course set menu with Wagyu beef. And you're in this very intimate two table setting. Good luck. Yeah, exactly. Get in there. There's other ones on the list, but it's it's this a cool list to kind of see it. Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if the laundry room one on Fremont Street is even real because all I hear is people text and text and text and never able to get in. There's ones that are really well known. There's ones that are not I do like them. It's become a little bit of a jump the shark thing with so many of these, but some of them are neat and things like secret pizza. It's kind of cool to know it exists. I guess it's not really a secret, but you know, I guess if you didn't really know and you look down that hallway, you would see it. So it's not just about drinking. It's about eating. It's about kind of discovering places. And I think that just talks about how Las Vegas has so much going for it as far as theme and in different layers, depending on how deep you want to go. You could be a grandma just sitting there playing the slots or you could be somebody who doesn't gamble at all, find all these cool places, or you could just be an urban explorer and do it all. I really like when it's more hidden, even if people know about it. Like there's one in Detroit called Bad Luck Bar that's down this alley. And even if you see it on like a Google map, you have no clue how to get to it because it's down this alley that looks very sketchy and the door just has a snake on it. And that's all you see. And you're like, really? Is this where I'm supposed to go? You open it up and it's like Black curtains and as soon as they open up the Black curtains, it's just this magnificent looking little bar that probably has 10 tables. And I'll have you throw up some pictures I have on the screen of it. But yeah, definitely if you're ever in the Detroit area and you like speakeasy, high-end cocktails, check out that place. It's really cool. So Mark, we've talked about how service charges are out of control in Vegas and prime 141 just up the ante a little bit. They're charging a 22% quote unquote service charge. Then they say tipping is not required or expected. But they kind of use a language that makes you think that the service charge actually goes towards tipping the servers and stuff. But it doesn't, although they say it's going for livable wages and health benefits. What do you say? Yeah, I mean, it all depends. Like it looks bad. It looks terrible. It all depends how it plays out. Like if they're paying these people 15, $20 an hour and giving them health insurance and they're like, you don't really need the tip. Like there are some restaurants that do that say don't tip up. We pay everybody well. You know, that's one thing. But if they're just doing this and taking the money and then hoping people still tip and paying them, you know, six bucks an hour or whatever, then it's pretty terrible. And like we've said before, just put it in the price. Just increase the price of everything 22%. This is just going to upset people. Even if it is best intentions and you are paying people well, they're just going to read this and get annoyed. Just make your whatever you're selling 22% more and nobody will complain. Yeah, I think that's what this is about, right? Keeping their menu prices lower. I travel a lot and I love the fact that in other countries, you just pay a price and everybody, you don't have to tip and it's done. But that's not what it's like in the US. So I feel like in some ways, this is taking tips away from their servers and their staff. And it's worded very strangely where you actually think that this is an auto tip. When it's not, it's just going straight to the owner's pockets for them to do with what they want. And I don't really like that, especially with culture in the US. I wish we would get rid of tipping culture and just price everything baked in. But that's not the way it is. No, you know, what's going to happen? Servers are going to make lots and not get tipped at all because people are going to assume this is the tip. And I don't know, it's just a mess. It's stupid. They'll probably take it off the menu in like three weeks. Watch. We have a lot of big projects opening in Las Vegas this year and Fountain Blue is one of them. And they release a new trigger. Yes, I'm not saying it the French way. No, that's okay. So just because I knew we're going to talk about this and I went back and I watched like every news station says Fountain Blue. And the only thing Fountain Blue is for the French, you know, there's a city called Fountain. So that's what everybody assumes. It's Fountain. Call Miami. Don't comment below and say we're saying it wrong. Okay, I've said my piece. Yeah, it's the name of a place, not the French word. All right. People are tired of us complaining about that. But I'm sure some people will still say we're saying it wrong. But they released the new Sizzle Reel, which is kind of interesting. Doesn't show a whole lot. That's new. And you know, we showed that one picture of the inside. That's about the only look we have of like a finished product there. But I walked around there recently and it's looking great. I mean, the outside is starting to come together. That Fountain Blue sign that faces the convention center lights up at night. It looks absolutely wonderful. So I'm excited for this property. I love the blue color paint on the outside on the building, you know, on the strip frontage. And did you see that video of the construction workers out on the strip doing it? It looked like the seven of us. What is up with that? Like, do they not have pulleys and lefres anymore or ropes? They're just like handing it up a lot like a human wall. It's so bizarre. It looked like a lot of fun. So I don't know. It looks like they're having a good time there. But you know, walking around there the other day when I went to Circus Circus and I was staying at the wind, it just looked great. I mean, it looks like a very nice property. And it's nice to see that come together because that strip front edge was, you know, barren construction for so long. And to see like the architecture of the building start to come together. The tower itself looks great. All the glass is in, you know, the FB on the building. So it's marching towards that opening in December. And I'm excited for it. And I do think that that north area of the strip is looking better than ever with Circus Circus's paint. Resorts World, we talked about how they're getting better. You have wind on core and then fountain blue. I'm excited to see what comes next to this area. Yeah, I'm just really hoping that they open, you know, the week of my trip that I'm coming in December. So I don't have to fly back quickly after to check it out because I'm really looking forward to seeing it. Probably the most excited I am for a property since circa, I would say like I wasn't super excited for Virgin or for Resorts World. So this is the next year like circa just seemed like they hit it out of the park with design and everything. And this is another one just like that. So I'm really, I think this will probably be better than circa as far as what you feel when you walk through it. The the finishes, everything that you get excited about, you know, high ceilings, everything like that. So plus it's not a free much straight. So you don't have to worry about that after midnight, you know. And I'm excited for some pictures to come out hopefully soon of some finished interior so we can start to build up the anticipation for what this will look like. One of the other big projects is the MSG sphere and they've been testing that thing all over the city. So you can see it lit up half the time. Usually half the dome is lit up and half is not. I have seen the whole thing lit up though. So it just depends on when you do it. Some days it's just turned off. But it's kind of interesting to see how all the infrastructure is going in. I was out there kind of visiting from the parking garages that are adjacent to it. All the like ticket concourses, all of that stuff is going in. The pedestrian walkway connecting into the Venetian, it looks like it's pretty much finished. So they're finishing touches on it. But the bad news for MSG or for sphere entertainment is the price went up again. Now 2.3 billion. I think it was just shy of 2.2 billion before. Now they've already spent 2.08 billion dollars. They've already spent that. So the good news is they're close enough that they're going to finish this thing. But yeah, the price keeps going up and every time it's like 100 million here, 200 million there. I think it was just over a billion dollars when they announced it. I was going to say, well, was it like 1.1 billion or something was the expected cost. And I love how they always put in there like, in Venetian, sands paid 56 million or whatever. It's such a small amount compared to what it ended up costing. Funny thing is like I went to Guardians 3 with my son this past weekend and there was the Dune 2 trailer and I was all excited about it. Like I said, it looked really great. And somebody on Twitter asked, would you see it in the sphere? And I said, well, for 200 bucks, I could run out a whole theater at AMC. So I just got there. I don't know. This is this is exciting. I'm sorry that it cost them this much money. It'll probably lead them into bankruptcy, but it's exciting that we got this venue. The MGM Square coming to you soon. Yeah. So if it was 1.1 billion when they announced it, just think about it. In just a few years, the price doubled. And there's just no way that they accounted for that when they, you know, figured out what the economics of this were when they built it. But you know, you too see it's tickets have sold well. Who knows how the movie takes its own money? Yeah, but they don't get any of that money. You too gets all the money. It's stupid. Yeah. But again, this was their loss leader, right? To get every all the other artists to come and do other shows. So I think it'll be, it'll be successful. It's just a matter of the economics working. And the Venetian, I think, did give the land for it in addition to that small amount of money, like 65 million or something that they've contributed to construction. And it is attached to the Venetian. So technically, part of that resort, what's the over under if we get another increase in cost before this thing opens? Yeah, I definitely think it's going to end up being, you know, like 2.5 by the time it's all said and done. You know, they're going to get inspections, final inspections, things are going to be wrong. They're going to have to spend money fixed stuff. There's always unexpected costs at the end. So 2.5. There we go. There's an over under set it there. Let us know what you guys think. What's your final price estimate in the comments? Let us know. So four seasons is coming to Henderson and not the hotel, but residential towers. They're building these towers up in McDonald Highlands, which is a beautiful master plan community out in Henderson. One of the top exclusive communities in the Las Vegas area, I think the most expensive house ever to sell in Las Vegas sold there. It's this big white mansion up on the hill, but it's going to open in 2026, two residential towers, 171 high-rise residences with six standalone villas. More of these high-end things coming, but this is a beautiful community. And I have a family member that lives there, spent quite a lot of time up there. Very nice. I mean, you got to have all the place for all the Californians to go live, right? When they move over. But no, it looks amazing. It, you know, from what I can tell, it looks like it's snug up against the edge of the valley. So you're, I don't think there's going to be much of anything behind it, if anything at all. So you get kind of that seclusion, the views, at least in the mock-ups look amazing. And at night, I'm sure like having a drink on your outdoor patio space overlooking, you know, the Vegas Strip all lit up would be really, really cool. So if I had the money, I'd definitely be checking out if I wanted to live in Vegas. And it looks amazing for seasons, big name. It's going to feel like a resort, which is kind of cool when you go, you know, have all the amenities there for you. So I'm sure the HOA is going to be like 10 grand a month. It's going to be a lot. But the views from up there are great. And yeah, the mountains are right behind this community or it's built into the mountains. I hope they bought the air rights in front of the building. Because if anybody builds in front of them, people are going to be super mad. Yeah, I'm sure they I'm sure they did. So did you see the rendering of the Hawaiian marketplace replacement? Vital Vegas tweeted this, I guess it's from the construction wall. But this is going to be the mall that replaces the old Hawaiian marketplace, which was kind of a shopping center that always was like, I don't know, not very nice. It had a mix of things come and go. It wasn't the greatest place in the world. This new one looks a lot nicer. And it fits in a lot better in that area across from city center, across from Cosmo. And next to where Tillman Fertita will eventually build his, you know, Cosmo clone casino that we've talked about. Yeah, I mean, the renderings look amazing. One thing we always joke about is what do we need in Vegas more signs and more shopping. So we definitely were hitting the shopping, but it looks really cool. It definitely fits in with that cityscape center area, the city center design and all that. And I like that the second floor is open air, which is really cool. You know, I'm sure there'll be some rooftop bar action going on there, which is big in my world in my life. So I'm glad to see that. But I think it will fit a lot better. It'll be a lot nicer and bring more restaurants and stuff to check out. Yeah, the rooftop bar thing seems to be catching on in Vegas finally. And you know, Brew Dog opened that really beautiful rooftop bar. And it does seem like more of these new venues are getting those. And you're absolutely right. It looks like these kind of garden open areas on the on the upper level, which looks great. And especially in that area of the strip, we'll have some great views. And it's a good idea. So this is a big improvement. Can't wait to see if Tillman Fertita eventually gets started on that casino. But that area is also getting a huge amount of redevelopment. And it's already so great with city center Cosmo right there and everything else. So looking good there. So Tom Brady, maybe a Raiders owner soon. I kind of predicted this, although it wasn't like this was a big leap when he took ownership or part ownership of the WNBA aces also owned by Mark Davis, the Raiders owner. And now he's apparently in discussions to become a passive owner of the Raiders, meaning that he won't have an active role. So it won't affect his contract with Fox. They're paying him what like $375 million for 10 years to be a commentator something insane. He definitely wants the money. Yeah, exactly. But apparently he's in discussions. This is just rumors. So nothing confirmed yet. A couple years ago, right? Didn't the Miami Dolphins get in trouble for having discussions with him about becoming a passive owner while he was still a player and they lost a draft pick? Yeah, I mean, that actually made more sense to me because Stephen Ross, the owner of the dolphins is a Michigan grad. Tom Brady went to Michigan. So they had that tie in and I think he's friends with one of the minority owners of the dolphins too. So this whole Davis thing just seems weird because I didn't never knew them to like be friendly or anything and he buys into the WNBA now the NFL. So it just seems like a weird partnership type of thing. I don't know why Davis would sell chunk of his team. He's old. He's got a lot of money. He doesn't need it. So maybe just the cache of having Tom Brady attached to you. But we do know that the tuck rule happened against the Raiders and that kind of set off Tom Brady's career. So we've come full circle and he's back with the Raiders. Yeah, it's strange. You would think Tom Brady could partner with any team in the league. Anybody would sell him a few percent of their team just to have a bad hat. Yeah, exactly. Anybody but the Patriots. I don't think he'd be there. Yeah, that's true. Robert Kraff isn't selling. But you know, yeah, apparently he must have a good relationship. There was a reason he bought into the WNBA team and I feel like that was just a precursor to him trying to partner more fully. Maybe he likes the Las Vegas market. Who knows? But good for the Las Vegas Raiders if they could have his name attached to the team, even if he's in a passive role. So I hate to talk about this, but we have to just for a minute to update on the ballpark fiasco. We got a lot of hate in the last video, a lot of love, whatever people saying we don't understand how business works. So we don't understand how financing works. A lot of people agree with us. So we're not going to debate the comments, but a lot of interesting comments there. The Tropicana did release a FAQ about this. And they did finally come to an agreement with the A's and announced that publicly. So under that, the A's are basically getting the land for free. If this does happen and GLPI, the owner of the land will be, you know, in putting some money forward to do improvements. Bally's will be building a new casino that will be Bally's branded and the timeframe for the Tropicana to close will be 18 to 24 months from now. Again, if they can get that public financing bill passed in the legislature, the first version of the fact had a lot more information on it. And then Bally's, you know, replied that I think vital Vegas on Twitter with a new version of the fact that was very much pared down. You could tell the lawyers had gone through it very carefully. But basically, Bally's is going to build a new casino. Tropicana will be open for 18 to 24 months. And if you work there, you're probably going to be out of a job. If I, that's pretty much what they said, and then they backed off of it, but he kind of expected, you know, and then they'll get a special consideration if they apply at the new place. But I'm sure they'll find a different job, hopefully a better job if that does happen. But you know, the Tropicana sign coming to Neon Boneyard soon so we can go check it out at the museum. Yeah, it's sad. They already have an old Tropicana sign there, but it's sad to see this property go. I totally understand why it will have to. And again, like I said on the A's show or the last show that we did, Tropicana was going away either way in its current form. And it was always going to be rebranded to Bally's, even if they didn't tear down the entire building, whatever they were going to do, it wasn't going to remain as it is. And you know, those bungalows at Tropicana are the oldest buildings on the strip as far as hotel buildings. There might be an older one-off building somewhere. But the original flamingo buildings all gone. All the other old bungalow buildings gone. So I think those date back to the early 1960s. Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but they are the oldest hotel rooms in the strip area. And so that's a piece of history going away there. We also learned the A's ballpark has now been downsized to about 30,000 seats from 35,000 seats. And it will be nine acres. Now mark the stadium in Minneapolis as eight and a half acres. And there's a couple other ones on like nine, 10 acre lots. Very, very tight, but it is doable basically compared to some of those other stadiums out there. Yeah, it's funny because the Colosseum where they play now is I think the largest in MLB at like 55,000 or something. And I know it's mostly tart off all the time. Like the upper decks tarped off and they don't even allow people to go up there except for like playoff games and stuff. But to go from that to like one of the smaller ones, hopefully if they do build it, people will come and they'll spend money on the team. We'll see. I still am very skeptical that this plan ends up going through. It does seem like they have the backing now of the state politicians, unfortunately, for this public financing. They dropped the bags off the bags full on it. Yeah, exactly. So apparently there's a couple weeks left in this legislative session. We're told that by the end of this week, they should have a bill introduced and it does seem like the culinary unions behind it now. So I would if I had a bet on this, I would say that it's going to happen in its current form. But we will see nothing is done yet. And as you say, the traffic is going to be horrendous. There's only two ways out of that property on the Tropicana and on the Las Vegas Boulevard, both of which are very, you know, congested and the airport sits sort of behind that. So there's no way to kind of get people in and out other than tunnels. So I guess that will be the main strategy. One other quick point that they made is that, and I do agree with this, we have a lot of venues in Las Vegas, but they said this kind of sits nicely in between a Legion stadium at 60,000 seats and T-Mobile Arena at 18,000 seats. This will be 30,000. So maybe there will be a place for other events other than just baseball there. But yeah, it's still not the greatest location in the world if you're talking about logistics. Come on, move to Rio. Let's go. This isn't, I don't like this at all. I think we've lost. I think we've lost. The politicians are going to go along with this. And I think everybody who's been against it has lost at this point. It does seem like the writings on the wall and there's nothing that we can really do about it to stop it. But I mean, so now at this point, let's just hope it's a great venue. It'll be interesting to see what Bally's does with their 1500 room hotel casino, which will be a brand new build on the same land. This is going to be a very tight complex if you're talking about building a hotel casino plus a ballpark there. But it's more redevelopment on the strip. And then let's look at the wider landscape. You do have that Tillman Fertita Casino. Now the promises of a brand new Bally's, which has always sort of been there, then Fountain Blue opening up a few other spots around the strip where you could have potential casinos. You still have that win Westland. So if you look over the next 10 years, you are going to have a whole crop of new casinos starting basically with Resorts World. And so the strip is reinventing itself again. My question to you is which property do we lose? Circus Circus. I don't think so because it's an independent owner. But what happens if it only took a little bit of paint. That's all he did was put paint on it. Like you could still blow it up. Take it down, please. Like I said, perfect nostalgia. Take that down. I mean, my next, I mean, Flamingo, I think for some reason, I think we'll stay around Excalibur could be one. New York, New York would make sense. Possibly. Harris would be, yeah, take that out. Go for it. Yeah, I do think as you add more hotel rooms to the strip, you will lose some properties. I don't know what they will be. Obviously, Excalibur and Luxor about both been rumored to be torn down for a long time and redeveloped. And you know, it's interesting because MGM has put all their money into other markets. We talked about their Osaka Casino. They got rid of the land under most of their casinos. But they have all aging properties. Caesar's the same thing. Do we see any of these big companies invest in Las Vegas in a new casino, a new flagship? Because none of them have done that in a long time. Do we see win finally build win west or they just going to squat on that land? I can't imagine them selling that land to somebody else to build a casino across the street from them. So I think it's either win builds there or nothing for a long period of time. But we've seen only new players coming in with all these new casinos. I wonder if some of the old players build something eventually. I still think like certain think about it what's being built around circus circus that lands getting more valuable that's end of the strip is growing and everything up there is really high end for the most part. And then you have circus circus. Yeah, let us know in the comments what you think. What will Las Vegas look like in 10 years? What new casinos will we have? Which ones will we lose? I have to think we're going to lose some of these older casinos eventually as the strip reinvents itself. Las Vegas has reinvented itself basically every generation dating back to the 50s. And I'm excited for this sort of new generation and starting with resource world and fountain blue and then all of this new stuff that we have coming in the next four or five six years. Hopefully Tillman Furtito will break ground. The new valleys other sites. We got the dream. Oh yeah. The dream that shattered on a stock strip. Yeah, we still haven't heard. So I think it's still, you know, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. Maybe somebody else will take over the project. But I think it's still stalled out there. 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 MTM Vegas.com for all of our Vegas content. Thanks again for listening. Talk to you next time.