Although third-quarter results were announced last week for Caesars Entertainment, they took a distant back seat to the news that the company was selling its Ferris wheel and Linq Promenade at a steep loss. HowardStutz of The Nevada Independentcut to the quick, pointing out that the $275 million payday was a 50% discount to how much Caesars spent to develop these dubious assets. The High Roller “observation wheel” was a particular dog, having been built in an awkward location from which there was precious little to see except the backside of the former Imperial Palace and its curious, swastika-like configuration.
Cosmopolitan – Wicked Spoon: Daily Brunch is now 8 a.m.-3 p.m. instead of 8 a.m.-2 p.m. for $47 on weekdays and $54 on weekends.
Excalibur – The Buffet at Excalibur: Weekend Brunch is Friday only instead of Friday – Sunday. Same time 7 a.m.-2 p.m. for $37.99. Now Saturday & Sunday is Mimosa Brunch 7 a.m.-2 p.m. for $43.99.
South Point – Garden Buffet: All buffet prices went up by $1-$3. Breakfast is now $19.95, Lunch is now $24.95, Prime Rib & Champagne Brunch is now $33.95, Prime Rib Dinner is now $33.95, and Seafood Dinner is now $52.95.
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.
A smashburger and a beer for $5? It’s not quite a Top Tenner, but it’s a good one in the Arts District.
A burger and a beer for $5? That has to be a bargain, right? Maybe not if the burger is a slider and the beer is Red, White, & Blue (wait, we like RWB), but that’s not the case here. You get a smashburger (the latest burger rage) that’s slightly larger than a regular McDonald’s burger, with cheese, pickles, and chipotle mayo. You might want another, so go ahead and order it; there’s no limit. It comes with a choice of a 16-ounce Michelob Ultra or 18Bin Blonde Ale. The deal runs Mondays-Thursdays from 11 am to 3 pm.
A Cool Place in the Arts District
Located in the Arts District at 107 E. Charleston, 18Bin is one of multiple bars/restaurants clustered in the area, including Berlin, Artifice, Taverna Costera, and Pepper Club in the English Hotel. While many of these bars are artsy types that don’t have TVs, 18Bin does and they’re tuned to sports when the games are on. The bar and tables are inside, with a big courtyard with seating outside.
BarDiningPatio
This is a busy hang on weekend nights, but mostly quiet during the day when the special runs. The full menu includes bar snacks, soups, salads, and sandwiches, with several vegetarian options; we had a decent ceviche for $13.
The Verdict
This is an excellent lunch play and a reason to check out the Arts District, but it’s also a drinking play. The 18Bin Blonde is $9 by itself, so ordering the special gets you a $5 beer and however many hamburgers get lined up in the process. If you linger after the special, there’s “Yappy Hour” (bring your pooch) Mon.-Thurs. from 4 to 6 pm, with 50%-off beer, wine, and select appetizers. On Tuesdays starting at 7 pm, it’s all-you-can-drink margaritas and $3 tacos.
Our trip to Power Soul Caféinspired us to finally check out Tacotarian, the vegan taco brand that, since launching here in 2018, has opened four locations in Las Vegas and one in San Diego. It has garnered some attention; in 2023, Tacotarian was named one of the 25 best vegan Mexican restaurants in the country by VegNews and placed #52 on Yelp’s Top 100 Taco Spots nationwide.
One venue is on S. Fort Apache way over by the big bend in the Beltway, another is way down on Blue Diamond near Silverton, the third is way out in Henderson, and the flagship is downtown in the Arts District on Casino Center Blvd. a couple of blocks south of Charleston. That’s the one we visited.
As you’d expect from a flagship eatery in the Arts District, this is a trendy spot — bright, open and airy, and full of Mexican colors, with greenery and a merch corner.
It’s also big, so it can seat everyone when it gets busy, which it does, especially for lunch. You order and pay at the counter and your meal is delivered to your table.
Tacotarian bills itself as flexitarian (sometimes vegan, sometimes not), so it’s not the usual vegan menu that relies heavily on Beyond Beef or Impossible products using such plant proteins as pea, mung and faba beans, and brown rice. Though they do include some of those, they also create their own proteins, with jackfruit (like a giant fig), seitan (made from gluten, the main protein of wheat), Gardein-brand chicken and fish (made of textured vegetable protein, a.k.a. TVP, soy concentrate, and flour), non-dairy cheese, plantains, even hibiscus flowers — essentially, meat-free versions of familiar taco fillings and flavors.
cauliflower ceviche
The food is pretty typical for a Mexican place, whether vegan, flex, or meat-based. The menu has antojitos, such as chips and salsa, nachos, guacamole, and elote ($5-$16), veg soup and salads ($6-$17), a couple of dozen different tacos ($4-$6, with a three-taco platter, the most popular choice, at $18), burritos ($11-$20), and desserts ($6-$9).
The difference is, as we say, in the proteins. For example, the carne asada is made with seitan, the barbacoa with jackfruit, and the chorizo with soy. You can also get alcohol at the Tacotarians — beer, margaritas, and specialty cocktails — unusual for a vegan restaurant.
We know this food isn’t for everyone, including ourselves. We’ve been through our soy, seitan, TVP, and Beyond Beef experiments, so none of that interested us. What did was the cauliflower ceviche ($6.99), marinated in lime juice, topped with cucumber, avocado, and pico, and served with plentiful chips. Not quite the real thing, but close enough in flavor and enjoyment. We also tried the Baja taco ($3.99), with avocado fried in beer batter, cilantro-lime slaw, and guacamole. Again, since we weren’t concerned with protein, it was a good regular taco to us.
The bill with tax, without tip, came to $11.90, which we thought quite reasonable for both the quantity and quality of the food. The meal, in the end, was tasty, filling, and affordable, a good one-off lunch.
Promoting itself as the “world’s first certified gluten-free fast-food restaurant chain,” Power Soul Café is the brainchild of Las Vegan Dina Mitchell, who for 15 years was in charge of the west coast expansion of Tropical Smoothie Cafes, a franchiser with 1,500 locations nationwide. She wanted to branch out from smoothies and add healthy food items to her own brand and came up with Power Soul.
Three locations have opened this year, the flagship on Warm Springs Rd. near Durango in the southwest valley, one in Henderson (1469 E. Lake Mead Parkway), and the third right around the corner from our office at Valley View and Spring Mountain. We stopped off on a hot summer afternoon to see what it was all about.
It’s different. There’s no dining area or any seating neither outdoor nor indoor. You order from a walk-up window; scan the giant QR code for the menu or read it through the window behind the point of sale. The all-glass front allows you to see the food being prepared and it’s handed through out to you. You can also order in advance and pick up from self-serve refrigerated lockers, which are convenient, especially since the cafés are open 24/7.
The menu consists of two dozen smoothies ($7.49), acai bowls ($12.99), chicken nuggets ($5.99-$10.99) and vegan chicken strips ($5.99), eight pizzas ($12-$15), and various breakfast waffles and egg sandwiches ($3.99-$8.99). The online ordering system allows you to filter for keto and vegetarian and 60 or so allergens to avoid.
We ordered at the walk-up window and got a Soul Colada smoothie and an Ah-Sigh-Ee (for how acai is pronounced) bowl. Both were tasty and refreshing when we got them back to the office, though at 109 degrees out, it would’ve been unpleasant to consume them in the car or standing around the Chinatown parking lot. Nor would we have wanted to do that between December and March, especially with the potential for sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (brain freeze) from these products. When it’s nice out, you can do so; otherwise, it’s best to have somewhere you can eat them, because you can’t do it at or in Power Soul.
The total bill came to $24.20 with tax and a $2 tip. It might sound a little steep for a smoothie and bowl, but they were fresh, healthy, filling, and satisfying.
Sometimes I play video poker at the Eldorado in Reno. The Eldorado, along with the interconnected Silver Legacy and Circus Circus, make up the ROW, and they are the only Caesars Total Rewards properties in Reno. Some of the machines at the Eldorado are pretty old, but gradually they are being replaced with newer model machines.
During a recent trip, I hit a jackpot in the high limit slots area and was waiting for an attendant to come deal with it. I went to a nearby bank of Triple Play/Five Play/Ten Play machines to check pay schedules. Although I checked them several months ago, new machines are being added at this casino all of the time.
The machines were multi-denomination, from quarters to Five Dollars, and the pay schedules varied by denomination — with the best pay schedules on the $5 machines. So those are the ones I checked. And I found a pay schedule too good to be true.
It was 10/6 Double Double Bonus Poker (DDB). This is a 100.06% game if the straight flush pays 50-for-1, and about a tenth of a percent tighter if the straight flush pays 40-for-1. This was the 50-for-1 version! Although the casino has looser-than-average games in their high limit room, a game requiring $75, $125, or $250 to fully load returning more than 100% is downright juicy!
I carefully checked to see that the royal paid 4,000 coins. I’ve seen pay schedules where you only get 2,500. I also checked three-of-a-kind to verify that it paid 15. I have seen games which were otherwise identical, only paying 10 instead of 15 for three-of-a-kind, and the difference is huge.
The Total Rewards slot club there adds significant value. In addition to the normal slot club, the ROW offers Reward Credit and Tier Credit multipliers more frequently than many other casinos in that system. Add this on top of a 100%+ game — now we’re talking!
I’ve played many versions of DDB and have the strategies on my computer, which was upstairs in my room. But not recently. It’s been a while since I’ve played this game and I’ve played several similar-but-not-identical games since, so I figured I needed a refresher course.
I went upstairs and spent perhaps an hour refreshing myself on 10/6 DDB. It’s a fairly simple game, and I’ve played it a lot during the past, but I especially wanted to refresh myself on all of the straight flush draws. I’ve recently been playing games that return 5-for-1 for the flush rather than 6-for-1, and the draws are different. I also reviewed the A versus a suited JT, and the unsuited AQJ. When I was comfortable with the idiosyncrasies of this game, I went downstairs to have a go at it.
There were three identical machines in the high limit room, and one was taken by another player playing a different game. I decided to play $5 Triple Play. This was a $75-per-play game. This was more than I had planned to play this trip, but the game was looser than I knew existed, and I had a line of credit there in case things went badly. Which they can. Most of you know that DDB has a “heaven or hell” type of variance. Not as large of a variance as some other games, but if I fail to hit enough quads, especially the premium quads with kickers, I’m not going to like my score at all.
One of the “problems” with this game is that all quads are hand pays that range between $1,250 and $10,000. Each one requires the intervention of a slot person (or two, for the bigger jackpots). If I have two or more machines available to me, I can hop over to the “spare” while I’m waiting for any machine containing a jackpot to be reset.
I was stuck about $2,000 when I hit my first quad — which happened to be fives. I knew my machine would lock up with the $1,250 hand. Except it didn’t lock up!
I examined things more closely and discovered I only received $1,000 for the jackpot rather than $1,250. The ‘only’ thing shorted in this pay schedule was quads between fives and kings, paying 200 coins rather than 250. This changes the pay schedule to about 98.5%. No thanks! That’s not a terrible return for most high limit video poker, but the Eldorado has some games better than that. I went back to the machine I was playing originally.
I had looked at the pay schedule closely — but missed this particular change. I was simply not aware that this pay schedule, with this one change from the “regular” pay schedule, even existed. It cost me $1,000 to “learn my lesson.” This was not a disaster, but I’m Bob Dancer and am supposed to see these pay schedules instantly. Well, I missed this one! But now I’m aware of it,. I won’t miss it again.
Yes, the Las Vegas Strip is mildly swooning. It was down 2% last month, the third straight month of declivity. But before one ascribes to headline-writer hysteria, remember that this is a decline from the most dizzying heights Big Gaming has ever scaled. People may complain about price gouging, high table “minimums” and lousy odds in Las Vegas casinos, but that sure hasn’t stopped them from staying and playing, in droves. We’re not going to take a victory lap, like American Gaming Association CEO Bill Miller did at Global Gaming Expo, but neither are we pushing the panic button.
