Continuing our odyssey up the Strip, surveying attractions and themes of yesteryear, we’ll pause to make a quick back-loop to the Tropicana, which debuted originally in 1957 as the Tropicana Hotel & Country Club, with little in the way of "theming" beyond its concrete "tulip" fountain out front, but in the mid-’90s evidently decided to take its name, and its location in the township of "Paradise" Nevada to heart, by jumping on the then-fashionable Polynesian-themed bandwagon. This involved the brief addition of two massive and somewhat incongruous replica moai statues out front that possessed slightly disconcerting color-changing eyes (and which first caught our eye in the foreground one of the MGM Grand images that accompanied yesterday's answer) and a tropical beach-style "plaza" area.
While these embellishments perhaps served to complement 1986’s Island Tower addition to the hotel, we'd have to say less so with regard to the Tiffany-esque leaded-glass ceiling above the casino floor, installed in 1979. The same goes for jarring with the classic-Vegas Folies Bergère can canning-showgirl production, which opened just a couple of years after the hotel-casino and endured until the eve of its 50th anniversary, in 2009. In a nutshell, the Trop's identity was a mess, and the statues (did anyone out there name them?) only lasted a few years (where are they now, we wonder?). Today the property has undergone a protracted renovation and has returned to its roots, somewhat, by embracing a retro "South Beach" vibe.
Moving further north, January 1997 saw the debut of the ultra-themed New York-New York property, with an opening that Anthony Curtis described at the time as "the biggest in years," adding of the hype that, "In my experience, nothing has compared to this since the opening of the Mirage in 1989." Such were the crowds who thronged the new joint that some players were obliged to wait up to three hours to receive hand-paid jackpots on opening night.
So, was this diminutive replica of The Big Apple a triumph of the theming era? Wrote our normally upbeat publisher, "It didn't take long for me to form my own opinion of NY-NY. I hated it." He cited a casino that was "dank, dirty-looking, and claustrophobic" [Ed: So, at least authentic, judging by some New York 'hoods we've found ourselves in!] But things got better when he discovered the Bar at Times Square which "really did look and feel like a bar I'd been to" at the original location. "I stepped out the back of the bar and into an incredible cityscape; with its nine food outlets, it was no less than a restaurant district. I was no longer in a casino in Las Vegas. Rather, I was strolling the streets of the Big Apple. Amazing!" The place had a convert.
Aside from the compacted rendition of a 1940s-era New York City skyline and harbor, themed opening attractions included the Coney Island-style Manhattan Express roller coaster; dining transplants including Nathan's Famous hot dogs, Schrafft's ice cream, and Gallagher's Steakhouse; and the show MADhattan, featuring a cast comprising some genuine New York street performers and was described by the New York Times as having "about as much in common with a typical show on the Strip as Brooklyn's pigeons have with Siegfried and Roy's tigers." While the former has undergone a couple of name changes in the interim, it's still going strong, as are Nathan's and Gallagher's; the show, however, didn't last long and was replaced in '99 by Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance.
Gone also is the 9/11 tribute which graced the front promenade area for more than a decade following the attack on the World Trade Center; it fell victim to bulldozers in 2013 in order to make way for new curbside attraction The Park, which when completed is intended to evoke Madison Square Park, although the tributes left are now in the hands of UNLV for safekeeping and will hopefully find a new permanent home sometime.
By the time the Monte Carlo opened, in June 1996, it had already undergone one identity change, having started life under the "Grand Victoria" concept, an evocation of Victorian-era London's architectural icons. At some point, this vision was dropped in favor of the French Riviera principality of Monaco and its notoriously opulent casinos and hotels, but the homage was half-hearted to say the least and the Las Vegas version opened before it was completed, with only magician Lance Burton said to be prepared on time in his new custom theater at the resort.
As Las Vegas Leisure Guide put it at the time, "We were not overly impressed with the general ambiance. It was as if most of the old world flavor and hype was checked at the front door. Contrasted with the large-scale, beautiful architecture on the front of the hotel, the inside pales in comparison. There is a lot of empty space and large flat walls. The few fancy accouterments ... were few and far between. Of all, we'd have to say the shopping area alone made us feel the most like we were strolling the streets of France." So, so much for that, and it's of little surprise that recent murmurings have this resort pegged for a major rebranding and new identity (which shouldn't be half as difficult to achieve as, say, the de-theming of Luxor or Excalibur, given that there's so little "theme" to remove).
Images appear courtesy of: UNLV; VintageLasVegas on Tumblr; Chris Flanders Photography; Vital Vegas; and MGM Mirage Resorts.
