Although most of Las Vegas focuses on the world-famous strip, Downtown Fremont Street Experience offers a memorable time for people of all ages. People can  revisit old Las Vegas with its classic casinos downtown including Main Street Station, Plaza, California, Las Vegas Club, Mermaids, Golden Gate, La Bayou, Binion’s, Golden Nugget, Fremont, Four Queens, Lady Luck, Fitzgeralds, Gold Spike, El Cortez, and The Western.

Different than the Vegas Strip, downtown Fremont Street has a lot of character. To attract tourists from the Strip, all the Downtown casinos grouped together to create the Fremont Street Experience. The casinos are bright and filled with lights which takes people back to the days of old Las Vegas.

The Downtown in Las Vegas is known to be a local’s area for gaming and nightlife. However, the Fremont Street Experience developed the downtown into more of an attraction for tourists. The north end of Fremont Street is covered with local casinos connected to the street with each casino unique in its own way.

The gigantic shelter covering the street occupies 5 blocks of Fremont Street. Watch the night sky come to life when you visit the world’s largest audio-video system combined with over 12 million LED lights. Individually designed light shows take place every hour from about 8pm and they are all free for people to watch.  Each show lasts approx 6 minutes and is different from the one before it.

Another form of entertainment on Fremont Street is the casinos, made famous from downtown gaming. Locals from Las Vegas tend to do most of my gambling downtown, because as the odds are better. Although the casinos downtown have smaller gaming areas than the Strip, there is a great atmosphere while you are gambling. Enjoy the dynamic characters of downtown Las Vegas and listen to great live music during play at your favorite casino games.

Las Vegas is known for being an adult’s playground, a place where almost anything goes, cleverly labelled as Sin City. Vegas primarily caters to the adult senses of entertainment. However, there are attractions for kids, which will ultimately draw parents to Vegas for a family vacation. There are many things to do around Las Vegas for the whole family of all ages. 

There are various family-oriented activities in Las Vegas that are absolutely free. A simple stroll up and down the Strip offers hours of free entertainment for all to see. In a town known for spending, Las Vegas does have a lot of expensive activities for families. It’s easy to spend a fortune on keeping the whole family amused, but there are affordable activities out there in Las Vegas.

With so several attractions around Las Vegas catered towards kids, the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead is only 30 miles SE of Las Vegas. Although the younger ones might not get too much excitement out of the Hoover Dam, parents should keep in mind that there are some activities for kids. An American engineering and architectural icon, the Hoover Dam is one of those things people should try and see at least once in their lifetime.

Another family activity that is tailored to kids amusement is the Gameworks arcade. This arcade has video games that can provide hours of entertainment for all kids. Gameworks arcade is located in the Showcase Mall, which is next to the MGM Grand. Also in the Showcase mall there is a movie theater for families who want to take a break from the Las Vegas excitement.

There are some that suggest Circus Circus is the most kids-friendly place on the Strip. Circus Circus caters to families, with their Adventuredome Theme Park. This it is an indoor attraction that is a huge hit with kids. Open daily, the Adventuredome also has ticket prices that fit most budgets making it a great way to enjoy family fun in Las Vegas.

It seems that local Las Vegas casino operators are looking elsewhere for their business ventures in the future. Las Vegas and Atlantic City have suffered the worst in the recession, but Asian and smaller East Coast gambling markets are proving that there’s still is a lot of money to be made in the industry.

Wynn Resorts announced an agreement to manage one of two major casinos scheduled to open in Philadelphia, which would become the largest metropolitan city in the nation with Las Vegas-style gambling. In Nevada, Wynn and his fellow casino owners pay a tax of 6.75 percent on the money they win from gamblers. The Philadelphia casino that Wynn will manage will pay at least 55 percent in taxes on its slot machine winnings and 16 percent on its winnings from table games. Pennsylvania’s casinos operate some of the nation’s most profitable slot machines.

The casino mogul Steve Wynn was drawn to Pennsylvania is the limited competition is one reason why each of Pennsylvania’s nearly 25,000 slot machines, according to Spectrum Gaming, won an average of $295 per day. That compares with less than $100 per slot machine in Las Vegas.

Another group that is looking elsewhere for the future is the Las Vegas Sands Corp. who will open the first phase of its $5.5 billion Marina Bay Sands project in Singapore on April 27, the company announced Tuesday. The company said it is planning to open more than 960 hotel rooms, part of the shopping mall, convention center, some restaurants and the casino at the resort.

The second phase of the project will include a rooftop park, more retailers, additional dining options, an event plaza and nightclubs, and is scheduled to open June 23 for the resort’s grand opening celebration. Two theaters will open in October, one showcasing Disney’s “The Lion King” and the other hosting special events and headliners, and the Marina Bay Sands Museum will open in December.

The resort’s plan calls for 2,500 rooms, 1.25 million square feet of meeting and convention space, an art and science museum, two theaters and 300 retail shops. The three 55-story hotel towers were topped off in July 2009. Las Vegas Sands was selected by Singapore’s government who granted approval for two casino projects on the island-nation in 2005 as a way to boost tourism. Gaming was required to be just one component, but not a major feature, of a development.

Ever since it became clear a month ago that financier Carl Icahn would be the new owner of the bankrupt Fontainebleau Las Vegas on the Strip, everyone has been wondering when will it open? With an oversaturated supply of rooms, one of the last things Las Vegas needs during this Great Recession is Fontainebleau’s 3,812 hotel rooms. Tourism and consumer spending still struggling, Las Vegas is under pressure to absorb the hotel rooms that have been added in past year, which turned out to be a 6 percent increase. So much so that Strip hotels have had to lower their rates to try to maintain occupancy levels.

Although Carl Icahn has kept silent about his plans for Fontainebleau, gaming analysts predict it won’t open until 2015 at the earliest. It’s hard to estimate how much the shutdown, remediation and completion of the 68-floor project would cost, but it could be $1.5 billion in today’s dollars to bid out the interior and finish the exterior.

Another contributor to the problem is the Cosmopolitan, adjacent to CityCenter. The 3,000-room Cosmopolitan was foreclosed on by Deutsche Bank, but it is expected the property might open in the fourth quarter. The future of another stalled Strip project, Boyd Gaming’s Echelon, is even more complicated. Construction on the 87-acre multiuse development on the site of the former Stardust shut down in August 2008 for what was then described as a three- or four-quarter delay. As the economy worsened, Echelon was put on hold for three to five years.

When business was brisk in Las Vegas, developers and speculators fought over Strip parcels. Casino executives were quoted declaring the land beneath their casinos was worth $20 million per acre. Those estimates inched upward during the boom years, topping out at more than $30 million per acre. For a price of $25 million for the acquisition of 2.15 acres at Harmon Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard by developer Brett Torino and two undisclosed partners.  One of the last pieces of land on the Strip is adjacent to Planet Hollywood and across the street from CityCenter. With too much supply at the present time, and more rooms opening soon, it’s unlikely that Las Vegas will ever again enjoy an average occupancy rate in excess of 90 percent and average room rates of $132 a night.

With the economy caught up in the Great Recession, state tax revenue is projected to be $887 million short between now and June 2011. Nevada needs to look beyond the current crisis and figure out what the state eventually wants to be, how it will attract the next generation of innovators and where it will get the money to pay for it all. As state lawmakers consider ways to close a budget shortfall and face the likelihood of huge cuts to education, many are asking why Nevada doesn’t follow many other states in creating a state lottery. While this could be one way to help get the state’s economy back on track, there is a huge force that stands in the way of this becoming a reality.

Nevada’s longest serving state senator, Joe Neal represented Clark County’s District 4 in the senate from 1973 until 2001. He tried for years to start a lottery, but continuously hit a major roadblock: the gaming industry. “Gaming did not want anyone to make any money in gaming but them,” says Neal.  “These people have a powerful lobbying group and they’re the ones who put the money in the legislator’s pockets for them to run on.” While Neal calls the chances of overcoming gaming opposition ‘slim to none,’ because a state lottery would require a constitutional amendment which would take an estimated 5 years.

For a state that was built on gaming, why not try and get more money out of the casinos by increasing the tax they have to pay. Wynn, LV Sands & MGM fought to be licensed in Macau knowing they would have to pay a 40% gaming tax to the Chinese. In Detroit, MGM pays a 19.1 gaming tax, the gaming tax in Colorado is 20%, Louisiana 21.5%, New Jersey & Mississippi 8%. In Nevada, the gaming tax is 6.75%; not only the lowest in the USA, but in the entire world. The casinos in Nevada have everyone convinced that they will go bankrupt if they have to pay anything higher than 6.75% in Nevada.

It’s hard to believe that the politicians, who are elected by the people, are controlled by the casinos. The casinos run this state, not the legislators & executive branch. The politicians, line their pockets with legal graft and free comps from the casinos. Instead, they want to cut the pay and lay off teachers, cops and fireman. Along with that, raise one of the highest sales taxes in the country, but don’t make the casinos pay their fair share. Also, don’t forget about the breaks the casinos get on their real estate taxes, that the people struggling don’t receive. Nevada, not of the people, by the people and for the people; it’s of the casinos, by the casinos & for the casinos.