Hello, High Roller at the LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada

by   •   Face, Las Vegas
 

I’ve been living in Las Vegas for almost five years now, since 2018 (this excludes the couple years I spent road tripping across the United States and living out of hotel rooms), but there are still a lot of iconic things in the city that I haven’t experienced. Up until yesterday, one of those things was taking a ride on the High Roller Ferris wheel at Caesars Entertainment’s LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip.

One of my friends is in town for a work conference near the central Strip, and while we were going for a walk around the LINQ Promenade together after picking up her admission credentials, the entrance to High Roller caught our attention. There was no wait and the box office was nearly empty, so we made an impulse decision to go for a ride around the wheel.

The wheel constantly spins at a very slow rate and you enter your pod while it still in motion, sort of like how you mount a bench on a ski lift. Because of how few people there were on a Tuesday late afternoon, my friend and I were able to get our own private pod without needing to share with any other parties.

I used to live in high-rise condos on the Las Vegas Strip, so as we ascended in altitude, I got waves of nostalgia looking out onto the city.

A little after ten minutes into our climb, we were high enough that we passed the elevation at which I lived in my old condos.

My friend took some photos of me in the pod. Here is me being confused why she is holding the camera up so high…

… and here is me looking like I somehow just now finally noticed that they put the Sphere there.

About 15 minutes into our ride, we reached the summit of 550 feet (~168 meters). From the top, I was able to get some great 360° views and captured some nice photographs of the sunset.

Soon after, we began our descent, and after about half an hour, our loop was over.

Going into the ride, I assumed that I would only end up liking it a moderate amount because of how desensitized I am to the view after living in high-rise condos, staying in rooms on upper floors of Strip hotels, and riding in aircraft over Las Vegas. However, surprisingly, I enjoyed High Roller a lot more than I expected.

I imagine a big part of it was attributed to the fact that we were able to get a fun, private experience in our own personal pod. There was amazing lighting due to the pod being fully surrounded by large glass windows and the setting sun shining in, so my friend had a great time taking glowing selfies. I was also able to roam around freely taking a lot of photographs of the view without feeling like I was distracting or detracting from others’ experience.

Apparently High Roller has flexible pricing depending on demand and time of day, with adult tickets starting at US$29 each and sometimes being eligible for discounts if you purchase ahead of time. My friend and I ended up paying US$33 each at the box office, which isn’t exactly cheap, but also wasn’t too bad in my opinion.

 

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Hello, Allegiant Stadium in Paradise of the Las Vegas Valley, Nevada

by   •   Las Vegas
 

A little while ago, I went on a tour of Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders.

I recently realized that, for some reason, I never posted photographs from my tour. Considering that I haven’t been doing much for the past few weeks and haven’t had anything particularly notable to blog about, I figured now would be a good time to share these pictures to fill in the lull.

The only sports I ever really watch are combat sports, so it was nice being able to get a behind-the-scenes look at a traditional ball sport stadium.

My main takeaway from the tour was that sports stadiums like this basically have the same premise as commercial planes, in that there a lot of “economy” seats where people are crammed together in a small space, but then there are extremely expensive, luxurious, over-the-top “first class” sections for people who are superfans and want to spend a ton of money. I got to check out the private viewing rooms, lounges, and clubs, and they seemed like pretty nice environments from which to enjoy some American football.

This tour didn’t convert me into a football fan, but it did make me realize that, as long as I’m not squished in a regular seat, I wouldn’t mind checking out a game sometime.

 

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Hello, Nostalgia Street Rods in Las Vegas, Nevada (Part 1: The Museum)

by   •   Las Vegas
 

Nostalgia Street Rods is somewhat known among us Las Vegas locals as being a hidden gem in the Valley. Although it might not make it to the top of tourist’s lists of places to check out while in town, it still has a very good reputation for those who are interested in cars.

In between my back-to-back hours of work, I decided to squeeze in a break and get some fresh air. The weather has been scorching hot recently and not too many other people have been out and about lately, so I figured now would be a decent opportunity to finally make my way over to the industrial area near the Boulder Junction neighborhood to check out the museum and car collection while it’s not that busy.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. There were only two other people in my tour group—they were a couple who generally kept to themselves—so it ended up being a very private and personal tour experience. I paid US$20 for general admission, but it felt like I got lucky and almost got the equivalent of a one-on-one tour that would’ve gone for US$50.

There were two sections to Nostalgia Street Rods, the museum and the automobiles. The museum was the smaller section, housed inside a single very large room, and had a lot of memorabilia. Most of it was centered around media and pop culture, but there were also some interesting historical Las Vegas relics. I was especially satisfied with the high volume of music-related items to see. The tour guide pointed out that a lot of care was taken to verify the authenticity of everything on display.

The main section of the experience was the vehicles. There were multiple rooms and warehouses of cars, in addition to larger vehicles being parked out­side in the lot. One aspect of the automobiles I found nice was that there was a breadth of condition of the exhibits. In simpler terms, car museums u­su­al­ly only have very well-maintained and polished cars, and even older cars have been restored to a pristine condition. However, even though Nos­tal­gia Street Rods had a lot of those, it also had a bunch of vehicles that had clearly been used and abused and milked of their functionality, and it was nice to see the more practical and realistic side of the vehicles as well.

I took a lot of photographs, so I decided to split it up into two blog posts—this one contains specimens from the museum, and the subsequent one will have photos of the automobiles and other vehicle-adjacent items.

 

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Hello, The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada

by   •   Las Vegas
 

After a long string of back-to-back travel, I’m finally back home in Las Vegas to rest up for a bit before my next trip. After settling in for a few days and getting some errands done, I decided to go check out the Neon Museum in downtown.

The Neon Museum is a fairly popular tourist hotspot, so it was about time for me to go visit it after having been a resident of the Las Vegas Valley for the past six years (though I guess two of those years don’t count because I was road-tripping cross-country full-time). I scheduled my tour for the night­time because I wanted to see the signs illuminated. This also meant I didn’t have to face the brunt of the excruciatingly hot summer temperatures, as it had (marginally) cooled down post-sunset.

It’s become a well-known meme at this point among my peers and fans as to how much I love Las Vegas, and with that adoration, I’ve done a lot of re­search about the city and the surrounding unincorporated towns. During that process, I’ve learned about the history of Las Vegas and the way it e­volved to what it’s like today. Because of that, walking through the Neon Museum and recognizing the names on some of the old neon signs was a fun ex­pe­ri­ence.

I got a discounted locals’ general admission ticket for US$23.00 and purchased a guided tour add-on for US$15.00. Along with the US$1.34 transaction fee, my total for the visit came to US$39.34. I do think that is a little bit pricey compared to other mu­se­ums, but I’ve traveled a lot and been to a lot of mu­se­ums, and I can say that I’ve never quite seen anything like the Neon Museum before when it comes to the nature of the exhibits and the historical sig­nif­i­cance of all the displays.

Here are some of my favorite shots from my walk through the Neon Boneyard.

And yes, I still drive the same pickup truck.

 

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Hello, Mr. Shota All-You-Can-Eat Sushi in Spring Valley, Las Vegas, Nevada

by   •   Food, Las Vegas
 

For my latest restaurant adventure, I went to Mr. Shota AYCE Sushi in the unincorporated town of Spring Valley in the Las Vegas Valley.

To start, I got salmon and yellowtail carpaccio with ponzu and truffle oil.

Next was the seafood salad.

For my third dish, I received a sashimi roll with tuna, salmon, whitefish, and crab wrapped with cucumber and topped with screaming orgasm sauce. At other restaurants, this roll is often called the Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Following that was seafood aioli with assorted fresh fish topped with fried onion and drenched in creamy aioli and eel sauce.

Then came towering sashimi poke with assorted fish and crab on wonton chips with ponzu, spicy mayo, and eel sauce.

Next was an oyster.

After that was amaebi, or sweet shrimp.

My final plate consisted of salmon belly, ocean trout, salmon, and sea urchin.

For dessert, I got ube ice cream… but more on that later.

If you look through my photos, you’ll notice that this is substantially less food than I usually have at all-you-can-eat restaurants. It’s not because I wasn’t hungry… it is because Mr. Shota had the literal worst service I have ever received at an all-you-can-eat restaurant in my entire life.

I spent about two and a half hours at the restaurant and the waiter came to my table six times. The first time was to give me water and take my first or­der. The second time was to bring me my first round of food. Then nobody showed up for about an hour, before I managed to flag someone down to put in my second round of food. My second round took over half an hour to show up, during the waiter’s fourth visit. The fifth visit wasn’t even a real visit, but I flagged someone down again to get myself some dessert. The sixth visit was to drop off a small container of ice cream. I went straight up to the register to pay, then left.

Decent waiters at AYCE restaurants will check on you once every ten to fifteen minutes to make sure you have all the food you want, or at the very least, show up once they notice you’ve finished eating everything on your table. I understand that some AYCE restaurants have policies in place to in­ten­tion­al­ly place delay in food ordering and delivery, thus trying to make you feel more full and en­couraging you to eat less food to cut costs… but Mr. Shota has done this to an unacceptable extreme.

The reason the table in the background of the ice cream photograph is different is because I took it back with me and ate it at home, because I was way too frustrated with the restaurant and didn’t want to stay any longer.

Never go to Mr. Shota.

 

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