Sphere Las Vegas – Las Vegas Advisor

We went to Sphere and saw the movie Postcard from Earth a couple of weeks ago and here are our observations and a recommendation about choosing seats.

You can an escalator from the lobby up a long way to the 200-level seats, then another up to the 3090- and 400-level seats.

We read about an overhang problem, in which the three balconies obstruct views of the screen overhead, but we didn’t really see one over the seats available for the movie. In the corners of the 100-level seats, there’s a bit of an overhang, but seats for the movies are only on the second (200), third (300), and fourth (400) levels. The 100 seats are for the concerts, on the floor and closest to the stage.

The bigger issue for us was with the 200-level seats. They seemed a bit low in relationship to how much of the dome the screen covers, two-thirds of it in total. In other words, it’s like any movie you see in a theater: The closer you are to the screen, the more you have to look up at it. And this particular screen stretches over four acres of dome surface! The screen towering over the 200 seats might not be an issue, but to us, it seemed like it could be.

Also, those seats cost $249. Each. True, the entire “Sphere Experience” is two hours, but the movie, definitely the main attraction, is only 50 minutes.

We paid $68 for our 300-level seats, the lowest price available at the time, but a check for this post showed that prices have gone up considerably since early November. Our 300-level seats now cost $99, while the lowest price for a seat is $89 in the 400-level nosebleed section. We did find $68 seats still available, but it looks to us like those are outside of the 10,000-seat section where you get the haptic effects (vibrating seats, wafting scents, and breezes) in conjunction with the action on the screen.

Needless to say, we weren’t prepared to pay $500 for two to see a movie, spectacular though it may be (and it is; it’s the most unbelievable movie experience we’ve ever had), and we sincerely hope you’re not either. So we say buy the least expensive seats you can get; you’ll see the screen just fine from the 400 level.

We do need to add one other note of caution. Getting to the upper-level seats in this arena requires a fairly steep climb. The landing is between the 300- and 400-level seats; you climb down to the 300 seats (and up on the way out) and up to the 400 seats (and down on the way out).

Either way, if you have trouble on stairs, this will be a challenge for you. We watched unsteady moviegoers gripping the handrails for dear life. But breaks in the rails allow passage between seating sections and those were scary for a number of spectators. More than one asked for help from people seated near them, which proved a bit hazardous for both parties.

We do recommend the movie and you can see our review here (as well as our recommendations for parking), but it presents a couple of tests: financial and physical.

Click here for the review of the Sphere Experience. And here for the parking details.

Sphere is located at the intersection of Sands Avenue and S. Koval Lane across Koval from the Venetian Expo. With the 580,000-square-foot screen, largest in the world, lighting up the exterior of the dome, trust us when we say, you can’t miss it.

There is some street parking on Manhattan Street (east) and Westchester Drive (south) of the arena, but you’d have to get there very early and be very patient to bag a spot. At six p.m. for the 7 p.m. ticket, we saw a line of cars double parked on Manhattan Street, hoping for someone to pull out. Actually, someone did and there was a mad dash from the lanes in both directions; we say you want to stay as far away from that chaos as possible.

Six on-site self-parking lots and one valet lot are all also east and south of the arena. In total, there are 307 parking spaces for an arena with a capacity of 20,000. Absurd. Worse, only two are currently available; the rest are still occupied by F1 grandstands and on the ticketing site, there’s no indication that they’ll be opening up anytime soon.

Lot S charges $75 for the movie. Ridiculous. You can also valet park in the adjacent lot $125 (plus tip, preposterous).

There are also four garages across Manhattan Street at the Howard Hughes Center with 2,000 spaces. Though they face Manhattan Street, you access them from a single entrance on Howard Hughes Parkway (one long block east). That’s where we dropped off our trusty steed. There’s a pretty good view of the exosphere from the top of Lot 1. And from there, it’s about a 10-minute walk to the building.

We bought our parking ticket in advance on Ticketmaster — and if you don’t have that app on your phone, you should; these days, many if not most tickets are QR codes on your phone. So we don’t know how it works if you don’t have the code, though we assume an attendant can assist. For us, we showed the code and flowed right in. Though the initial price you see on Ticketmaster is $40, the final price is $20 (at least at the time of this writing). Not bad for an easy into and out of a highly popular attraction.

Here’s the link to the Ticketmaster parking page.

We imagine that prices rise for self-parking at the Wynn and Venetian on Sphere concert nights, but so far at least, neither has changed the pricing structure for the movie. The Wynn is $20 for the day, but it’s a fairly long walk through that large property and across Sands Avenue to Sphere. The Venetian charges $15 for four hours and a walkway from the hotel takes you right to one the west entrance to Sphere.

If you’re walking from elsewhere on the Strip, four of the five entrances to the arena are along Sands Avenue; the fifth, the Plaza entrance, is east of the building on Manhattan Street opposite Lot A. That’s the one you enter when you park in the Howard Hughes lots.

Click here for the review of the Sphere Experience. And here for the seats and prices.

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Seating at Sphere

Parking at Sphere

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