Vegas, baby!

For our last day in Vegas we decided to focus on the Strip.


During the day we went to two exhibitions, Mob Attraction at The Tropicana, and Bodies at The Luxor.


Mob Attraction was a lot of fun. I had read about it in a booklet that was handed out for free, and I gathered that it was basically an exhibition with some film clips. The write-up mentioned something about it being "interactive" and "immersive" but I didn't give it much thought.


Well, when we arrived and paid we were issued with a "passport" that we had to keep on us at all times, and then we were told that we were immigrants that had just entered the US at Ellis Island. It then became a role-playing game of sorts and we were greeted at various points by actors. We got an envelope from one guy and told to deliver it to "Big Tony". After delivering the envelope, Tony warned us to say nothing to the cops (I was told to keep my "pretty mouth shut"), and so of course as soon as we left Big Tony we were stopped by an Irish policeman. How these people managed to keep a straight face and remain in character was a feat in itself.

Also along the way there were screens and life size holograms of actors giving us historical info about how the mob began and how it eventually moved to Vegas. The actors in these clips were James Caan, Frank Vincent, Tony Sirico (Paulie from The Sopranos) and Mickey Rourke. Our "passport" was actually a device that activated the screens and other effects as we walked along.

At one point it became a more typical exhibition of artefacts and info, which was really interesting - turns out that Scorsese's Casino is quite close to the truth. And it also made me really want to watch Bugsy again.

Just before we left though, we were told that the Boss wanted to see us. A hologram of The Boss came out and told us we were in trouble. Two heavies with machine guns also appeared and we were "shot" at. We got whacked!

Following that adventure we went to see Bodies, an exhibition about the human body that uses real human specimens. Each room was devoted to a different system in the body. The circulatory system specimens were particularly striking. They looked more like works of art than parts of the body. It also reminded me a lot of human biology class - a lot of what I learnt came flooding back.

Once the sun went down we decided to go for a walk up the strip and take a look. It was packed with people and still really hot, temperature wise.

We also went to see the water and light show out the front of The Bellagio (those of you who have seen Ocean's Eleven will have seen this at the end of the film).