Category: Entertainment

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Swingers Golf at Mandalay Bay

On November 8, Swingers adults-only golf club and high-end entertainment venue opened its flagship location at Mandalay Bay. It was the latest in a line — Atomic Golf next to STRAT and Pop Stroke extreme mini-golf at Town Square — of golf attractions arriving in Las Vegas.

Swingers is the first thing you encounter when you enter MBay on the ground level from the parking garage. It’s on the left and occupies the entire wall that stretches into the casino’s dining area.

The 40,000-square-foot two-story venue encompasses two bars, a street-food eatery, an arcade, and four “crazy-golf” courses; founded in London, Swingers claims to have pioneered the “competitive-socializing” mini-golf experience. Swingers debuted in 2014 and currently operates six locations: two in London, one in Washington, D.C., one in New York City, one in Dubai, and the Vegas venue, with a location coming to Boston.

From the main lobby, you walk up to the first level and immediately encounter a very long bar.

From there, you descend half a floor to the lower two nine-hole golf courses: Balloon on the left, Clocktower on the right. At the far end of the bar is Emmy’s Squared, the restaurant. At the near end is a selfie room.

You go up a flight of stairs to the second floor for another long bar and two more nine-holes. Carnival, the arcade, is at the near end of the second floor.

If you’re used to expansive outdoor miniature-golf courses, like PopStroke’s, you’ll be surprised by how small these are, being indoors; they can get pretty crowded at prime times. Still, the courses are imaginative and challenging, with lots of neon and such obstacles as windmills, waterwheels, and carousels, jumps, and loops.

Swingers is an attraction that proves an evolving rule in Vegas: LOUD IS THE NEW FUN! Fronting the otherwise uninhabited two-story English country house is a DJ spinning relentless monotonous electronic dance music, every track in four-four time: BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom BOOM boom boom boom. Forget trying to have a conversation; forget even hearing the specials recited by a waiter at Emmy’s.

As for the Carnival, the arcade collects 6-10 credits per game and you pay $10 for 48 credits (20.5 cents) or roughly $1.20-$2 per game. Higher spend lowers the price per credit (12.5 cents per $100). Examples: Wack n Win is 6 credits, Wack a Hole 8 credits, Bowler Roller 10. The games dispense tickets that you redeem for logo merch.

On our visit a week or so after it opened, Swingers had an unbelievable number of people working: waiters, bartenders, cocktail runners, security, suits, and at least 12 people in the kitchen. We wouldn’t be surprised to hear that, like Atomic Golf, they lay off people soon. In the meantime, you can sit anywhere and you’ll be immediately approached for service.

At the bars, bottled and draft Heineken, Coors Light, Budweiser, Michelob and the like are $10, craft beers $14. Wine by the glass starts at $15 and goes up to $26. Proseco by the glass is $18, with bottles up to $990 for Krug Vintage. Sangria is $17, espresso $23, cocktails start at $12 go to $26, or splurge on eight-year-old scotch for $142. Nightclub prices, almost.

Emmy’s Squared is a Brooklyn-born Detroit-style pizza and burger place. You can get three kinds of pizza by the slice: cheese, pepperoni, and pepperoni-pineapple ($10). A chicken sandwich, meatballs, chicken parm, burgers, and double burgers are $16-$23. Waffle fries are $10 and Caesars salad $19. We tried a slice of pepperoni. The frico crust was marginal and it’s baked with honey as a topping. We don’t know about you, but we don’t want honey on our pepperoni pizza and we didn’t finish the lone slice ($10.84 with tax).


A round of crazy golf starts at $35 per person and ticket packages are available for purchase that include cocktails, street food, crazy golf, and reserved seating. And whatever you do, don’t forget that you’ll pay $20-$23 to park at Mandalay Bay. If you go, make sure Swingers is open and not closed for a private party, which happened to a member when he went, so you don’t pay to park for nothing.

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Rooms for NYE

This year’s rate check was conducted on Dec. 2 and turned up 86 casinos that have rooms available for New Year’s Eve, compared to 91 last year. The number of nights is the minimum required stay; the dollar amount is the total cost; resort fees aren’t included. 

1 night: Buffalo Bill’s $148, Westin Lake Las Vegas $152, Sam’s Town $157, Railroad Pass $159, Longhorn $168, Hotel Jefe $170, Skyline $180, Hilton Lake Las Vegas $189, Circus Circus $197, Lexi $199, Boulder Station $199, Sunset Station $199, Silver Sevens $209, Santa Fe Station $219, Suncoast $224, South Point $225, Main Street Station $231, Cannery $239, Palace Station $243, Oasis @ Gold Spike $269, Aliante $276, Downtown Grand $276, Four Queens $289, Hotel Apache $289, Az. Charlie’s Boulder $298, El Cortez $299, Golden Gate $299, Tuscany $329, Strat $349, Westin Las Vegas $351, Az. Charlie’s Decatur $365, Westgate $390, California $399, English $399, Green Valley Ranch $399, Ellis Island $424, Sahara $424, Silverton $429, Gold Coast $475, Orleans $476, Red Rock $499, Rio $499, M Resort $509, OYO $605, MGM $649, Cromwell $721, Trump $730, Circa $799, Fontainebleau $944, Four Seasons $975, Caesars Palace $1,186, Nobu $1,311

2 nights: Golden Nugget $488, Plaza $510, Excalibur $520, Luxor $524, The D $568, TI $633, Fremont $693, Mandalay Bay $710, Flamingo $735, Virgin $740, Harrah’s $748, Delano $791, Palms $792, Palms Place $802, Resorts World $898, Durango $919, JW Marriott $933, Horseshoe $946, NYNY $1,018, Park MGM $1,018, Linq $1,046, Elara $1,152, MGM Signature $1,152, Paris $1,260, Vdara $1,354, Aria $1,359, Waldorf Astoria $1,490, Planet Hollywood $1,496, Cosmopolitan $1,680, Bellagio $1,708, Venetian $2,085, Palazzo $2,138

3 nights: Encore $2,297, Wynn $2,297

Sold Out or N/A: Casino Royal, Eastside Cannery, NoMad, Platinum, Primm, Serene, Whiskey Pete’s

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Miss Behave’s Mavericks

Plaza

Wed – Sun 7 p.m.
Sat 7 & 9 p.m.

$35-$99

“Miss Behave” is the stage name of Amy Saunders, a British-born performer, comedian, and producer best known for her sword-swallowing prowess. Self-taught in the skill (it’s not an illusion; sword swallowers actually take the sword up to the hilt — down the esophagus and into the stomach), she started swallowing swords in London in 1996 and has set several records for the feat. She’s also a producer who’s been running her own variety revues since 2008, including Miss Behave’s Game Show, which appeared at Bally’s (now the Horseshoe) between 2018 and 2020.

Miss Behave’s Mavericks launched in March 2022 at Cheapshot, a Fremont East bar and small theater, and lasted nearly a year. In August 2023, it was announced the Mavericks was moving to the Plaza Showroom, where it opened late last month. We’d heard intriguing things about Miss Behave and her shows over the years and we like the showroom — small but spacious and comfortable, excellent sound system and acoustics — so we attended a Saturday early show shortly after it opened.

Saunders was described by the BBC as “a live cartoon with a late-night attitude” and she lives up to the characterization, emceeing Mavericks in her lilting British accent, cracking jokes, ad libbing, stepping off the stage and prowling the audience so you almost feel part of the show, and generally keeping things moving along at a rapid clip — in her words, “lubricating the situation.”

This is a variety show with a number of sharp edges. Acts we’ve never seen before include a woman twerking to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a prima ballerina and a lady in a gorilla suit doing stripteases, the hula-hoop artist performing in a duck mask to the Vietnam song “Bird Is the Word,” and another stripper riding an oversized bucking spinning balloon dog.

Two acrobats, one aerial, the other on a four-handed platform, demonstrate what Miss Behave described as “the ultimate in what’s possible to do with the human body.” Speaking of which, she swallowed a sword and one of the legs of a stool while balancing a champagne bottle on the seat.

Our favorite segment was the singer who did an absolutely fierce rendition of David Bowie’s “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide” off Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (in our top-five albums of all time); to us, she stole the show.

Also different was the intermission about 60 minutes in. It was great to get up, stretch, go for a walk to the restroom just across the casino, and brace ourselves for the last 30 minutes.

All in all, Miss Behave’s Mavericks is a rousing good time in a great room downtown at an affordable price and you’ll definitely feel in with the in crowd when — not if, we recommend — you see it.

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“Lite-Brite” at Illuminarium


Lite-Brite is a “magic-screen” toy created by Hasbro in 1967, consisting of colored plastic pegs that fit into a panel on a light box. Recommended for ages 4-15, Lite-Brite users create art with the pegs; when the images are complete, the box is turned on to light them up.

Hasbro teamed up with the Illuminarium, the immersive digital “museum” at Area15, to present “Lite-Brite: Worlds of Wonder,” which opened on June 5. The show features a room-size magic screen divided into three “worlds”: enchanted ocean, forest with dinosaurs, and outer-space city. Having seen the “Space” digital show at the Illuminarium (reviewed in LVA 9/22), we went back for “Lite-Brite: Worlds of Wonder” to see what the new show has to offer.

Like “Space,” you’re ushered into an anteroom for an orientation to the Lite-Brite gestalt from a talking box on a stool.

And like “Van Gogh,” “Leonardo,” “Arte Museum,” and the other immersives we’ve reviewed, “Lite-Brite” is a 60-minute experience (it reruns after an hour) in the huge Illuminarium room, with the giant animations covering the walls and floors all around you. Of all the digital shows, this one is by far the best for kids, who chase the images of giant birds and mammals, sea creatures, dinosaurs, spaceships, and the like and interact with the pixels that follow them on the floor.

Kids of all ages participate in two different games, Save the Dinos and Creature Creator, the only immersive that’s this interactive.

For us adults, it gets a bit monotonous, especially if you’ve seen one of these shows before. The games go on for five-six minutes at a time twice within the hour, far too long; the second time one of them comes on, it helps clear the room for the next set of visitors who show up every 15 minutes.

The soundtrack is intense — spacy orchestral music, from the highs of synthesized piccolos during the future-city segments to the basso profundo of basses and cellos for the deep underwater portions. The room is nice and cold on a very hot summer afternoon, but we were never so happy to walk out into 115-degree sun (bring a sweater if you don’t want to freeze).

Tickets start at $35 for adults and $30 for children and seniors, with family and group packages available.

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Pop Stroke at Town Square

This isn’t your old-time Disneyland kid’s miniature golf by any stretch of the imagination. You won’t find drawbridges, windmills, castles, clown heads, or log tunnels at Las Vegas’ newest miniature-golf course, Pop Stroke. What you will find is a serious putters’ challenge, with all kinds of sand traps and roughs, contouring from gentle to wild with all kinds of banks, humps, turns, and waves, and different grades of synthetic surfaces. Which is appropriate for a mini-golf company in which Tiger Woods and Taylor Made Golf are partners.

Pop Stroke was founded all of six years ago and now has 16 locations in six states; the one at Town Square near the junction of I-15 and the 215 Beltway, which opened in April, is the only location in Nevada.

Pop Stroke features two 18-hole courses, one easier than the other. You can bring your own putter or pick one of Pop Strokes’ based on your height; the balls come in different colors and you get to keep the one you play with. You can download the app to keep score and order drinks from the three bars and food from the sports bar, which the staff delivers to you on the course. Shareables include chicken tenders, hummus platter, nachos, wings, and tuna tartare ($12-$21), while tacos, sandwiches, burgers, wraps, and steak are $13-$24.

There’s also an ice cream counter, with 25 flavors (1/2/3 scoops $6/$8/$10) and a variety of toppings ($1 each), plus floats and milkshakes ($9-$12).

An outdoor play area offers a couple of foosball tables, ping pong, and cornhole. There’s a warm-up green for practicing, but it’s not really necessary; admission is good for all day, so you can play as long as you like, hang around the game area or bar and start up again, or even leave and come back.

Being barely six months old, Pop Stroke’s palm trees are young and provide little shade. We were there during the heat wave in July when it was 115 out and it was sizzling out on the greens. But plenty of water, wet towels, fans, and misters are stationed around the property that help to keep things if not exactly cool, at least not roasting.

This place is very popular. There’s plenty of free parking, but the lot does get full. And depending on the size of the group/groups in front of yours, you might have to stand around and wait for everyone to take a turn. We saw a group of eight take 15 minutes on a hole.

We also watched couples and groups of three and four bypass them to the next hole. Since you can play all day, unless you’re intent on competing and the score really matters, anything basically goes. From our observations, groups of two to four seem to be the best size.

All in all, Pop Stroke puts a new spin, so to speak, on mini-golf and in clement weather or at night, it’s a very fun outdoor activity. It’s open 9 a.m. to midnight Sun.-Thurs., till 1 a.m. on Fri-Saturday. Summer pricing is Mon.-Thurs. $35, Fri,-Sat. $40 per person, locals $30/$35. Kids 3-12 are 40% off, seniors/military/twilight (two hours prior to closing) 20%. Special events happen almost every day: Mondays senior day, Tuesdays kids day, Wednesday college day, Thursday ladies night. And there’s a happy hour Mon.-Thurs. 3-6 p.m. with 50% off drinks and a discounted food menu.

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Nathan Burton Comedy Magic

Nathan Burton Comedy Magic has been around the Vegas block a time or two. Burton’s show first opened at the Aladdin in 2006, then moved to the Flamingo in 2008 (we reviewed it in the July 2008 LVA) and the Saxe Theater at the Miracle Mile Shops in 2012. Last year, Burton landed at a new theater in the Flyover motion-simulator building on the south Strip across from Park MGM and we finally satisfied our curiosity about the new venue and old show.

The Nathan Burton Theater is literally two steps in from the south Strip sidewalk. Crowd control at the entrance to the theater is rough; stanchions define two short lines for 30 people, while 175 are waiting to get into this popular afternoon performance. The other interesting thing is that the ushers are all dolled-up in Vegas showgirl costumes; as soon as the performance starts, you realize they also are the showgirls!

The theater is 5,000 square feet and seats 189, with four TV size video screens in the audience and a 30- by 18-foot video wall at the back of the stage.

In our review 16 years ago, we wrote, “Burton’s show is mostly small-box magic, displaying a lot of the bits you’ve probably seen before. Consequently, our first impression was ‘nothing special.’

Well, it’s still mostly box illusions, maybe a dozen of those in all, plus some mind-reading, a levitation, and tricks involving a transparent straight jacket, audience cell phones, playing and bingo cards, confetti, a couple of fast switcheroos, and an audience member’s drink in a bag disappearing (beer bottle in our show).

The invisible-deck-of-cards segment is cute and the bingo bit is very funny — we’ve never saw an audience go so crazy and we were watching closely, having spotted this outcome from a mile away. The other cool routine involved mind-reading a six-year-old.

Overall, however, the comedy can’t compare to Mac King (now at Excalibur) or even Adam London (in his very small show at the Orleans), but the nonstop onslaught of tricks has a madcap feel to them and don’t blink or you’ll miss one or two. We can say that Nathan Burton works up a righteous sweat. This is definitely a family-friendly show (70 minutes) and there were lots of kids in the nearly sold-out crowd on a Tuesday afternoon.

We opted for the second least expensive section and sat in Row K, right in the middle of the room. Those seats were fine, though the base price of $28 quickly rose to $45.51 with a $7.56 service fee and $9.95 processing fee. The cheapest seats in the back might be a bit far away. Show your ticket at the Flyover box office and get a 30% discount to that attraction.

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Atomic Golf Drone Show


Las Vegas’ first “residency” drone show is sponsored by Atomic Golf on Thursdays at 9 and 11 p.m.

We’ve read various accounts of the number of drones that perform the show. It’s somewhere between 200 and 1,000; it varies from week to week. But no matter how many there are, it’s an impressive display of coordinated flying and technology.

In formation, the drones assemble themselves into intricate images. Like the number of drones, the images change from show to show. For ours, they comprised words and logos, golf clubs and tees, a U.S. map with Las Vegas starred, the Vegas Golden Knights symbol, and more.

The show lasts exactly 10 minutes.

It all takes place just beyond and above the driving range, so when viewed from inside Atomic Golf, the towering posts holding up the fencing that encloses the range obstruct the view somewhat, as you can see in the photos. But that matters mostly for photographers (like us); for spectators, it doesn’t really interfere with the entertainment. The best view from Atomic Golf is bay 402 in the far north corner of the fourth floor.


The best view overall is probably from the top of the STRAT parking garage, but unless you have Nevada license plates (free for locals), parking will run you $20. No grace period. There’s free parking at Atomic Golf, but none was available when we drove in.

It was our first drone show, so we thought it was pretty cool and impressive. It’s definitely worth seeing for a quick cheap thrill and you can take in the grand new entertainment venue while you’re at it. The shows are scheduled to run Thursday nights through the middle of October.

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Atomic Golf


Atomic Golf is the $75 million 100,000-square-foot four story golf-entertainment mega venue that opened in March next to the STRAT. It’s an ambitious undertaking, with 101 golfing bays spread from one end of the four floors to the other, all using the 216-yard driving range. Each has a video box that you face as you play, loaded with seven proprietary games; you can battle aliens or another team’s space ship, play blackjack by hitting cards, aim for a bull’s-eye or the longest distance, or just practicing your swing.

There’s also a “putting district” with eight bays, mini-golf meets video games, where the clubs and the ceiling use sensors to track where the golf ball goes. The central Astrocade watch-party area features a 40-foot LED screen, a DJ spinning very loud music, and games such as cornhole. Six bars include the exclusive Tap Room on the third floor and a full menu of drinks and sports bar food is delivered to your bay by waitresses. Bays are $60 to rent.

Atomic Golf has experienced well-publicized problems since it opened. The driving range faces west, so when the sun is setting, it not only gets very very hot, but you’re looking straight into it as you play; portable a/c fans and misters provide little relief. The lack of early business forced the venue to lay off 33% of its workforce.

But on a Thursday night in late July when we visited, the place was jam packed with golfer-partyers drinking, eating, and slicing, hooking, shanking, and whiffing golf balls all over the range. The parking lot was full, so we had to park at the STRAT (covered elsewhere in the newsletter).


Frankly, we didn’t play. We were just there to see one of the two drone shows performed on Thursday nights at 9 and 11 p.m. After dark, the sun wasn’t in anyone’s faces, though it was good and toasty in the open 100-degree air and the kids retreated to stand in front of the fans from time to time to get some relief.

But the golfers were having a blast, people were watching the big screen in the Astrocade, and when the drone show started at 9:01 p.m., no one noticed. They barely knew to look out at it over the fence posts. That’s the best advertisement we can imagine for the place.

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Neon Museum

Neon Museum


The original “boneyard” for broken, defunct, and replaced Las Vegas signs was behind the YESCO plant on Cameron Street just south of Tropicana, where they were forgotten and subject to elements and entropy. In 1996, the city of Las Vegas and the Allied Arts Council of Southern Nevada got together and established the Neon Museum to preserve this unique part of Las Vegas history. Today, the non-profit organization occupies a big piece of property on Las Vegas Blvd. just north of downtown, consisting of the old La Concha Motel lobby from the Strip, the two-acre Neon Boneyard, and the North Gallery.

Green Shack sign
Ernie’s Pool Hall

For many years, we’d intended to review the Neon Museum and finally got around to it.

You check in at the La Concha building, where you can buy tickets or show your pass purchased online. From there, you walk into the main Boneyard, where more than 200 neon signs and other pieces from a couple of hundred Las Vegas properties are collected and displayed. To say that this is a wonderland of symbolic Las Vegas history is an epic understatement. It’s quite a thrill, even overwhelming to start, to lay eyes on these bright slices of the past; small or large, famous or obscure, monochrome or multicolored, they’re all as rare as they are fascinating.

Be sure to access the museum’s app via a sign with the QR code for the self-guided walking tour with 25 stops. The signs start just down the stairs and to the right of the gift shop and under the towering Hard Rock guitar; you walk the loop counterclockwise. In addition, informational signs along the path impart more historical details about what you’re seeing: signs from the Golden Nugget, Moulin Rouge (one of the biggest and brightest), Binion’s, Sassy Sally’s, several motels, a pool hall, a dry cleaners, a dairy (established 1907), the Green Shack restaurant (one of the longest lived in Vegas history), Treasure Island (a lying-down skull), wedding information, the Riviera and Sahara, even an Ugly Duckling (car rental).

Anderson Dairy
Ugly Duckling

It’s a dirt yard covered in gravel and since there’s a lot of wandering involved, it’s best to wear good walking shoes.
You can also pay for a tour led by highly knowledgeable guides. One idea is to do it on your own and perhaps catch some snippets from the guide or guides as you go; then, if you’re really into it, you can came back and take the tour.

the tour

Best is to come 20 minutes before sundown to see all the signs, including the ones that won’t be lit up; many aren’t. When it gets dark, you see all the illuminated signs — spectacular against the desert night sky and a new perspective. (You’ll also save by buying the daytime admission and taking it into the night.)

Another attraction at the Neon Museum is “Brilliant,” a 20-minute or so “audiovisual immersion experience” that takes place in the North Gallery. “Brilliant” reanimates 40 more vintage signs via eight projectors housed by the two Champagne-bubble cylinders designed to resemble the one from the original Flamingo; two dozen 3D speakers amplify the soundtrack of classic tunes about gambling and Las Vegas.

You gather in a park across the street from the lobby and at the appointed time, a guide takes you over to the North Gallery. The outside wall has a long mural depicting some historical moments that the guide describes; then he opens the gallery and you file into the first space to see a short video from the artist who put together the show. From there, you walk around to the outdoor “showroom” for the presentation.

After two hours on our feet touring the main Boneyard and waiting for “Brilliant” on a cold and windy early-spring evening, we didn’t enjoy as much as we could or should have. If you have to see everything, you should catch it, but if you don’t, you can probably miss it. (Here’s a link to the video.)

You leave the Neon Museum and drive south back into downtown and the neon night. As you pass all the historical signs installed along Las Vegas Blvd. and the original Glitter Gulch, you can’t help but be thankful that the museum is preserving this important part of Las Vegas’ past.

Daytime admission to the museum is $20 adult, $10 (7-17 years old), and $15 military; evening is $25/$12.50/$20. With the “Brilliant” package, add $17. The guided tour is another $8.

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Play Playground

Play Playground

Play Playground opened at Luxor in mid-January. This 15,000-square-foot facility on the second-floor Attractions level offers a couple of dozen “larger-than-life nostalgic” games and two bars. Nostalgic? That’s right. Play Playground boasts no VR, AR, or video games. Rather, the activities consist of adult versions of childhood physical, memory, puzzle, and team games designed for friendly competition; most games keep score and leaderboards track the highest ones. The entire experience is advertised as lasting up to 90 minutes.

You check in at the desk, show (or buy) your ticket, fill out an annoying waiver on a tablet, and get your badge, which gives you play credits on the competitive games and tracks your scores to compare to the leaderboard; you can also trade points for prizes. When you run out of credits, you can continue participating in activities that don’t require the badge for activation, such as the Bounce House, Bullseye Bounce, Balloon Room, photo machine, three-story slide, and ping-pong-ball catchier.

The credit games include Perfect Popper (fit shaped foam into their spaces on the wall before time runs out), Doctor Doctor (put the patient’s parts back together again), Ringer Run (move the ringer through the maze without touching the track), Poker Parkour (race along the balance beam without getting knocked off by big swinging poker chips), High Five (similar to Bop It), and activities with names like Find Words, Move It, and Ramp Up that involve ball rolling, letter and word combinations, and the like.

Like the illusion museums, it’s best to come with at least one other person to play the games with and compete against and larger groups seem to get the most entertainment. But even at 15,000 square feet, the space is fairly cramped and when it’s crowed on weekends, the lines can be long and the energy ebbs. Otherwise, it’s good wholesome fun, a definite departure for this town, but true to form for the Attractions level at Luxor.

Note that though Play Playground started out with kids’ hours, it quickly pivoted to 21 and older only, probably due to the ready availability of alcohol at the two bars.

Tickets start at $37 with a $2.50 service charge for booking online; hours are Sun.-Thurs. noon-midnight., Fri.-Sat noon-2 a.m.

Here’s the kicker. If you drive to Luxor, even if you don’t spend another dime there, you’ll also have another opportunity to reach into your pocket and pay the casino: If you’re not local, it’s $18 to park. It doesn’t matter if you stay 24 minutes or 24 hours, it’s 18 smackers. And we have to say, paying it is damn painful — and almost precludes us from reviewing attractions like these. We can’t in good conscience recommend coming here and ponying up 50% of the attraction price just to stash your car for an hour or so.