I just read an article in a European magazine that says that the Las Vegas Strip casinos plan to charge admission and later this year, they’ll implement a Monte Carlo-type fee where you pay a certain amount of money at the door. The article says $20. Can this possibly be true?
Unfortunately, yes, it is.
Most casinos in Europe charge admission fees; in your example of Monte Carlo, it’s 25 euros. Some casinos around the world charge fees for locals – the Philippines and Singapore are two examples.
And admission fees aren’t unheard of even in U.S. casinos. Generally, entry charges have been limited to riverboat casinos that actually cruise, so patrons paid for the ride even if they didn’t gamble.
But we’d been hearing rumors since the first of the year that certain Strip casinos would “experiment” with charging admission fees, like European casinos, and we can now confirm that sometime between July and September 2017, pilot admission-fee programs will be initiated at up to six as-yet-unnamed casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, with an assessment and possible reevaluation toward the end of the year.
The details at this point are a little hazy, but here’s what we know.
Everyone entering these six casinos will pay $20 at the door. Everyone will also need to show ID (this, too, is standard operating procedure in Europe). In exchange, patrons will be given $20 worth of casino chips, the way it works in Monte Carlo.
These will be special non-negotiable “admission” chips that cannot be cashed. They must be played off at specified tables and though we don’t know for sure, we’ve heard that the rules at these games will be onerous — triple-zero roulette, blackjacks pay 1-1, 1x odds at craps, and the like. Winners will be paid in regular chips that can be played at the regular tables or converted to cash at the cage.
Guests of these casinos’ hotels will check in at the front desk -- we can’t imagine that admission will be charged to enter the hotel lobbies. However, access to the casino from the lobby will, presumably, be funneled through the admissions toll booth. We understand that hotel guests will scan their key cards at the booths, so that they may come in via any entrance without having to pay the admission fee.
As yet, however, hotel guests are the only exception. Patrons with dining, show, or other reservations will have to pay, present ID, and play the admission chips.
As far as lines and logjams at the entrances are concerned, part of the experiment will be to implement a casino-reservations system. We’re not sure if reservations will be mandatory or if there’ll be two lines, one for people with and one for people without reservations. But we do know that it’ll behoove patrons with dining and/or show reservations to arrive earlier than usual in case the lines are long.
April Fools!
Not a word of today's QoD, neither the question nor the answer, is true (as far as we know!). We made the whole thing up.
Thanks for playing along.
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