Las Vegas Road Trip: Day One

Feb 15, 2005- Permalink

Our Las Vegas trip would entail seeing eleven shows in seven days, so taking a brief rest in our hotel room before heading out for our first show was a welcome part of our plans. Alas, it was not to be.

We had booked, or so we thought, a seven night stay at the Riviera Hotel using Vegas.com, which bills itself as “The Official Vegas Travel Site.” When we arrived at the Riviera, an older Vegas landmark that appeared in the original Ocean’s 11 and Martin Scorsese’s Casino, we were shocked to discover our prepaid reservation did not exist in their system. I felt like I was in the Seinfeld episode where he complained that they could take the reservation, but couldn’t hold it. I called Vegas.com and after a long, long time on hold spoke to a customer service representative. He said they’d send the booking info back to the Riviera. After a long wait at the Riviera’s main desk, one of their staff flashed me a piece of paper saying it was the original “regret” notice that they had faxed over to Vegas.com two weeks earlier. According to them, I never had a booking.

More time on hold with Vegas.com. The CSR said they never received a “Regret” notice from the Riviera and then went on to hint that perhaps the Riviera had oversold since his supervisor was telling him that they were not honouring several of their reservations. It was turning into a game of he said/she said and I was the pawn. I explained that they had a very tired, unhappy journalist on the phone and that their value in my eyes was dropping rapidly. He said that he would do his best to relocate us. Between the Chinese New Year crowd and the MAGIC clothing convention, the city was packed. More time, a lot of time, was spent on hold and finally the CSR came back. They had been able to find us seven consecutive nights at the New Frontier, a country’n‘western-themed casino across the street from the Fashion Show Mall. We had arrived in Las Vegas two and a half hours before and now we were finally going to check in…only to be back at the Riviera less than three hours later for our first show, Splash.

The name Splash came from the water acts and 20,000 gallon tank that used to be the centerpiece of this 20-year-old variety show. The tank is gone — replaced by a 35’ × 15’ ice rink — but the show is the very definition of a variety show. A couple of the dancers seemed to have gone for the quantity discount at the breast augmentation clinic and with our front row seats we felt like we could have been protected from the elements by them. Besides the singers and dancers, who whip through a variety of decades and genres like an A.D.D. sufferer with an itchy remote finger, the show also features the comedy and skill of the Los Latin Cowboys, a pair of gaucho-clad wisecrackers whose comedy does not hide their amazing skill with the bolos. The comedy and skill also extends to the Richard brothers, whose juggling and camaraderie kept the audience in stitches. The audience was equally impressed by the three skaters who put on a performance made all the more amazing by the relatively small space that they had to skate in. After a tribute to America, the show once again featured a jarring juxtaposition as a 14’ metal sphere was rolled out and the showroom reverberated to the thunderous sounds of Guinness World Record Holders Bela Tabak’s “Riders of the Thunderdome”, a group of motorcyclists who speed around the sphere narrowly avoiding collision. The show plans to unveil a new anniversary edition in May. I have no idea what other acts they could toss into the show to surprise us.

Splash plays at the Riviera Hotel. Two shows/night at 7:00 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays. 8:00 p.m. Fridays & Sundays Dark Mondays For ticket information call (702) 794-9433