Posted on: December 17, 2024, 05:20h.
Last updated on: December 17, 2024, 05:51h.
What closes in Vegas sometimes stays in Vegas. Often, it’s more cost-effective for Strip casino resorts to wall off attractions that fall out of favor rather than conduct a full tear-out and rebuild. This is especially true when there are no new plans for a space.
Spiegelworld’s DiscoShow at the Linq is currently staged in a former sportsbook that was walled off in exactly this manner when the Imperial Palace closed in 2012.
Here are three examples of relics from Vegas’ past that still exist, which some beyond-intrepid trespassers have risked arrest to confirm for themselves.
The Dragon, Excalibur
“Merlin v Dragon” exemplified Las Vegas at its theme-iest. Set in the moat outside the medieval resort, this animatronic show featured Merlin, the legendary wizard, battling a dragon that emerged from a cave in the moat.
Built by AVG Productions, the rubber dragon was 71 feet long, had glowing yellow eyeballs and moved along tracks laid at the bottom of the moat. They nicknamed him Murphy, after Murphy’s Law, since everything that could wrong with him mechanically, did.
As guests watched from a drawbridge, Merlin lobbed fireballs at the dragon, which spit fire back at him, until Merlin won the battle and the scaly beast retreated.
The free attraction played multiple times a day from 6 p.m. to midnight. Due to its high maintenance cost and frequent breakdown, however, it was scrapped in 2001. While the moat lasted until a 2010 renovation, the dragon is still in its original lair — off limits to the public, but still there.
This was confirmed by YouTuber Freddy Trap, who documented discovering the dragon in 2023. According to this subsequently posted subreddit, however, a wall was erected to stop any more trespassers from making the same discovery.
Perhaps one day, Murphy can be displayed somewhere, or even repaired. For now, though, knowing that he still resides inside the castle walls adds mystique to the resort.
Hunter S. Thompson’s Hotel Room
A good chunk of the action in the 1971 novel “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” took place in Room 1850 of The Mint’s tower. According to Thompson, it was where he and his sidekick, Oscar Acosta, ran up an unpaid room-service bill of $29 to $36 an hour for 48 consecutive hours before trashing the place.
In 1988, the Mint was absorbed into the neighboring Binion’s Gambling Hall, then called Binion’s Horseshoe. Binion closed all 365 of its hotel rooms in 2009. And when Hotel Apache reopened 81 of them ten years later, none were located in the Mint’s tower, which remains closed to the public.
Earlier this year, Australian reporter Elmo Keep trespassed on the shuttered tower by taking an elevator to the roof of the adjoining Hotel Apache and climbing down a fire escape.
“You’ll need to make your way through the corridors until you find the room, and then there it will be, right in front of you: the site of the creation of one of the most impactful and innovative pieces of journalism ever written,” he wrote.
However, he warned that the tower is “in severe disrepair,” “strewn with refuse,” and “is home to several unhoused people who have made it into a kind of base of operations.”
Also, it’s completely illegal.
Adult Theater, Circus Circus
When it opened in 1968, Circus Circus included an adult showroom called the Hippodrome. It hosted the show “Nudes in the Night,” which at one point starred Babette Bardot.
In 1970, owner Jay Sarno launched a topless show there called “Tom Jones” — after the 1963 film of the same name, not the singer. Other shows that played in the theater included “Naked But Nice,” “French Love Connection,” “Nudes Delight” and “Hot Pants Sexplosion.”
According to this two-year-old subreddit, the theater was never demolished but merely walled off in 1973 . Dusty and creepy, it has been sitting there ever since and can still be accessed by employees from back-of-house corridors behind what is currently the pizzeria on the casino level.
“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.
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