{"id":866770,"date":"2024-10-07T09:24:29","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T16:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/?p=866770"},"modified":"2024-10-07T09:24:31","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T16:24:31","slug":"on-the-road-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/on-the-road-again\/","title":{"rendered":"On the road (again)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8230; with apologies to the great <strong>Willie Nelson<\/strong>. Our <em>hejira<\/em> has taken us in a week from <strong>Lexington, Virginia<\/strong> to <strong>Charlottesville<\/strong>, to <strong>Charlotte<\/strong>, <strong>North Carolina<\/strong> and <strong>Columbia, South Carolina<\/strong>\u2014all in the name of getting back to <strong>Augusta, Georgia<\/strong>, only to find a city devastated by Hurricane Helene. Never have we seen such destruction firsthand. (A state reeling from Helene&#8217;s wrath may finally be tractable to sports betting and maybe even casinos. We can but hope.) And yesterday we flew from Augusta to <strong>Las Vegas<\/strong> for this year&#8217;s installment of <strong>Global Gaming Expo<\/strong>. Above you see the surprisingly palatial press room at the <strong>Venetian Expo Center<\/strong>. We rate!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s very early on the first morning of G2E and there&#8217;s little as yet to report, although there&#8217;s already scuttlebutt about the &#8220;hostage video&#8221; that <strong>Light &amp; Wonder <\/strong>CEO <strong>Matt Wilson<\/strong> cut to contain the damage from the <em>Dragon Train<\/em> debacle. He&#8217;s promising <em>Dragon Train<\/em> 2.0, which won&#8217;t play well with <em>Aristocrat Technologies<\/em>. Check-in at G2E was a bit ropey, what with two staffers standing around chatting while an overworked third did the actual checking in. But hey, after waiting eight days for <strong>Georgia Power<\/strong> to restore electricity (Internet is still out) to our regular office, it&#8217;s no sweat. Sighted in the press room:  the winner of the <strong>Christopher Nolan<\/strong> lookalike contest, right down to the stubble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re staying at the <strong>El Cortez<\/strong> (thank you, <strong>Kenny Epstein<\/strong>) and will endeavor to file dispatches on the vagaries of G2E. That is, when we&#8217;re not running from pillar to post. Welcome to the madhouse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; with apologies to the great Willie Nelson. Our hejira has taken us in a week from Lexington, Virginia to Charlottesville, to Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina\u2014all in the name of getting back to Augusta, Georgia, only to find a city devastated by Hurricane Helene. Never have we seen such destruction firsthand. (A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83928,"featured_media":866771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1728],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/20241007_085335-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83928"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866773,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866770\/revisions\/866773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}