Last year Teri met up with her high school friend, Emily, in Vegas for a Dave Matthews Band concert. This year they made plans to hit the town again and see The Beatles Love Cirque du Soleil show. Emily's boyfriend and I joined them for a weekend of fun.
We all came in separately and I arrived about the same time as the ladies. The first stop before the hotel was the liquor store of course. This store in Vegas was giving out free samples of nasty flavored vodka. We had some drinks, ate some food, and finally made it out for the night. We ended up at a club called The Bank in the Bellagio. After waiting in line for awhile we paid $40 to walk in the door. Drinks were about $15 and the music was very loud. The ladies had fun and it was their trip. Afterwards Teri and I played roulette till about 6:30 in the morning while Emily and her boyfriend reacquainted themselves.
The next morning we were all struggling. Teri in particular was hating life. The other two weren't feeling very chippy but managed to make it down to the pool. Teri and I ordered some food later in the afternoon but neither of us could eat. She was still hungover and my stomach was upset from lack of food. The Cirque du Soleil show started around 6:00 or 7:00 and we eventually started getting ready. Emily and her man wanted to get all decked out and he brought his tux. Being that I don't have a tux and wasn't going to get one I wore a suit. We hit the buffet before the show but Teri and I couldn't eat after nibbling on our lunch.
They warned you that once the show started you had to wait for a break to be seated and I was cutting it close in the beer line. We paid over $100 for our tickets and we were in the last row. The place wasn't huge though and we had speakers in our headrests. The stage was in the center of the venue. It turned out to be quite an impressive set up. The show basically went through the different eras of 20th century London. There were all sorts of characters. It sorta had a circus theme with a short fat ring leader starting and ending the show
Almost as amazing as the dancing and athletic ability was the venue itself. There were big curtains going from ceiling to floor dividing the venue almost in to quarters at the start. There were also screens on two ends of the squarish venue above the seats. They would often show silhouettes of the Beatles on the curtains and screens while playing tracks of them talking and messing about. The most amazing part of the venue was the stage. It could basically move up and down in sections as well as open and close in any way they wanted. The stage floor changed for each song. Sometimes parts were raised, some parts were lowered, some places had open holes, and others were raised 10ft high. During some songs the stage constantly changed during the performance while the dancers all did crazy stunts in conjunction with the stage moving up/down and left/right. A 5' square section would open in the stage floor and someone would drop down through it from a rope attached to the ceiling.
They had all kinds of gimmicks to play with. Ropes from the ceiling, trapeze, cars, trampolines, and other odd objects were all used to fly/swing/jump on and around. At one point they ran out with the biggest sheet of cloth I have ever seen. They started at a bed in the middle of the center stage and brought it out and up the first 20 rows or so of the audience. It had a huge mushroom effect when the bed suddenly shot up towards the ceiling and dropped down again. In one scene a guy was on a swinging board/trapeze thing that allowed the guy to swing around in circles. He had some very impressive control over this swing. He moved around on it in risky positions while getting it to stall completely upside down. The scene where they had four trampolines around a typical British phone booth was entertaining. They also brought out two larger quarter pipes on the sides of the stage and another double sided quarter pipe in the middle. Four roller bladders do some very cool stuff. They had confetti falling from the ceiling and played with blowing bubbles. It was a great show with classic music and a sensory overload of acrobatics.
After the show Teri and I hit the roulette table again till about 5:30am. She did well during her first time at the game. I didn't do so well but had fun. Teri and I hit the airport together the next day but flew out separately to Dulles and Regan. During my layover in Atlanta I saw a giant. The guy was over 7 feet high and weighed at least 300 lbs. He wasn't at all fat just huge. He was wearing special moccasin shoes because his feet were over sized.
Strippers, gambling, and clubs aren't my thing but its hard not to have fun in Vegas.
Teri's pics (which include my pics and Emily's pics)
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