Aaron's Status

10:05 pm

We had a packed day in Las Vegas today and this will be the rundown of all of that. I’m in bed and my body is aching and sleep is going to feel great.

We started with breakfast in the Venetian at “Grand Lux Cafe,” and while it cost about 2x what it should have, it was good food. The Venetian was quite a sight by itself, with its crazy “canal” with actual gondolas inside the hotel and a mall that stretches both alongside and under the canal.

Shark Reef Aquarium

Our first stop was the Shark Reef Aquarium, which is inexplicably inside the Mandalay Bay convention center, an absolute chungus of too-big ballrooms connected by a way-too-big hallway. We didn’t have the highest expectations for this aquarium and perhaps for that reason we were all very impressed with it.

They do, indeed, have sharks. But they also have some impressively large salt water fishes, alligators, rays, sea turtles, and an enormous Komodo dragon among other things. The “main attraction” is at the very end, where you enter a room styled to resemble the interior of a sunken ship and are surrounded, on all sides, above, and below, by a giant tank housing several species of shark.

If you’re in town, it’s worth checking this one out.

The Sphere

The Sphere totally blew my mind. I mean, I knew what the thing was, and I anticipated being impressed or even overwhelmed, but the experience overloaded my capacity to predict it.

I live in Boston, I’ve been to the Mugar Omni Theater at the Museum of Science a bunch of times and I understand how immersive it can be to have a film surround you and envelop your peripheral vision, but The Sphere is something else entirely. It’s so big, and the screen is so bright and crisp, there are moments where you feel like you’re actually in the scene.

We saw Postcard from Earth, a chilling editorial about humans being terminally bad stewards of our planet co-written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. The thing hits home in many ways, but apart from the narrative and the implied conclusions, it’s such a stunning portrayal of Earth. In addition to the 14,000 or so “beam forming” speakers that can make sounds originate from anywhere around you, they can also physically vibrate the seats with a huge range of frequencies.

As if that wasn’t enough, they also have powerful fans to blast you with air, and the ability to add smells. Spoilers incoming so if you plan to see this show (and you should) maybe skip the rest.

There is a moment where you’re suddenly floating over a field of workers picking citrus fruit and suddenly there is just a wisp of a citrus smell and a breeze flowing over you. As the film reaches a fever pitch of portrayals of the Earth’s climate catastrophe and you’re plunged into frantic timelapses of intense storms, there’s wind blowing at you and the whole room is shaking madly and you feel like you’re part of it, like it will just consume you. It’s very good.

Anyway, strong recommend. The technology and the scale defies description. See something grand, like Postcard from Earth; something created to fully showcase the capabilities of this insane venue.

TAO, High Roller

After the Sphere show, we went to dinner at TAO Asian Bistro, which was, well, loud. It’s very much the kind of restaurant that also has a nightclub attached to it. That said, it’s high-end dining, we had excellent service and the food was fantastic.

They were filming some kind of marketing thing at a table adjacent to ours, so these five young women decked out like you’d imagine had this sparking, flaming dessert tower served to them four or fives times in a row while a drone circled their table.

After TAO we went up in the “High Roller” observation wheel ride thing. Apparently designed by the same person or people who did the London Eye (which we’ve also gone on), you sit or stand in a 15-foot (or so) bubble attached to a 500-foot diameter wheel that rotates once every half hour or so. In 15 minutes you’re 550 feet above the Strip, looking down on this bizarre thing called Las Vegas that we decided to build in the middle of the fucking desert.

As we came back around we were lucky to see the Bellagio water show from our bubble, which apparently costs them $30,000 every time it runs (can this be true??)

Death Valley

The day was long, my legs are tired, and now we are off to Death Valley, which is the thing we actually came for. It may be hard to beat the intensity of The Sphere, but I’m really excited to see this park for the third time, and to see parts of it I haven’t been able to before.

More to come!