Can We Get an Update on the Mirage/Hard Rock Switch?

Can we get an update on the Mirage/Hard Rock switch? What has stayed to this point in time? LOVE? And what has left the property. Dolphins and tigers?

Hard Rock International, the hotel-casino wing of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, took over the Mirage from MGM Resorts on December 19 of last year. Note that Hard Rock bought only the operations of the property; Vici is the landlord. Hard Rock will pay $90 million in annual rent to start. The Mirage is the first hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip to be operated by a Native American tribe.

Other than that, little has changed so far. According to various statements, mostly by the CEO of Hard Rock, the transformation to a Hard Rock hotel-casino will be gradual and the property will remain the Mirage until then, projected at between 24 and 40 or so months. It will be called the Mirage until the transformation to Hard Rock is complete in 2025 at the earliest. BetMGM remains the sports book operator and The Beatles LOVE will remain in the showroom at least through the end of this year.

Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat closed completely last November, but that was due more to dolphin deaths than the operations transition. Still, even without the deaths, we doubt the habitat would have survived it.

The volcano is scheduled to be replaced by the iconic guitar-shaped Hard Rock hotel tower. Eventually, the entire property will be remade in Hard Rock's image. The plan involves gutting and redeveloping the existing hotel towers, plus adding the all-suites guitar-shaped tower, for a total for a total of 3,640 rooms. The casino, restaurants, and public areas will, likewise, be completely stripped and rebuilt from scratch.

The casino will nearly double in size, from 94,000 square feet to 174,000, with the number of slots going from 850 slots to 2,000 and table games increasing from 51 to 212. There will be a minimum of 21 restaurants, most (if not all) of them new.

Another 83,000 square feet of convention space will be added, with a new ballroom for high-end events. The pool area will be completely rebuilt, with a separate “pool experience” in front of the guitar tower.

In perhaps the biggest news, the theater will nearly double in size, from 3,278 to 6,265 seats (which doesn’t bode well for LOVE beyond the current extension into 2024). There will also be a music museum and high-tech show out front.

Hard Rock has announced that they plan not to close the property while the transformation is underway, so we'll be curious to see how they manage to pull that off. But for now, that looks to be at least two years in the future. And Hard Rock is in no hurry. The Seminole consider it a "legacy business" that will help provide for the tribe for many generations to come.

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rokgpsman Feb-12-2023

Beatles LOVE show

The Beatles LOVE show at Mirage has been one of our favorites over the years, seen it several times. If it does get the boot by Hard Rock I hope it can reopen at another theater. But the showroom theater at Mirage was specially built for it, I doubt another venue will do that. And I think the people controlling the Beatles licensing would have to give approval on a different location for the show. So I'm afraid this show will not be around much longer. Another sad demise in the name of "progress".

VegasMatt26 Feb-12-2023

Last week

I stopped in last weekend during my stay at NYNY. I got my new Unity card, but their app has bugs they are working on.
They level matched me from my Pearl status with MGM to the Legend level and gave me a $ 50 dining credit, two visits to Pantry cleared that away, not to mention a $50 credit to use up at NYNY.
I've been playing MyVegas online game and racked up enought points for $50 freeplay at NYNY as well as a free appetizer at Tom's Urban and a free shot of sugar water at Chocolate bar.

RichM Feb-12-2023

It shouldn't be too hard...

The Mirage is a functioning hotel and casino right now. They could simply build the new guitar tower first, with a new casino as part of that tower. Then, once done, go to town on the clearly dated Mirage tower with all operations in the guitar tower during that phase of construction.

I'm not saying they'll do it that way. I'm just saying there are ways to do it.

Question of the Day - 12 February 2023

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