Las Vegas · Dates not set
Four of us, whenever we get to it, and a long list of things we could do: skydiving, a tank, the Grand Canyon from the air, and the desert on the days the Strip wears thin. No dates yet, and none of it is booked.
This is a pile of things that looked fun, not a plan. Nothing is booked and nothing is decided. Some of it we might do all together, some in twos, some not at all, and that is the whole point of writing it down rather than agreeing an itinerary.
Prices are per person unless a card says otherwise, and they are roughly what to expect rather than a quote.
The ones that cost real money and need booking ahead.
The Boulder City drop zones jump over Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam rather than flat desert, which is the whole difference. Morning slots are the calm ones; the wind gets up by afternoon.
Battlefield Vegas. Twenty minutes at the controls of an M113A2, which is an armoured personnel carrier rather than a turreted tank, plus a run through a Glock, an MP5, an M16, a Barrett .50 and a flamethrower.
Only the West Rim allows a landing below the rim, on Hualapai land. South Rim flights stay above it the whole way. Afternoon departures come back over the Strip after dark, so the skyline flight arrives in the same booking.
Five resident shows, and they are not much like each other.
The water one. A pool holding a million and a half gallons, twenty-five feet deep, with sixteen hydraulic platforms that lift the stage out of it and drop it away again mid-scene. Synchronised swimmers, sixty-foot dives, and scuba divers working under the surface for the whole show.
The oldest of the five, running since 1993, and the most straightforwardly circus of them: acrobatics, clowning and a very large taiko drum. Usually the cheapest ticket of the lot.
A martial-arts story told on a stage that tilts to vertical and moves through the room, which is more of the spectacle than the acrobatics are. The most plot-driven of the five.
Built around the catalogue rather than a story, so it lands as a gig with acrobatics in it as much as a Cirque show. The easiest of the five to enjoy without concentrating.
A New York themed variety night: stand-up, magic, a live band, and acrobatics in between. Later, looser and more adult than the rest, and the shortest of the five.
A theatre show, a club, and a screen the size of a building.
At the Flamingo, with a rotating cast of Drag Race alumni. A seated theatre show with a running time and an interval, rather than a club night.
The Fruit Loop on Paradise Road, a mile off the Strip. Resident queens, guest Drag Race alumni, and it runs until dawn.
Residencies and the immersive screening alternate, so what is on depends entirely on the week we pick. The screening earns the ticket for the room more than for the film.
Indoor options for the cold half of the day.
Two hundred-odd dead casino signs laid out in a yard. The dusk slot is the good one, with the daylight going and the restored signs coming on; the daytime ticket is a different and lesser thing.
Nevada tested over 900 nuclear devices an hour north of here, and for a while the mushroom clouds were a tourist draw that hotels advertised. Straighter and stranger than that makes it sound.
A warehouse of several hundred playable machines from the fifties onward. Free to walk into, a quarter or two a game, which makes it both the cheapest hour in the city and the hardest to leave.
Set in the old federal courthouse where the Kefauver hearings actually sat, which does more work than any exhibit in it. There is a working speakeasy in the basement.
Meow Wolf's fake supermarket, where the shelves open into something much larger behind them. The oddest thing in the city by a distance, and the one people tend to keep talking about.
A car and a morning gets a long way from the Strip.
An hour northeast. Red Aztec sandstone, petroglyphs, and short marked walks rather than hikes, most of them under a mile.
Twenty minutes west, and a thirteen-mile scenic loop that works almost entirely from the car with a few short stops. The half-day version of a desert day.
Forty minutes out, and on the road back from the Boulder City drop zone, so it bolts onto a skydive morning for almost nothing. The dam tour goes inside; the powerplant tour is the shorter one.
Two hours each way, so it takes a whole day rather than part of one. December is the right month for it and July is emphatically not.
No ticket, no booking.
Rebuilt five times a year by a team of about a hundred, so which display is up depends on when we go. Quietest before ten in the morning or after eleven at night.
Downtown, under a screen five blocks long. Older, cheaper and stranger than the Strip, and the part of town that still looks like the postcards.
Only relevant for whatever we actually feel like doing. Roughly in the order things stop being available.
Prices and schedules here were checked in August 2026 and none of it is booked. Worth confirming once we have dates, especially if we land on a public holiday, when opening hours across the city move.