Las Vegas – Caesars Palace – Things to Know

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at12:00 pm by Wanda

The world famous Caesars Palace is a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas, USA. It’s on the west side of Las Vegas Strip, between the Bellagio and the Mirage, in Paradise, a township in Nevada.

With it’s Roman theme, this is one of my favorite Casino’s, mind you they are all pretty impressive.

Caesars Palace is owned by Harrah’s Entertainment and is a vast complex of 3,348 rooms in five towers. These are called the Augustus, Centurion, Roman, Palace and Forum.

People flock there to gamble and see spectacular shows and world famous entertainers.

How did it all start?

The beginning of Caesars

In 1962, the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund lent $10 million to a cabana motel owner called Jay Sarno. Sarno began making plans for a hotel that would be built on land owned by Kirk Kerkorian. Building began that year. The first tower would cover a 34 acre / 138,000 square meter site and have 680 rooms.

What’s with the missing apostrophe?

Sarno had real difficulty deciding on a suitable name for his amazing hotel. He finally settled on ‘Caesars Palace’ because he wanted the hotel guests to feel as if they were royalty. He specifically called it ‘Caesars’ and not ‘Caesar’s’ because his idea was that every guest should feel as if they were Julius Caesar himself.

Caesars opens…

On 5^th August 1966, the hotel opened with Andy Williams and Phil Richards heading the bill – both as Julius Caesar in a play.

Who has played Caesars?

A glittering list of celebrities has provided the entertainment in this luxury venue, including:

Frank Sinatra
Judy Garland
George Burns
Liberace
Diana Ross
Bette Midler
Celine Dion – her show regularly sold out despite having some of the highest priced tickets for any show in Vegas, some costing $220 each. The spectacular Colosseum (Caesars spelling!) Theater was built especially for Celine Dion’s show, called A New Day.
Elton John
Cher
Julio Iglesias
David Copperfield
Gloria Estefan
In 1982, Ronnie Vannucci (who is now a member of the band, ‘The Killers’ who are based in Las Vegas) became the youngest musician ever to play with a band in a lounge in Caesars Palace…at the age of six!

What other entertainments have occurred there?

Reception Area During the 1980s, the hotel had a games room devoted to Atari video games. There were over 60 arcade-style machines.

In 1981 and 1982, a Formula One World Championship event called the Caesars Palace Grand Prix took place. The desert heat was tremendous and it took Nelson Piquet a quarter of an hour to recover from heat stroke when he completed the race. The event wasn’t repeated because the heat put spectators off too!

Caesars Outdoor Arena hosted several championship boxing matches. Sugar Ray Leonard, Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns and Roberto Duran all boxed there.

Jumping that fountain…

On December 31, 1967, Evel Knievel unsuccessfully tried to jump over the hotel’s water fountain on his motorbike but didn’t succeed. In 1980, Gary Wells attracted huge press coverage and nasty injuries when he tried and failed. In 1989, Robbie Knievel – Evel’s son – tried again …and made it! If you thought that was good, on May 4, 2006, Mike Metzger became the first person ever to back flip his motorbike over the fountain!

What about the gambling…?

Las Vegas is the place to go for a ‘flutter’. Caesars has around 1,440 slot machines and 160 casino tables. It’s not easy to find out about the revenue from gambling at Caesars because as the 1990’s approached, the management wanted it to have a new, family-friendly image, focusing more on children and less on gambling. To encourage families, a new venue called Caesars Magical Empire opened in 1996, to showcase major magicians.

However, it is on public record that in 2007 the eight Harrah properties in Las Vegas had a total income of $3,626.7 billion – and 54% of that was just from the casinos!

Caesars changes style

Fountain in Caesars Palace In 1992, Caesars opened The Forum Shops. The high end stores became a huge crowd puller and pleaser. The store fronts were exotic, with beautiful fountains at intersections. The elaborate gold interior décor would have made Gianni Versace swoon with pleasure. In October 2004, another phase of the mall opened. This included the second circular (spiral) escalator in the US – the other one being in San Francisco.

In 2005, the highly successful 46 storey Augustus Tower was opened. This encouraged Harrah’s to expand Caesars further with another tower of hotel rooms, to be called the Octavius Tower as well as a sports complex to replace the existing events center. The entire project was to cost $1 billion. However, in January 2009, Harrah’s announced it would delay completion on the new tower as demand for hotel rooms had dropped.

Obama at Caesars…

On 26^th May 2009, US President Barack Obama performed in the Colosseum for one night in a tribute show to the senator of Nevada, Harry Reid. Obama’s fellow performers included Sheryl Crowe, Bette Midler and Rita Rudner. Obama then became the first American President to stay overnight at Caesars!

Want to visit?

To find out more about what Caesars has to offer, to check availability of rooms and to book online go here.

Here are some views of the decor in Caesars Palace to give you an idea of how breathtakingly beautiful it is.

Statue in Caesars Palacde

The Reception Area

Reception Area

A shop selling oriental items

A shop selling Oriental items

Vanity mirrors in one of the ladies rest rooms

Mirrors in a Ladies Toilet Caesars Palace

The Forum shops have a Roman facade in keeping with the theme

Gucci

The Trojan Horse (wasn’t it Greek not Roman) moves its head and opens its eyes

Trojan Horse

Pegasus flying from the fountain

Fountain - Pegasus

I threw coins into the Trevi fountain replica last year to ensure my return and sure enough I am back

The Replica of the Trevi Fountain Caesars Palace

Entrance to one of the many restaurants. The decor is amazing.

Entrance to one of the Restaurants

The Palms restaurant. Just look at the magnificent statues and columns

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Painted skylight

Skylight

Lights in the reception area

Eating in Caesars Palace can be expensive however we found The Cheesecake Factory and found that the meals there are quite reasonably priced.

Our waiter, Tim Mossman was attentive and funny, he wants to go to Australia one day to claim the town of Mossman which was founded by his ancestors. He and his wife also want to visit Rome and Venice, although working in Caesars Palace and having the Venetian Hotel just down the Strip is the next best thing to visiting those places.

Still nothing quite matches up to the original.

Tim warns us that the servings are large, and he is not wrong. The food is tasty and well presented, and as I say, surprisingly reasonable for Caesars Palace. The Cheescake Factory is right behind the aquarium and the fountain show at the end of the Forum Shops.

Ham sandwich at the Cheescake Factory Caesars Palace