Is the Hawaiian Marketplace still open? I haven’t heard anything about it in years.
It is, though barely.
We recall being a little underwhelmed by the place when it first opened years ago. It never got much better, but it has, essentially, slowly disappeared.
The 80,000-square-foot Hawaiian Marketplace, directly in front of the Polo Towers in the Strip commercial stretch between Harmon and the Showcase Mall, was (supposed to be) modeled after the venerable International Marketplace in Waikiki. The Las Vegas Strip version had island décor, with palms, pineapples, and an impressive King Kamehameha statue. When we walked through recently, however, little was left.
A Fat Tuesday bar dispenses alcoholic slushies from machines; T-shirt and eyewear kiosks, a reflexology space, Chili’s, an Irish pub, Chinese and Indian restaurants, and a small salon surround the “marketplace,” which is gone.
Curiously, right in the middle of the empty market space is a Zoltar Speaks animatronic fortune teller in a box (immortalized in the Tom Hanks’ movie Big); it works ($1), but given the lifeless surroundings, we were afraid to hear what it had to say.
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Jun-10-2018
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Richard Chen
Jun-10-2018
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