Word: circusing
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...were in Europe, a place like Vail, Colo., would fit the exalted category of "ski circus," a place so sprawling and opulent as to be almost a sovereignty unto itself. But last week that rather complacent empire was startled by a message from a tiny band. Early Monday morning someone set Vail Mountain ablaze. Seven fires spread along a mile-long ridge overlooking the tony ski village, demolishing a restaurant, a patrol building and a picnic shelter and impairing several lifts. No one was hurt, but the damage totaled $12 million...
...cast of O, the beautifully buoyant Cirque du Soleil water extravaganza at the Bellagio, wore circus motley: urchin's togs, ballerina gowns, penguin suits and the odd clown nose. Last week's opening-night audience, though, was outfitted in formal evening wear--1,800 exponents of money and glamour. It was just the sort of crowd Steve Wynn would like to see at his new hotel every night. So would the other high-rolling master builders in this high-desert fantasyland. Like an aging chorine who learns a little French and buys a Chanel frock in hopes of attracting...
...stage, Wynn is still seeing things that bother him. You get the impression that not a tile or a tessera has been laid, not a square inch of valance put in place, without the boss's scrutinizing it. We are in the branch of Le Cirque 2000, with its circus murals and its billowing masses of peachy silk coming off the ceiling. In the middle of it is a singularly incongruous Art Deco-revival light fixture, all sharp angles and etched glass. Wynn recoils. "What's this thing?" he demands, fixing the chandelier with a cold eye. "This looks like...
What's even crazier is that there are several other madmen up and down the Las Vegas Strip today building billion-dollar pleasure palaces like so many Starbucks. The Hilton Paris is re-creating the City of Light, while Circus Circus' Mandalay Bay is evoking the South Pacific, just down the street from the Venetian's Adriatic. And, of course, there's Steve Wynn's modern-art museum and homage to Italy's Lake Como, the $1.6 billion Bellagio...
...what ever happened to that family-friendly Las Vegas? Demographics. The target audience is now 50 and ready to travel without the kids. "Imagine," says Circus Circus president Glenn Schaeffer, "somebody will turn 49 every 13 seconds for the next 15 years, and they have the highest household income and the fastest spending rate." Circus pioneered the low-end family concept during the late 1970s and made it work for more than a decade. But Schaeffer was brought in after a management shakeup to arrest declining numbers...