You know it’s bad when gambling is starting to hurt for business.
Why go to Vegas when you can gamble all your money away on your phone from the comfort of your couch.
Take the money you saved from the airplane fare you didn’t buy and gamble it on if Trump will say 6-7 this week.
Same thing is happening on Orlando. The parks have decided that they are getting to crowded, so they raised the prices. That keeps out the poors, and makes the park less crowded for the wealthy, who buy more, and have a better guest experience without the crowds.
The parks still get crowded at peak times, but the parks conveniently have expensive passes that wealthy people can purchase to skip the lines.
I got free express passes for a work event, worth normally around $160 each. I got to spend 2.5 hours in line (the express line!) before the ride broke down and we all had to leave. In just over 8 hours in the park, we rode exactly 2 rides and would have spent over $500 each for the privilege had it not been a work trip.
Fuck Universal Epic.
Universal really is the worst on that.
Disney didn’t charge extra for fast-pass last time I went there. Anyone could schedule their rides on an app so they didn’t have to wait in long lines. The only shitty thing there was that they used to make you schedule day-of, and when they changed to letting you schedule months in advance it meant that when I went on a trip with like a week’s notice all the reservations were booked.
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Great news. I hope to see less wasteful spending.
Caesars and MGM don’t care about your US$5k vacation to Vegas anymore. They just want to deal with the Epstein class that are going to play US$100k hands at their card tables.
That’s how it feels.
Work trip was to Vegas a few months ago. It was pretty dead on a Friday afternoon. It was me and my coworkers walking around trying to find something to do. They were charging $8 for water at the bar. And my nachos was $22.
A decade ago, there would at LEAST be two dozen dealers hanging out at empty tables, inviting people. You’d bump into people or try to navigate a crowd. You’d get coupons for food, and courtesy deals for being a member. Not anymore.
It was a casino with a mall, food court and club scene too! My town’s mall had more activity than this. Hell, the McDonald’s on the highway had more activity than this.
It’s called recession. Soon to be the Second Great Depression.
Everyone is holding onto what little cash they have due to great uncertainty. Doesn’t matter which party or which country you belong to. I think history will show us that trump was not a good money man at all. Nothing more than an evil little shit stumbling upward because of dad’s money. From that point on it was all grifting schemes and tween dreams.
It’s always been obvious he’s shitty with money
People aren’t even drinking anymore.
How scary does shit have to be for a population to look at the cheap alcohol on shelves everywhere and say “Nah, I better save and stay healthy.”
There’s way better drugs available these days.
I guess they’ll have to rent out more illegal Israeli biolabs
So, it’s getting worse. There were videos last summer of how empty the Las Vegas Strip was.
The best thing that could happen to Las Vegas is to cut off the water and give it back to the scorpions.
No no, everything is fine. Las Vegas was too crowded before anyway. And last Christmas, people were spending as much if not more than previous years despite what you may have heard. Our economy is absolutely booming. Just look at the stock market, it’s the clearest indicator that everyone is doing very well.
You are absolutely correct. And the DOW is over 50,000 Dollars according to some people.
The Dow is over $50,000 - that’s what we should be talking about!
See Peter Santanello’s video of Las Vegas. There are communities living in underground garages that even the police are afraid to enter.
Yeah, but aren’t the cops afraid to enter classrooms with gunmen?
Vegas forgot the entire reason it was popular in the first place:
Because it was CHEAP. You could go to Vegas and get a nice hotel and go out every night for less than you could go anywhere else because they made their money on gaming instead of the accommodations.
During Covid they pivoted to trying to be a “destination” by ripping off everyone at every corner. The rooms are loaded down with fees, the food and drinks are ridiculously expensive.
The reason to go to Vegas was that a regular middle class person could FEEL like a rich person. That doesn’t work when you are priced out of everything.
The whole trick behind Vegas and casinos is to make a poor man feel rich. If you feel rich, you’re more likely to spend. So, they bait you with cheap hotels, cheap food, and free drinks in fancy looking establishments. Then, when you’re at the roulette wheel, you’ll be more inclined to bet big.
Exactly. They make Joe the HVAC guy feel like James Bond for a weekend. Now it’s just a regular vacation but without an attraction.
Two major things that are hurting Vegas today
International visitors are down due to the orange moron.
Attendance at conventions and corporate meetings are down due to the above stupid decisions. It was a cheap place to hold a large meeting: flights, transit, hotels, meeting hall rental and food were all 30%+ less than anywhere else.
Trumpelstiltskin, ever spinning gold into shit.
Yeah, my company could offer me a fully covered trip with extra free time to explore or have fun in the US and my answer would still be no.
To expand on Vegas’ woes, online gambling has exploded. Why bother driving several hours or take a plane to a desert city to play in several casinos when you can bet on a game or a bunch of outcomes by just using your phone?
Also, at least in my area, there are these skeezy little gaming parlors that have popped up in every strip mall where the Curves used to be.
Back in my day you had to drive over state lines to legally ruin your life.
no only that but they got rid of the physical machines and replaced them with screens that you play the same phone gambling game on. the magic is dead. every casino looks the same and has the same 2 machines playing the same exact games on screens.
That’s a great point to bring up.
I wonder why Vegas companies didn’t push back against the legalization of online gambling like we saw alcohol and tobacco companies do with marijuana. Perhaps most of them already have their hand in that pie, which is why it’s okay. Same thing with how tobacco companies stopped fighting legalization of weed once they became the dominant players.
That was driven by Vegas companies, I remember seeing Bally’s and MGM logos on a bunch of online gambling sites/apps when it was first getting started. I don’t think they realized just how viral the internet is, and how fast another entity can spin up and eat their lunch.
This is how I’ve been feeling about tourist places in general. So many shallow attractions trying to get easy money mixed in with the real interesting stuff, and everyone is competing for a spot with the good stuff, which drives prices to ridiculous levels and still there’s a large line and crowd.
I much prefer places tuned to attract locals because they have to at least be good enough to be worth future visits.
Good.
Fuck vegas.
Honestly, fuck yeah. I feel bad for the countless residents who depend on tourism, but gambling is a scourge upon the Earth and needs to die already, that money doesn’t help anyone but casino owners who are, once again, giant corporate whales who soak up money and never return it to the system.
Vegas may be dying but something has to kill the online sites also.
It’s okay, the Dow is over 50k.
They want to cater to the 1%, they’re only going to get traffic from the 1%
The problem is they are competing with the entire world then. The 1% would rather go to Macau.
Exactly. The top 10% of the US population is currently responsible for 50% of spending, which is propping up the economy. But places like Vegas don’t cater to the top 10%. Oh sure, there are high-roller areas; but for the most part, Vegas caters to the lower-middle class. Shockingly, rich people don’t like hanging around smokey casinos and a bunch of drunk gambling addicts. It’s no surprise that it’s suffering.
Hmm yes. That’s the only thing contributing to its visitor drop. Nothing else
They hike the prices through the roof and drop quality and it’s the consumers’ fault for not wanting to pay extra for crap
Also, who would visit the U.S. right now?
They also changed the games to where it was even harder to win and the payout was less.
But business analysts said that bleeding their customers dry through predatory tactics was the most important thing to do!
Think of the shareholders!
Also they turned the whole comp system from something that was a fun treat into what amounts to a grocery store rewards points scheme that isn’t fun for anyone. So now instead of a pretty girl coming up to you and just handing you a free drink or some guy giving you a free breakfast because you are a big shot, you instead have what amounts to a subway sandwich punch card.
There was a youtube video a few months back where a person who lived there and had several pro vegas videos outlined how the casinos had done it to themselves.
Last time I went to Vegas was 2023 and free drinks on the casino floor was still a thing at least, though not nearly as frequent as the time I went prior to Covid.
And winners are quickly banned. Why would anyone gamble and NOT card count?
I’ve only been once, but watching degenerate gamblers and young parents pushing strollers around a big mall drunk was just depressing. I got a vibe of Dollarama Epstein Island.
You know what 1000x better than The Venetian? Venice.
I’ve only been to Venice out of the two and I very much disliked Venice. So Vegas must be pretty bad.
Hundreds of years of history, beautiful museums, best restaurants in the world, going to dinner in a vaporetto, horrible.
Maybe Vegas is for you.
I’m not really a gambler. Glad you like Venice. I’ll give a list to counter:
Claustrophobic, terrible smell, rarely air conditioned, hard to find food that isnt just carbs and fat.
The museums are cool though.
Sounds like you shouldnt leave the US.
Oof homie
Go to Italy, complain about the food and air conditioning. That’s why Rome has a McDonalds.
