Virgin Hotels CEO Is Out, Guitar Hotel Is In & The Strip's Dream Is In Trouble!

Hello and welcome to the MTM Vegas Podcast. I'm Sean Coomier, your host, joined us always by Mark Osterman. We have a great show for you this week. 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 have a lot to discuss, including what St. Patrick's Day was like in Las Vegas, a super interesting casino gift for high rollers in a local casino. Some new tech that MTM Rewards has added to their program that'll make it easier for players. The Las Vegas Gateway Arch is getting a custom show and the NCAA tournaments happening in Las Vegas, but there was some trouble at Luxor. Plus, why the Vegas Loop is no longer going to the airport and why they made that decision. And a huge new casino project on the Strip is officially on hold. Is this a sign of trouble in Vegas once again? We'll discuss all of that on this show. You can find all of our Vegas content that we post, podcasts and videos at MTMVegas.com. Thanks so much for listening. Let's hit it. So Mark, we've talked about casino gifts before. They love to give away little chotch keys, but one casino here in Las Vegas, the Orleans recently up the ante. Blood pressure monitors for everybody. I think this admits who their target demographic is. Yeah, I mean, two years ago, they could have given away a thermometer and everybody would have thought it was the greatest thing ever. But this, it's funny because last week we talked about how the age of visitors to Vegas is dropping, you know, a 40 year average. And it's not the case for the Orleans. They must, they must be in the 70 plus age average. But it's super great, right? It goes right on your wrist. And, you know, when you hit a jackpot, you can make sure your blood pressure doesn't go too high. What will they think of next? They should tie it into a slot somehow where your blood pressure like helps you on the slot or something. I don't know. On the last show, Mark, we talked about the land sale of the Riviera and the new development that could potentially be there. And the review journal had an interesting article about the north end of the strip and how it's rebounding and sort of becoming the new hot center of the strip. And there's a lot of naysayers about that. There's a lot of people who don't think the north strip will ever be able to compete with the central and south strip to fully built out parts of the strip. And, you know, it's interesting. There's some other stuff in this article too about the developers. We talked about how they built Harmon Corner and then the project 63 on Harmon and Las Vegas Boulevard. They really are open to what they're going to do here. They could potentially be going for a casino. They say could be shopping. They want some sort of outdoor experience, again, only 10 acres. So we don't know what's going to go there. But do you buy the fact that the north end of the strip really is going to be the future of Las Vegas? I do. I think all of the money is going to go there. But a lot of people still rooting for MGM Caesars and all that stuff for their south. Yeah, I'm not so sure, just because it's not as walkable as the rest of the strip, you know, you don't feel like you want to be up there and about and hopping around. And maybe it gets there. But I think that's a couple decades away before that's a reality. And I'd love to see it continue to grow out to where it gets to the strat and even connects to like arts district and everything. I think that would be really cool. You know, that's kind of a desolate area somewhat right now. So I think it could be the future. I don't think I would put my money on it right now. But it definitely is a lot better than it was, you know, 10, 15 years ago. You make a great point. There's a lot of like gaps in the development there. But if we do see eventually a baseball stadium going into the festival ground site and Fountain Blue opens up, maybe that land, the AllNet Arena eventually gets built or something gets built there. Yeah, all those pieces of land are going to be filled in. When West, I would imagine somebody is going to develop that land, the old frontier site. So, you know, the, the, I guess the bones are there for it to happen. But you're right. It's going to take, you know, a decade or more of development. It's going to take a lot of money. And, you know, there's some big companies that own those casinos on the south end of the strip that are not going to stop investing. Although, you know, we've seen some curious investments lately with buildings falling apart and stuff. But I don't know that it's going to be one versus the other. It's just maybe more of an expansion of Las Vegas as a destination. Growth is what they're looking for. I will see. But Resorts World, you know, what do they say? 84% occupancy last year. So they, they clearly are drawing people up there. Yeah, I think Fountain Blue will just add to that and get more people in the area. You already have, you know, win up that way. That is a mainstay for a lot of folks. So if you give them more options, like I feel like when kind of had, you know, a honeypot for a bit there, people would come and they wouldn't really leave the resort because there was, wasn't really super easy to get anywhere else. There's nothing else to do. So they just kind of were captive at win. And now they're opening up things. So I wonder how that will play in their, their future, their timeline, if that will hurt them at all. But you know, it's better for people that are visiting that area. For sure. So let us know what you guys think. Is the north end of the strip the future? Is it just going to be growth or are these properties going to struggle kind of more isolated than they are down in the south? Now, speaking of Resorts World, they rebranded their Infinity Pool to the Athena Infinity Ultra Pool. Got an email about this. I wasn't sure if it was new, but it does seem like it is. Previously, they did charge to get in there and it was adults only. So I don't know what's changed, but the prices are pretty steep to get a chair in this area. $150, a daybed $400, all the way up to $2,000 for party bungalows. Did you notice and all the marketing and stuff that they always take the picture of the Infinity Pool at a very specific angle so that you can't see the dirt lot below it? Yeah, I mean, if a infinity pool usually looks at an ocean view or something really great and this looks at dirt lot or whenever they have an event, you know, and they're filling it in, there'll be something to look at, I guess. You know, it is a beautiful space. It's unfortunate that it overlooks the dirt lot, but I pull itself, that area is really nice. It is, it's beautiful, $150 for a chair though. I just, I don't know, I mean, at least circus swim, you know, circus stadium swim, you're, you can use it on drinks and stuff like that. Like it's a minimum, so much so and I just feel terrible, like, okay for a chair, like just to get in here seems I got, well, this is terrible. Let me say no, did they, did they, is that just a flat charge? I could never find it or is it like a minimum? Did you ever see? I think it's a flat charge for rental. I went on their website, I clicked through to the chair, I picked one and it said $150. Yeah, it looks like they're kind of adopting the stadium swim thing. I agree, like just, it's just way too much money. I don't know. Maybe it's a way to make your high rollers feel like they're getting something for free when you offer it to them and they are putting a fake price tag on it. Just for that, I don't see a lot of people, you know, wanting to go to resource world and spend $2,000 on a cabana. It just doesn't have that, that vibe or that draw, like somewhere you'd see at like a wind pool or something along those lines. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but I love the marketing, how they hit all the bad parts. Classic Vegas. All right, and let's move on the MGM and we got some information from some of their executives and basically talking about conventions and how conventions are coming back in 2023. They did some talking about how the rates that a lot of these conventions were booked at for this year were lower because they were booked during the pandemic when hotel rates were less. So they're not getting the kind of high rates that they've been used to and how they expect that to change going forward, how conventions book now are at a significantly higher rate. And basically, just saying that the convention business is strengthened, it's pretty close to 2019 levels, not quite there. So another step forward, as much as people didn't think conventions were going to come back, all of the messaging seems to be that while not quite to 2019 levels, prices are higher for stuff they're booking now and people are booking. People want to see each other in person. Yeah, and I wonder if Vegas is kind of, you know, like a niche thing for this or if conventions are coming back everywhere at this rate, I feel like Vegas kind of is like the first domino to fall for conventions to bring people back and they're stealing it from other areas. So I wonder if this is a nationwide thing or just a Vegas thing. I mean, it's good to see it's surprising to me. I didn't think it would be, you know, to this level this quickly, but it's good to see, but room rates are just going to keep going up and up. But, you know, if you're filling it with conventions now, the regular person's just going to get priced out. One other interesting thing from this article was they talked about an increase in premium players and premium customers across their regional brands. So they're drawing in higher-end people. And, you know, I guess that just fits in with everybody spending more money. Not quite understanding where all this money is coming from, but they are saying it's noticeable that they have more premium people spending more money. So things looking pretty good, I think, for MGM. We didn't think otherwise, but yeah, they're spending $2 on Japan as well. Another thing. All the rich people got richer during the pandemic. That's where all the money is going. All right, let's not start getting everybody crazy in the comments. So let's move to something a little brighter. St. Patrick's Day, March Madness. This was a busy week in Las Vegas. The weekend rates, I was looking at like a hotel for my birthday last Thursday, and hotel rates were just insane. It was the first day of March Madness, plus of course, the night before St. Patrick's Day, which fell on a Friday. And it was cool to see all around town Vegas was busy. All the different St. Patrick's Day celebrations. All the sports books doing good. Stadium swim full, of course. So Vegas doing March Madness right. And I heard that Michigan State won. Yeah, that's why I'm still wearing the gear, otherwise it'd be in the closet somewhere. But no, we used to go every year for March Madness opening weekend. It was always a really good time. And I have to say, I was seeing stuff on Twitter, and I missed it, texting my buddies. And they're all like, I kind of miss it. We should be there, especially now that first time in a couple years that state's done well in the tournament. So, we're all kind of longing for that experience again. So I think we might put it on the docket for next year, maybe do second weekend and just hope they make it to the second weekend, where it dies down a bit. First weekend is just always kind of crazy, man. It's definitely like the busiest weekend in Vegas that I've ever been. Yeah. And in the timing with St. Patrick's Day happening on a weekend, it all just sort of converged in. And yeah, we saw crazy crowds everywhere, people on Fremont Street doing that. And you came across this and we thought it'd be a good reminder to people for stadium swim. If you're ever planning on going to circa, and you don't want to pay the circa prices, if you stay at the D or a Golden Gate, you also get access to stadium swim, which could be a good way, especially if you're on like a boys trip, not going to spend a lot of time in the room, don't want something as nice as circa, but still want access to that. A good reminder for these sports centric weekends that you can stay there as well. Yeah, you get, I think it's two free passes per stay. So, you know, plan accordingly, you know, use it today that you think you're going to be there the longest for sure. But that's a nice perk because you still have your regular hotel pool, which probably isn't great because it's an old, you know, an old building that you're staying at. But that's cool that you're going to access there for free and the rates are usually, you know, pretty cheap at Golden Gate or the D comparatively. So that's nice to see. And it's good to tie it all in. So Mark, we've been redeemed. John Curtis from Eating Wells Vegas went and ate at MY Asia at Horseshoe. And of course, people gave us such a hard time because we didn't know who Martin Yan was. But John Curtis says he's calling it in. This is just blah, corporate food, not anything. And apparently he was a big fan of this chef. So yeah, so that was your kind of expert review of MY Asia. They also popped on the marquee, the screens turned on. So we saw some testing this week at Horseshoe. So things continue to move along there. But I guess this MY Asia is just another corporate Caesar zone restaurant kind of uninspired, or at least according to John. Yeah, and that's not surprising. You know, Caesar's has kind of gone that way. And everything's just like a rehash of what they already have. And you know, when you put a celebrity chef name on a whole bunch of restaurants, they're definitely not going to be there for quality control to make sure it's the best it can be. And they're just relying on people like they put the menu together maybe. And that's it. You know, a lot of times it's just slapping their name on. So I'm not surprised here. And then what was the other one with the burger? The bun looked all depressed and sad. It was like the saddest burger I've ever seen. Yeah, he also went to Beast Boat Kitchen and got the hamburger there. That was a sad looking burger. I mean, it wasn't sad, but it looked a little smashed, not quite what you would want. They got the Martha Stewart potato treatment. That's what happened. A lot of people don't know that the Caesar's corporate restaurants are owned by Caesar's or the chef restaurants are owned by Caesar's. So all the Gordon Ramsay, the Guy Fieri, Giada, all those restaurants are owned and operated by Caesar's. So to your point, it might have the chef's name. He might work on the menu, but he's not involved in day to day operations. And you know, this is essentially just another restaurant owned by Caesar's. But you know, as much as everybody loved this guy and you know, he's been around forever and has a good reputation for his other restaurants. Sad to hear that, but I'd love to hear from anybody who goes there because you know, John Curtis can be a little, you know, a little hoity-toity with his reviews. So maybe other people have a different take. Although I will say John knows his food. I'm not, I'm not challenging him on that. He definitely ordered a lot of stuff. That table was full, man. Like, it wasn't like he went in and had one plate and was like, yeah, it was okay. Like he sampled some stuff it looks like. All right. And our big story of the week, we've talked about Virgin Hotel since it opened. We've covered it. Everybody seems to agree with us that the vibe in there is just, I don't know, boring. I got to cut you off. This blows my mind what came out of this. So, okay, go ahead. Okay. That the Virgin CEO, I guess I'll skip to the, to the good part, the Virgin CEO, Richard Bosworth is leaving. He's leaving Virgin at the end of March. He's an investor and a partner in the company that owns it. And it says he's going to stay on as an investor, but he is leaving the operations that's the CEO of the hotel. And it was his idea to sort of bring in all these different brands and sort of the disconnected Hilton here and Mohican Sun and the Casino, different shop operators, even a different operator for the theater, everything else. It doesn't seem to have worked. I guess maybe this is a sign that they're going to bring in somebody with some fresh ideas to try to turn this place around. We'll read down on the notes, like the, the hotel occupancy is better than it was ever at Hard Rock. What? Yeah, that was a, that was definitely a takeaway as I saw that. Well, I mean, the hotel is nice. I've talked about how I enjoyed my hotel room there. You know, it's very virgin. It's very sort of sparse, modern, but it's really comfortable. I, I really enjoyed my room. In fact, I said it's one of the best airport hotels in the country, but once you leave it and, you know, but once you go to the Casino, it just all falls apart, I think. Yeah, where are the people going? That's what I want to know. Like, Hard Rock was a beloved property. And I, I realized a lot of people went there just to gamble and hang out and maybe not stay as much, but it was still pretty busy, you know, for, for rooms. So the fact that they're, you know, renting out more rooms than the, in the history of Hard Rock kind of blew my mind. And then where are the people going? I've been in that casino several times and every time there's like maybe three people in their gambling, it's bizarre. The one Mexican restaurants are usually pretty busy, but I don't know where everybody else is going unless that's just like a, a cheap crash pad that they're staying at and then go into the strip or whatever. And maybe that's where they found their little market, but I was shocked when I read that. I thought it had to be a typo. Maybe it shows you that the Virgin brand is good and strong for the hotel side, right? Because that's really the, the branding of the property Virgin hotels. And if that is kind of drawing people into the hotel, I think that it shows that maybe they have a product where they can draw other people, but that whole place doesn't feel Virgin. The hotel does, but the casino doesn't, the rest of it doesn't. It feels like 10 different people designed it and they really need somebody to come in and I don't know how they fix this because they have outside merchants for everything and contracts and everything else, but they need to make the place more Virgin. And I think that that, you know, occupancy thing shows that there is a desire for the Virgin brand. It's a very popular brand. A lot of people love it and this property didn't quite achieve it, but maybe with some new leadership, they'll figure it out. Get rid of the airport, Dunkin Donuts and Hudson News, please. But no, yeah, if they would have done it all Virgin, I think it would have been a smashing success. Like, I think there's definitely a market for that. That's what I was excited for. I was hoping for like the hotel and chagrin were basically the only two places that that did that. And if they could have done that across the whole casino restaurants, everything, I think it would be packed every night. And it's another thing that's really interesting. I'm going on Virgin Voyages. Their cruise line later this week and Virgin Voyages is really owned by Bain Capital with Virgin having a very minority stake. Basically, it's a branding exercise, although Virgin Cruises or Virgin Voyages is known to be pretty high quality. This is sort of a similar thing. Virgin is only loosely involved in this. Richard Branson owns a very minority stake. So it seems like Virgin has franchised a lot of their stuff, even if they have small ownership stakes. And they're not really involved. And I wonder if the brand sort of got lost somewhere here, but this is the first shakeup. We've been kind of waiting for something like this to happen. Bosworth, if they can turn around, he still owns part of the company. So he'll still do well. But I wonder what he's going to do next. It does say he's moving on to somewhere else in hospitality. So we might see him show up somewhere along the line. He's going to go mess up palms or something. So Mark, did you see that big rescue on Fremont Street of the zip liner? Got stuck in the middle. This one's happened to my son over like a 400 foot gorge in Thailand. But I think it's pretty cool to have it happen right on Fremont Street. Yeah, over a gorge would definitely be worse. I'd be panicking. But yeah, it's just weird that both happened at the same time. So there must have been some type of glitch. I hope they got another free ride because it's kind of lame to just get stuck there. But also kind of funny, you know, the one guy waving to the other guy as he leaves. I have to think it has to be a little embarrassing. You get like messed up with your friends. They make in front of you for being the guy who couldn't complete the course. But you get that slow view as you go down. I feel like it would be worth it. And like you said, hopefully they got another ride. Yeah, two for one. There you go. There's the deal. We have a lot to cover on this show. A lot of big stuff happened this week. Let's start with MGM. I guess they are finally getting into the 21st century. They are finally allowing you to just have your free play on your card. I guess previously what you had to go to the MGM Rewards Desk in order to load it. Now it's just loaded to your card. Like it is. It's so many other casinos. Welcome to 2023 MGM Rewards. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about like how Cosmo has a much better system for all this type of stuff. Everything's loaded to the card. And it's annoying like even to get the celebration dinner at Caesars. You know, forever you had to go get that printed off slip. And now it's added to the card for some, but not others. And so that's kind of annoying. But it's good to see, you know, to get rid of these player clubs. There's always a line. They're hard to find. So if we get it to where everything is just kind of happens organically, it would be so much better. Or, you know, where you can just go to those machines and get it taken care of. I hate waiting in line at players clubs. So this is good news. It seems like the locals, casinos use those machines and kiosks a lot more for their promotions. Like they have, you know, gamble on Wednesday, earn this or and they have different vouchers that print out. And it doesn't seem like the strip casinos use those quite as much and they rely more on you going to the desk. So anything to help you avoid those lines, especially when you don't have status and then you're in Caesars. Even when you're in the diamond line, do you hate that you're in the diamond line at Caesars and then a seven stars member comes up in the other line and he, so you think you're the top dog and then somebody else outclasses you. That's annoying. Or like when they grab from the wrong line, when they grab from the gold or platinum or whatever and you're like, wait, no, that's not how it's supposed to work. Like I should be next. You know, it's stupid stuff. Yeah. It's like the taxi line like, oh, no, I'm not going to wait in line next to you. Thank you. So yeah, good news on MGM rewards. If you have free play should be a lot easier to use. The punk rock museum is opening on April 1st. We had talked about this a while ago when it was announced, but it is opening downtown Las Vegas not far from Fremont Street, although not on Fremont Street. It's more in downtown proper, I'd say. They say it's the most expansive, inclusive and intimate display of artifacts, flyers, photos, clothing, instruments, handwritten lyrics, artwork, and just about everything else donated by the people and bands who were there. Punk rock coming to Las Vegas. Exciting. I wonder if they like bought a lot of the stuff from like defunct plant Hollywood's. All the memorabilia that are in those restaurants and stuff and hard rock. But no, it's something it is kind of like a weird location. It's almost in like arts district, but a little bit outside of it. So I wonder if that'll play against it. You know, you're not going to get a lot of foot traffic there. I wouldn't think but I guess if you're hanging out in arts district, it's something you can go check out. Definitely something if you're into punk rock music, you want to go see. The question is, somebody made a joke on Twitter, like, you know, how far do they push this out? Does it end up nickel back as in there? Oh, no, we'll see. I hope to get down there. Check it out. You know what always surprised me. You talk about memorabilia. Just how much memorabilia there is. Like when you go to hard rocks and you go to all these places, there is so much memorabilia everywhere. Like every outfit that certain people wore and you know, certain artists and it's crazy that there's like a whole ecosystem around that stuff. Yeah, remember one time I had the Planet Hollywood, a suite at the Planet Hollywood in Vegas and you know, the table had stuff in it like glass over top and they had stuff from like Judge Dred or something like that like Wesley Snipe stuff from movies and all kinds of old trinkets. But yeah, every set has so much stuff that you can, you know, sell. So I wonder how much that's kind of interesting. Like how much do movies make selling all their swag and memorabilia after the movie's done? Maybe somebody out there knows, let us know. Now, speaking of artists, Taylor Swift is coming to town and that was that big tour that sold out in minutes, caused all the controversy with Ticketmaster. But Las Vegas is welcoming her with custom decoration on the arch. There, I guess they're putting colors that correspond to her different eras of her music. And I think it looks pretty cool. And I like the fact that they're going to maybe decorate this differently for different people, different events. What do you think? Yeah, I think it looks cool. And I definitely need to get down there. I haven't been under the arch since it's been up and it looks cool, especially at night. So something to go out of your way for and get stuck in traffic for a bit if you need to. So I want to see, but yeah, it's cool that they're matching that up. You know, we're talking about the Yukon men's basketball team in a bit and maybe they owe them some of that after what they had to go through in Vegas. They should put some blue and red white lights on it for a night. Yeah, we should give them some love. So let's talk about that Yukon men's basketball team is here to play in the sweet 16 at T-Mobile Arena. And they check into their hotel. I'm not going to say what hotel it is, but apparently there is dirt, vomit, and worse. That's according to the article. Why are you going to say which one? I mean, I guess I want people to get an Egyptian. I want people out there to formulate their guesses to what hotel this was. Now we will tell you it is the 30 per period. They have a lot of nice renovated rooms. I've stayed there. I haven't had these issues. So I think this is more about housekeeping. But yeah, apparently they get to their room. They said basically it looked like the people who were there before did the movie The Hangover. Yeah, like vomit and stuff. You don't want to see that. You expect a little bit of dirt these days in Vegas just because they're not cleaning them as often or as nicely as they used to. I mean, we talked about in the past like Aria had feces on the side of toilet and stuff when a friend checked in and all that. So housekeeping. But this is a big event coming. You rented out all these rooms, a block room. Whoever is the manager of housekeeping should definitely get in some trouble for this. If there's any room that you go check, it's these rooms that are coming for a team that's playing in an event. It's going to be headline news if they get something bad. So it just kind of blows my mind that this still happens on stuff like that. Yeah, you're right. I mean, this made national news. There's a lot of articles about it. Although most articles don't mention the hotel, but we found that information on Twitter from the original author. So it was the Luxor. Apparently they moved up to resource world. That's the rumor. Their opponents were staying at Vidara, a much better choice when you're playing at T-Mobile. So maybe Yukon, sheeped out here. I don't know. But I agree with your point. This doesn't make Las Vegas look good. It doesn't make Luxor look good. And I think it probably reinforces what a lot of people already think about the pyramid, even though I like the newly renovated rooms. And I think they're perfectly fine. Yeah, I'm surprised that they would even use this as an option. And you would think that the NCAA would be the one setting up the hotels and everything. And there's so many hotels right around like Park MGM's right there. No Mads right there. Why wouldn't you be putting people there? And maybe there's other teams in this. So maybe they did. But you kind of got the short end of the stick. But Resorts World is not the best option for this. They could have walked from Vidara if they want to. Now they're gonna have to do buses and stuff, which isn't a huge deal, but it's still not as convenient as it would have been. I'm sure they were just happy to walk into a clean, modern room and not have to deal with non- soulless. Even if it's soulless. All right. Well, speaking of soulless, and I don't think this is soulless, but I think a lot of people probably do, especially because it's considering it's replacing the Mirage Volcano. But the Guitar Hotel was officially approved by the county this week. Remember, we brought you all the details when they went in front of the gaming commission last year. And they said that the height could vary in the number of rooms. But basically, the guitar tower is happening. We know it's going to be 600 rooms, 660 feet tall. Now, the one in Florida is 450 feet tall. So this is significantly taller than that one. And it is now approved. So we know that they're not going to start construction until late 23, but probably early 24. And they're going to completely redevelop the property. And most importantly, that volcano is gone. It's going away. Nobody's going to save it. Apparently, there is a petition for to save it change.org 8,974 people have signed it. But nobody showed up at the county commission meeting to protest this. So yeah, nobody cared. Yeah, I was surprised when I saw, you know, under 10,000 signatures. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard. And with how many people are about Vegas, how many people have commented about the volcano going away? I would have thought that would have been like, you know, six figures or more on that. So that just goes to show, you know, things are changing. And I guess more people are empathetic to it than we imagined. But I'm looking forward to when this thing's built going into the sky bar at the Waldorf and sitting there and staring at it, I think it'll be like the best spot, one of the best spots. I mean, I guess you can go to Manly Bay, go to the sky, the rooftop bar there or at Delano. But I think that would be like a cool spot. You got like, were you looking up to it a little bit versus down? So I'm excited for that. I think there's going to be a lot of good vantage points, whether it's there further south in the strip, maybe the Eiffel Tower. You're going to get cool views from some of the other hotels that already exist. The guitar is designed to resemble back-to-back guitars with brightly lit strings. It has that light that kind of shines off into the air similar to the Luxor light. And I'll show some video of what it looks like. In Florida at night, it's beautiful. The shows are incredible that they put on it. I had seen it during the day, you know, a couple years ago. And then just recently, like last month, I saw it at night and just loved it. So I'm looking forward to the shows. And then they're also going to put some sort of strip side music technology show. So they are replacing the volcano in some way. So we should be happy about that. But this is going to be a completely different property. And one that's going to be exciting to kind of watch as it develops. Yeah, I was waiting for you when you started to roll up there with the strip side. I was waiting for you to say screen. Well, no, please, no. I'm sure there will be screens involved. Now, Vegas Loop is back in the news. We talked about their millionth passenger. And, you know, they had dropped a 69 station number. And that didn't kind of gel with their map. But we didn't see what the updated plans were. And this week, TechCrunch dug into some stuff. And about a month ago, I guess they submitted a new plan for Vegas Loop to the city of Las Vegas, because they're trying to get approval. So, but for people who don't know, the strip is in Clark County. And then kind of where the stratosphere sits, that's the start of Las Vegas. That's where the arches and stuff. So that's different planning approvals and everything else. The city of Las Vegas is giving boring a harder time with approvals for their safety, for their evacuations, even concerns about them building tunnels underneath the stratosphere and the stability of all of that. So they are still working through a lot of the approvals for this. But they released this new map, which has basically doubled the stations. Not quite double, but it's huge. And it goes to some other places, like Chinatown. And there's more UNLV stops. And so there's definitely some expanded stops for locals or for more residential areas. But they also took the airport off of it. Of course they did. No, that's just that's too fun. This was the one thing everybody wanted was airport. That's all anybody cared about when all started. Why can't we get a monorail to the airport? Why can't we get something to the airport? And then they take it off. I mean, it's too funny. And we've been wondering if this was ever going to get done. And now they're like, let's double down on it. And we're gonna have to hire half of Vegas to drive cars in our tunnels to get this thing going. It's just blows my mind a bit. Some of it's strange too that there's stations that are literally blocks away from each other. It seems like it's just too much. And you know, these stations are going to cost between like one and a half and 10 million depending on what they are. Most of them will be above ground like we see at the convention center. So they won't be underground, which makes it a lot cheaper, I guess, to build the stations. So boring builds the tunnels. And then I guess whoever like the casino will pay for the station, that's sort of the idea. The one good thing about this is it's completely privately funded. So there's no public funding here. The monorail was privately funded as well. So we're doing that, but I don't quite get why taking the airport off and then not just like focusing on, you know, getting these casinos open getting that first part of it open. There is a new kind of parallel tunnel that runs parallel to the strip. So it does seem like they added other tunnels, kind of, I guess, help with easing traffic or whatever. But yeah, this is what it's supposedly going to look like. We'll see if they build it. But no airport really hurts. And I don't get it. I guess the taxis are happy. Yeah, and I hate the airport, taxi line, Uber line, all that. So I was looking forward to this. It's something to alleviate some of that pressure, some of that stress. I mean, it's still like a 10, 15 minute ride to most places from the airport. So it's not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to get that, you know, that's a huge portion of the traffic around the strip is taxis going to and from the airport. So it would have been nice to see some of that, you know, pulled off the streets. But you know, it is what it is at this point. Yeah. And in this mess of a map, there's another thing. It's the tunnel is built all the way down to Blue Diamond in Las Vegas Boulevard, which of course is where the Bright Line station is supposed to be. So hopefully, at least that will tie into Bright Line if and when that ever gets built, although Bright Line not to give a huge update, but they are still marching forward. They keep getting more approvals and they say they could be star construction as early as late this year. So we'll see how Bright Line goes. But, you know, maybe 10 years from now, we'll have the high speed train coming in, the Vegas loop all over the city mark. It's going to be glorious. And then mine cars will come out. I don't know. And the dream hotel is going to be open, beautiful on the south end of the strip, which brings us to our next story, the dream hotel. So there's a lot of big new projects coming to Las Vegas that have been announced. And one of them is the dream hotel on the South Strip, basically across from Mandalay Bay or next to Las Vegas sign, a little bit south of Mandalay Bay. And this company announced this project right before COVID. And then of course, COVID came, they put it on hold. There was also a lot of concern with the airport that there was balconies and that people could like shoot or there could be bombs and stuff because it's right next to the airport property. So then they had to redesign the whole hotel. And then dream hotels got bought by Hyatt. Now that's the operating company. So there's the company that owns the property that's building it and then Hyatt dream hotels will manage it when it opens. And the company that's building it, they've been funding it themselves, waiting for their financing to come through. We've seen the banking crisis, higher interest rates, and apparently their funding hasn't come through yet. They hope in the next few weeks it will, but they owe like $25, $30 million to contractors. This is how it all starts. This doesn't look good. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you, but me, I usually don't start something until I know I can pay for it. Oh, you think they would have delayed a bit until they had this funding locked up and guaranteed and a way to roll out. And you know, it's terrible for all these people working at the at the construction site that aren't getting paid or, you know, maybe the construction company has to front the bills, contractors, all that stuff, until they get the money. So I'm hopeful that they get it because I wouldn't want all those people to get stiffed, but just seems like a really bad decision on their part to get this ball rolling without, you know, we're only talking $30 million, $40 million. What's this supposed to cost like $550 million? So it's just a small drop in the bucket of the total cost and they're already struggling. Yeah, they announced that they had agreed to terms with a lender when they started the project. And then they said that the details kind of didn't get worked out. As we know, interest rates have risen. So the cost of borrowing that money has gone up substantially. And the one kind of concerning thing is that when projects die, this is how it happens, right? They something happens, they're not able to pay the contractors, work gets put on hold, they say, oh, we're going to get financing. We saw this happen quite often back in the Great Recession, even, you know, obviously with Fountain Blue, even Cosmo had a cause, I believe, construction at a certain point for their, you know, for everything to happen. So hopefully it will just be a few weeks and they will get their financing, but this could turn into a longer issue. And then who knows, we might end up with another stalled project. So, you know, there's a lot of naysayers out there in the comments, especially always talking about, you know, Las Vegas is going to bust after this little boom that we've had. And I mean, this certainly could be evidence for them, but I feel like we should wait to see if, you know, in the next few weeks they can get this fixed. If not, if it starts stretching out to months, then I'd be worried. Yeah, but this is kind of what we've been seeing over the last couple of weeks. We saw the person back out of buying the land behind where the Riviera used to be. Now somebody else is buying it, but he was worried about construction costs and financing and all that stuff. And then what is his name for Tita? He's backing cooling off a little bit of building his, his casino and everything. And he doesn't know what he's going to do. And we'll see how it plays out. So that's, you know, a row of things and the Rio hasn't started anything yet. And that's been a couple of years now. So it just seems like everything's kind of in a holding pattern for the time being, which is understandable. And there are other projects around that that have been announced, just like local projects, condo projects, stuff like that that are kind of on hold too. So yeah, I mean, this is a uncertain kind of time with the higher interest rates. But you're right, there's a few different kinds of signs of concern. I think it's good that the Riviera site sold and it even sold for higher than what the original buyer was going to pay for it. And for Tita, while he may be holding off or kind of, you know, buying his time before he announces anything, he did buy a spend a lot of money on that land. And you know, there is definitely still hope, I think here in Las Vegas, you have the projects like Fountain Blue and the sphere and other stuff that's so far along, it's going to get finished. Also Durango, the new casino from station casinos definitely going to open this year. So yeah, we do have some good stuff, but this is concerning. And I wouldn't be surprised if the dream hotel doesn't get built just because of the location and everything else. But let's hope that they get the loan because it looks like a cool boutique casino property, something different than what we see elsewhere with those mega resorts. Yeah, well, you can go hang out with the pinball hall of fame, you know, for a little bit and back to your room. So it's good. That was the other crazy thing about this. So many problems, there was COVID, there was having to redesign the building. And then when they finally figured it out, the pinball hall of fame built eight feet into the dreams land. I guess the maps were wrong or something and they eventually settled this. There was a lawsuit and then they settled it, happy neighbors now, but there's been so many kind of problems with this hotel. They finally cleared them and now they don't have the money. I'd love to know what everybody out there thinks about the dream hotel. Do you think it's going to get built? Do you think it's, it's done so? 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.