Bellagio 3600 Las Vegas Boulevard South Las Vegas, Nevada 89109
Number of rooms	,421
Theme	Mediterranean
Gaming space	16,000 ft² (10,776.75 m²)
Permanent show(s)	“O”
Signature attraction(s)	Bellagio Gallery Of Fine Art Conservatory The Fountains of Bellagio
Notable restaurant(s)	Le Cirque Circo Picasso Michael Mina Jasmine
Owner	MGM Mirage
Date opened	October 15, 1998
Casino type	Land
Major renovation(s)	Bellagio Spa Tower added: 2005
Previous name(s)	Dunes (demolished)
Casino website	Bellagio

Bellagio is a hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is owned by MGM Mirage.

Inspired by the Lake Como resort of Bellagio in Italy, Bellagio is famed for its elegance. One of its most notable features is an 8 ac (32,000 m²) artificial lake between the building and the Strip. The fountain shows on the lake are a major free attraction.

Inside Bellagio, Dale Chihuly’s Fiori di Como, composed of over 2,000 hand-blown glass flowers, covers 2,000 ft² (610 m²) of the lobby ceiling. The hotel also contains the Conservatory & Botanical Gardens.

Bellagio was conceived by Steve Wynn and built by his company, Mirage Resorts, Inc. following the purchase and demolition of the legendary Dunes hotel and casino in 1993. Bellagio was designed by Marnell Corrao Associates and Jon Jerde.

Bellagio is home to Cirque du Soleil’s production of “O”, the second permanent production show for the troupe.

History

• When it opened on October 15, 1998, it was the most expensive hotel ever built, having cost over $1.5 billion.
• In 2000 it became a MGM Mirage property when Mirage Resorts merged with MGM Grand Inc. to create MGM Mirage.
• Actor Justin Pierce commited suicide in 2000, by hanging himself in one of the Bellagio’s rooms.

Film History

• Bellagio was featured prominently in the film Ocean’s Eleven (2001). The safe for the three casinos that were robbed was located at the Bellagio.
• The sex tape that propelled hotel heiress Paris Hilton to stardom was shot in one of the hotel rooms in Bellagio.

Fountain details

The Fountains of Bellagio

The Fountains at Night (oarsman/shooter nozzles visible)

Wet Design, a company specializing in creating intricate water shows, designed an array of underwater pipes with over 1,000 nozzles that makes it possible to stage fountain displays coordinated with over 4,000 lights and music. The Fountains of Bellagio, as the attraction is called, was made using three types of nozzles: “oarsman”, which can swing back and forth to create dancing water; “shooters”, which can shoot water upwards; and “super shooters”, which can send a water blast as high as 250 ft (76 m) in the air. After the success that Wet Design had with the Fountains, Steve Wynn asked them to improve and modify the volcano attraction at sister casino The Mirage.

Links

• Bellagio website
• Bellagio Hotel Virtual Tour – 360 degree virtual tour
• Las Vegas Travelog – photo collection
• Satellite view of the site
• Marnell Corrao Associates technical project overview
• Bellagio Casino Review
• Traveler reviews of the Bellagio Hotel

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Interesting change, isn’t it? It seems that starting with this year, Las Vegas will be no more the capital of the gambling world. The Sin City is growing old.

In accordance with Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, casinos in Macau took in gross gambling revenue of $10.4 billion in 2007, up 47 percent from about $7.05 billion the year before. Four new casinos opened on Macau last year. At the end of December, Macau had 4,375 gaming tables and 13,267 slot machines in 28 casinos, up from 2,762 tables and 6,546 slots in 24 casinos a year before.

Minimum bets in the Chinese territory usually set at US$12.85, compared with a less than US$1 in some Vegas locations, allow Macau to take in far more per customer and per table than Las Vegas, says Asian Times.

“Macau has built properties based on Las Vegas’s 30 years of experience, but the Chinese market doesn’t have any experience with the Vegas product,” Andy Nazarechuk, dean of the University of Nevada Las Vegas-Singapore’s William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, said. “Once they learn, there will be money to be made.”

Las Vegas is growing much more slowly, and it is not entirely its fault. It is the US general policy about gambling that makes the US gambling to slow down every year. Including the policy for online gambling. At a first glance, UIGEA helped Las Vegas and the other US land casinos.

The true is, the US gambling industry lost its way during the last years, and now it tries to find it again. I am not talking about the companies, that expanded their activity in all the world, but about the US internal gambling market. The development of the Indian casinos is part of this process.

Las Vegas, billed as The Entertainment Capital of the World, is famous for massive and lavish casino resorts, the unrestricted availability of alcoholic beverages (as is true throughout Nevada), and adult entertainment. Once officially referred to as Sin City, this image made Las Vegas a popular setting for films and television programs. The major attractions in Las Vegas are the hotels. The most famous hotels line Las Vegas Boulevard South, also known as the Las Vegas Strip. Many of these hotels carry thousands of rooms and are featured on various themes. There are, of course, large casino areas in these hotels as well. There are many hotel casinos in the city’s downtown area as well, which was the original focal point of the city’s gaming industry in its early days. Several large hotels and casinos are also located somewhat off the Strip but adjacent to it, as well as in the county around the city. (Wikipedia)