Las Vegas Erupts in Bargains : Sin City’s Attempt to Lure Families and Low-Rollers Producesthe Lowest Prices in Years

In those glorious days when the Mob ran Las Vegas, life was cheap. Drinks were too. And meals and rooms. Why, they just gave them away.

Those glorious days, my friend, are back.

Two weeks ago, I saw the Folies Bergere at the Tropicana Hotel for $10.50. Twenty-five years ago, to see the same show, I had to pay $12.50.

Why so cheap?

I had a coupon. In fact, everyone in line had a coupon.

Discount coupons are a way of life in Las Vegas today. You’ll get a pile of them in the mail two days after you make your hotel reservation for an air/hotel package. Otherwise, they’ll be waiting for you at the front desk. The clerk at the airport car rental counter will hand you some more. They’ll be stacked up in your hotel lobby.

Las Vegas is simply awash in discount coupons. Every day is like Thursday afternoon at Ralph’s.

Some examples: Free admission to the antique car museum at the Imperial Palace, normally $3.75. Half-price on the Island Buffet at the Tropicana, already a dirt-cheap $3.95. Two for the price of one at the Liberace Museum, normally $6.50 a head. Five dollars off the $22.50 ticket price for Jeff Kutash’s “Splash” at the Riviera. Free tickets to the “Viva Las Vegas” show at the Sands, normally $10. Free wine at the Dunes. Three free drinks and two free desserts at the Flamingo Hilton.

Las Vegas has always offered bargain brunches and, to patient gamblers, free drinks. But show discounts? Free shows? What has happened? Why now?

For one thing, Las Vegas has added 13,000 rooms in the last two years, including 4,032 at the Excalibur, which opened last June, and 3,049 at Steve Wynn’s Mirage, which opened seven months earlier. Occupancy has dropped from 87.4% last year to 77.6% this year. As a result, Las Vegas hotels are giving away the store to fill all those rooms.

“All the new hotels have certainly keened the competition up,” said Don Payne of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. “But in this quixotic market, every time you put 3,000 rooms up, and they say there’s a surplus, the new hotel suddenly gets 90% occupancy.”

Another factor is the economy. “The bargains you’re talking about,” Payne said, “are a reflection of our feeling on people’s will to spend discretionary income. In other words, the recession.”

Kathy Espin, who handles publicity for the Stardust, has a seasonal explanation: “This is our traditional (end-of-the-year) slump. People have social obligations elsewhere. Occupancy at all the hotels suffers, and we’re pulling out all the stops.”

Payne compares the present to the late ‘60s, “before the bean-counters took over. The new management decided that everything had to pay its own way, starting with the rooms. The one thing they kept was the free parking.”

Coupon madness is raging at the best places. Even the posh Desert Inn is giving away coupons for free drinks at Jeff Kutash’s “Showstopper,” a brand-new show by Las Vegas’ hottest choreographer.

But the biggest news right now is the bargains on air fares and room rates. Southwest Airlines introduced a $29 one-way air fare (from Burbank, Ontario or LAX) on Nov. 1. Southwest also offers air-and-hotel combinations for two nights for $69.

During weekdays, rooms at the Imperial Palace, the Excalibur and the Aladdin are down to $20 for a double. They’re $30 at the Sahara and Circus Circus.

(A caveat: You must book three weeks in advance for the airline deals, about two weeks for the hotel discounts. For hotel reservations, use the numbers listed in the “Guidebook,” or the ones you find in Sunday newspaper advertisements. Often, main hotel switchboards are not aware of these discounts. If there’s a convention in town, you’ll pay top dollar. A national convention of undertakers was here when I was, and I had to pay the full price of $89 for my room.)

Meal prices in Las Vegas, meanwhile, have hit Depression levels. Downtown, at Lady Luck, you can eat three buffet meals a day for a total of $8.89.

Las Vegas on $25 a day? You bet. And you’ll have enough left over for nickel slots at the Riviera, 50-cent roulette at the Stardust and dollar craps at the Golden Nugget. Not to mention the best free show in town, the exploding volcano in front of the Mirage, which erupts every 15 minutes after sundown.

Does this tell us that the so-called “grind,” or low-rollers, trade has taken over Las Vegas? Have senior citizens on bus tours replaced high-rollers as the mainstay of Las Vegas’ business?

Step with us now into the casino of the Imperial Palace. Here, under a ceiling crawling with hideous bronze dragons, slot machines spread out as far as the eye can see. Two white-haired women sit side-by-side, feeding quarters to the machines. One, whose name tag says Thelma, is smoking. The other picks up a glass and takes periodic sips. “Can you believe it?” she asks. “They gave me a free drink and I’m not even a big gambler. I don’t even know whether a full house beats five of a kind.”

Outside, seniors pour out of three buses, and the Strip Trolley--a hotel shuttle bus disguised as a tram--discharges what looks like the vanguard of a nerd invasion from Caltech. The visitors carry their suitcases through the casino, jostling furious patrons, and take an elevator upstairs. Later, they will be chastised for standing over the blackjack tables with calculators in hand.

You’ll have to go elsewhere to find the high rollers. Check out the baccarat tables at the four most expensive hotels in town--the Desert Inn, Bally’s, the Mirage and Caesars Palace. Few Americans are playing the high-stakes games these days. Males carrying Asian passports keep them going.

New games have been introduced as a result. A two-handed variation of poker called pai gow is everywhere.

Somewhere between the Mirage, at $99 a night (down from $130), currently the most expensive hotel in town, and the Imperial Palace, at $20, lies a great bargain hunter’s middle ground.

Circus Circus, always a good deal at $44, has lowered its rates to $30 per room, sleeping up to four people. Circus Circus pioneered the kid-friendly casino/hotel concept when it opened in 1968. The hotel, and the medieval-themed Excalibur it sired, represent the new Las Vegas, a city that Mayor Jan Laverty Jones wants to promote as a desert resort for the whole family. Late last month, Steve Wynn of the Golden Nugget and the Mirage announced that he, too, would be building a family-oriented hotel, with 3,000 rooms.

Circus Circus’ upstairs midway, where kids are allowed to play unaccompanied by adults, features free circus acts, leaning to trapeze and high-wire artists, from 11 a.m. to midnight. Contortionist Rudolph Delmonte, so nimble he can lick any body part below his neck, draws big crowds. Look for mobs of kids playing carnival games and making silly faces in the fun house mirrors. While their parents are off gambling, the kids run back and forth, in and out, up and down the elevators. It’s all free, whether you’re a hotel guest or not.

Even kid-haters love the dinner buffet at Circus Circus, an incredible feast for under $3.99. Ten thousand people eat here every day, the hotel claims. The lines are long, but they move quickly. Friday is seafood night, with six seafood items among the 45 at the buffet. Flounder and cod, rarely seen at buffets, are here.

On your way out of the buffet, you’ll be given a book of coupons.

Circus Circus has been such a success that its owners decided to build another theme hotel: the Excalibur. The Excalibur puts up nearly as many kids as Circus Circus. Its noon and 2 p.m. “Wonderful World of Horses” shows, starring the Royal Lippizaner stallions, are a big draw at $5.95. For rooms, too, the price is right: $20 per night between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The theme here is supposed to be Olde England, but the exterior is clearly modeled after a 19th-Century Bavarian castle. With 4,032 rooms, this is the largest resort hotel in the world. Excalibur draws older kids than Circus Circus, mostly teen-agers, and rather than running around in the casino they go jousting out in the parking lot.

For a more adult experience, the Tropicana is a good bet. To young, sophisticated Americans, the Tropicana has become what the Dunes was in the ‘60s. It’s down from $89 a night to $55 now--still no great bargain, but the food is: $3.95 for the breakfast and lunch Islander Buffet, $4.95 for supper.

Guests registering at the Tropicana, where I stayed, get a sheaf of discount coupons: half-price for the Folies Bergere, $2 off at the Java Java Room coffee shop and half-price at the Islander Buffet. With your half-price coupon, you get endless trips to the breakfast bar for $1.95--rows of tropical fruits, exotic omelets, seven kinds of doughnuts and something you’ll never see at Circus Circus: unlimited soft drink refills.

And, when you cash in your half-price coupon, you get . . . two more coupons.

At the other end of town, the Golden Nugget, the AAA-rated four-diamond luxury king of downtown, is giving away its big Victorian rooms for $58 this month and $49 in December for two. We’re talking about four-poster beds and expensive-looking antiques.

From Dec. 8-26, Southwest Airlines’ packages will cost just $74 per person for two midweek nights at the Golden Nugget, with air fare.

Wynn spent millions redecorating the Golden Nugget. The lobby is lined with gleaming white marble. In the hotel and casino you’ll find gold-plated elevators, vases, telephones, even slot machines. And a huge gold-plated Big Six wheel. You might expect to find the heavy hitters gambling here, but not necessarily. The opulent Golden Nugget is the home of nickel slots and dollar craps.

“We have dollar blackjack, too,” said Alan Feldman, vice president of Mirage Resorts, Inc. “But we also have $100-minimum craps, and $100-minimum blackjack. We’re one of the few downtown casinos with baccarat. We feel that part of the appeal of downtown is that it appeals to a wide variety of players. You never turn your back to the nickel slot player.”

The busiest slots in the Golden Nugget face the buffet restaurant. This is where you wait for your number to be called, half an hour on Sunday. The Sunday champagne brunch, at $9.50 per person, would seem to be a big splurge by Las Vegas standards. But this is a four-plate, two-bowl, all-you-can-eat brunch. And beautiful to look at: smoked salmon, cherry cheesecake, fresh melon, gefilte fish, blintzes in strawberry syrup, French toast, Spanish omelets, roast beef, ham, turkey and shrimp salad.

The champagne is only Jacques Bonet, but you get vast quantities.

The brunch is offered all day Sunday. From 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. every night, the Golden Nugget sells complete steak dinners for $1.99.

At show time in the new, lean Las Vegas, the real bargains begin--or end, depending on your tastes. Magic shows are steep and rarely discounted. Tickets for Siegfried and Roy at the Mirage start at $67.30.

But tickets for “Crazy Girls” at the Riviera--12 young women telling X-rated jokes and taunting males in the audience--sell for only $9.95, including two drinks. The performers lip-sync to lewd tapes and dance topless, too. In fact, this is the raunchiest show in town.

Folies Bergere, in contrast, is topless for only a few minutes. This is Las Vegas’ longest running show, 32 years old, and cheaper than ever . . . thanks to coupons. Depending on which coupon you use, the $21 two-cocktail show costs either $15 or $10.50.

How does the show look to someone who last saw it 25 years ago? Wonderful. The singing is better, the ‘50s songs are new, the comedian, Ray Fell, is much, much funnier. And you no longer have to slip somebody a $10 bill to get a front-row seat. Just get in line early.

The hottest ticket in town is “Enter the Night” at the Stardust, featuring Bobbie Berosini and his performing orangutans. At $33.25, this is no bargain by current Las Vegas standards. But if you stay at the Stardust between Dec. 1 and Jan. 30, your tickets are free. A double at the Stardust during this period will cost just $32 in the brand-new tower, $22 in the motor inn. The deal is good on weekends, but not on New Year’s Eve or Super Bowl weekend, Jan. 25-26. The Stardust will give guests 25 free raffle tickets on a 1992 Saturn from Dec. 15-25.

Visitors now rate hotels by the quality of their coupons. Of those hotels that willy-nilly hand out coupon books to all who ask, the Dunes is considered the worst and the Flamingo Hilton the best, with the Sands a close second.

You pick up your Dunes Funbook at the Promotions Desk. The coupons, except for the one for the free key chain, have strings attached. The Dunes will give you a free carafe of wine, but you have to buy dinner. They’ll give you a free drink, but you have to buy a second one.

Not so at the Flamingo Hilton. Their free drinks are unconditionally free. You don’t even have to be gambling.

The Sands gives you a high-quality coffee mug and free show tickets, but to get the hats and T-shirts you must bet $20 on a sporting event.

The Flamingo Hilton’s coupon book will introduce you to Food Fantasy, their 24-hour coffee shop. Whether or not you take them up on their two-for-one hamburger and fries offer at $3.25, this deli/cafeteria is a cheerful relief when you’ve had enough buffets. Corn beef or pastrami sandwiches are $4.25.

These coupons exist, of course, to lure you into the hotel casinos. Las Vegas hotels are set up so that no matter where you wish to go, you must pass through the casino first. Thus, while enjoying a rock-bottom, low-budget vacation, you can easily lose your house.

GUIDEBOOK

Las Vegas

Here is a sampling of Vegas deals:

Bargain flights: America West flies from LAX to Las Vegas for $29 one way, provided tickets are purchased 21 days in advance. Call (800) 247-5692. Likewise Southwest Airlines, (800) 531-5601.

Air-hotel packages: Southwest Vacations, including air fare and two nights’ lodging, begin at $69 for midweek stays; (800) 423-5683.

Delta Dream Vacations, including air fare, two nights’ lodging and 24-hour Alamo subcompact, begin at $99 for midweek stays; (800) 872-7786.

Hotel specials: Aladdin, $20 per night, double occupancy. Address: 3667 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 634-3424.

Circus Circus, $30 per night, double occupancy. 2880 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 634-3450.

Excalibur, $20 per night, double occupancy. 3850 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 322-8687.

Imperial Palace, $20 per night, double occupancy. 3535 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 634-6441.

Sahara, $30 per night, double occupancy, includes show tickets and buffet breakfast. 2535 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 634-6666.

Stardust, $32 per night, double occupancy, in the new tower, or $22 in the motor inn from Dec. 1 to Jan. 30, excluding New Year’s and Super Bowl weekends, includes show tickets. Available weekends. 3000 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 222-2946.

Meal deals:

Circus Circus for best supper buffet bargain, $3.99. 2880 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 634-3450.

Flamingo Hilton, Food Fantasy, two hamburgers and two orders of French fries with coupon available at the Funbook Desk, $3.25. 3555 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 732-2111.

Golden Nugget for best Sunday champagne brunch, all day, $9.50. 129 E. Fremont St.; (800) 634-3454.

Palace Station, winner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s poll for best buffet and best breakfast, at $3.95 for breakfast, $4.95 for lunch, $7.95 for supper. 2411 W. Sahara Ave.; (800) 634-3101.

Tropicana Hotel, Islander Buffet, $3.95 breakfast and lunch, $4.95 supper. 3801 Las Vegas Blvd. South; (800) 634-4000.

Freebies: The continuous circus acts at Circus Circus, 11 a.m. to midnight.

Free sample of your choice and free tour, Ethel M Chocolate Factory & Cactus Garden, 2 Cactus Garden Drive; (800) 634-6584.

For more information: Contact the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, 3150 S. Paradise Road, Las Vegas, Nev. 89109, (702) 733-2323.