Photo TR: Las Vegas 12/9-12/11

We went to Las Vegas from 12/9-12/11 and stayed at Luxor. The hotel is really nice, but I expected more from the IMAX experiences. We arrived on Friday night and went right to the Luxor from the airport. There was nothing really incredible to talk about for this night except that I broke even on gambling. Saturday morning, Gyendolynne had a massage scheduled at the Oasis spa. She said it was great to be pampered. I decided to take in some more gambling at this point. I played video poker and won $250 on double deuces on only $20. That pretty much made the trip since we were only going to do the IMAX stuff, have lunch and see King Tut’s tomb for the rest of the day. We had a helicopter tour planned for 5pm. I can’t tell you how disappointed we were in the IMAX rides. Don’t do this at all! We saw one IMAX show, it was the safari one. This film was dirty and the 3D effects weren’t great because the film had some overlapping problems. All in all, we weren’t too happy with this. The helicopter ride got the bad taste of the IMAX rides out of our mouths though. It was great to see the strip and Stratosphere tower from the air!

It was a short trip. Onto the photos!

Another random photo

Random Luxor photo

Our only break away from Luxor and Gyendolynne gets locked up at Excalibur!

Happy picture back at Luxor

We took our helicoper ride and had someone take our picture in front of their xmas tree afterward.

and really down right silly!

Kinda goofy....

We are a little excited about the 3D glasses

Onto the IMAX theater, hopefully this is better.

We won't let it ruin our day though.

By the second one we were not amused!

Waiting to ride our first one, spirits were up!

IMAX Rides were terrible

MMM...First drink of the trip!

Its an interesting hotel. Stayed there several times. Its my favorite non over the top luxe hotel.

1) Its interesting to see how much has changed over the years -- namely -- the boat ride around the hotel is gone !!

2) Do they advertise the three part 'adventure' anymore?

I remember when that came out -- you had the ride film, then the game show thingy, then the theatre of time.

3) Does the laser show work at all inside?

My favorite part of the attraction ride film is actually the elevator TO the ride. It TOTALLY feels like you are free falling.

Which ride-films did you ride? I've only done the attraction one. That one is kewl.

J.

I don't remember a 3 part adventure, but we got tickets to ride all the IMAX rides, see one IMAX film, and do some other things there as well as Mandalay Bay.

We didn't see a laser show and there wasn't an elevator in the IMAX rides.

We saw the safari 3D film.

Great Photo TR, Rick! The Luxor looks nice, what I see from your pictures! It is sad, that the IMAX movie was so bad! We have a good IMAX cinema in my hometown! I really love the cinema and my favourite movie is "Spacestation 3D"! Last year I watched the movie 2 times a week! :shock: I hope your next IMAX cinema will be better! However, thanks for posting!

--Sören

Nice TR, too bad you didn't like the IMAX rides. I went on Search of the Obilisk and I liked it. I also saw Pirates in 3-D and that was a pretty good 3-D show. But if you wanted to go on the best simulator you had to go to the Star Trek Experience.

I work at our local IMAX theatre. A couple of points:

- Those 3D glasses look really crappy. The ones that we use at our IMAX theatre are very costly and they are reused (they are put through a huge sanitation machine for ten minutes, though.) They're made by Polaroid/3M and they're very nice and clear. We even got some new ones about a month ago that are even more clear. It's amazing to see The Polar Express 3D at our theatre- the clarity is amazing. I love IMAX!

- It's real sad that the film was dirty. However, I have to wonder why the film was dirty. The IMAX projection system can self-clean itself while in use, preventing what happened to you.

- I've never heard of an IMAX ride- could you tell us what it is exactly?

^^We did the Star Trek the Experience a couple years ago before the change. We really wanted to go to it, but just ran out of time.

^Thanks for the info on the 3D glasses. My wife and I saw Polar Express at the IMAX (not in 3D) here in San Jose last year and we really liked the experience. That's why we were looking forward to this.

The IMAX rides are simulators in IMAX film style. It is similar to Back to the Future ride at Universal, but this was even worse than that!

I did the IMAX thing back in 1995 and was mildly impressed, but that was 10 years ago! Thanks for the pics and TR!

Wow, I never would've imagined an IMAX not being great. But at least the helicopter ride was nice!

For its time, "IN search of the Obelisk" was the best there was. Pretty crazy. I never did the IMAX theater (the 3rd attraction) there because originally, it wasn't built for IMAX, but for a modification if I remember correctly (very tall screen, overly narrow width), so I didn't bother (my hometown had a SWEET Imax theatre).

I liked the 'elevator' ride down to attraction level the best. Basically you fall down a mine shaft.

Soren, have you seen magnificent desolation at all? What did you think?

Yeah, back in the day the motion simulator at the Luxor was the best around. I haven't been to LV since 2000, but even back then, the Luxor sort of seemed a little run down and not as impressive as it was when it opened. I need to get back to Vegas...

dt

Only one beer shot... Rick, come on man!

Jose,

I wasn't very impressed with Magnificent Desolation 3D. It seemed really lacking to me. Spacestation 3D was considerably better (we've had both films at our theatre.)

If you're going to do an IMAX ride in Vegas, Race for Atlantis at Caesar's is much, much better than In Search of the Obelisk. Much. (Actually, I found the simulator at Star Trek to be kind of a letdown, too, but the Borg thingy was great.)

Dammit, I've never been to Las Vegas, and I SOOOOOOOO want to go, its only an eight hour trip by car from Albuquerque, so I have little to NO excuse

Nice TR, thanks