Since early 1999, the forty-story sentinel of Mandalay Bay has marked the southern limits of the Strip, glowing like a beacon as its gilded windows commandeer the sunset. Built by Circus Circus Enterprises on the site of the former Hacienda - blown up at midnight on New Year's Eve 1996-97 - it was an explicit attempt to match the new generation of showpiece casinos like Bellagio .
Traditionally regarded as a canny but resolutely downmarket operator, Circus Circus Enterprises has followed a steady upward progression since the mid-1960s, from Circus Circus itself via Excalibur and Luxor . It celebrated completion of Mandalay Bay , which shares its trefoil design with Bellagio and the Mirage , and its gold-plated exterior with the Mirage and the Golden Nugget , with the logical final step of renaming itself the Mandalay Resort Group.
For each new casino built by the company, the target clientele has been envisaged as more affluent and more inclined to prize style over novelty. Not that Mandalay Bay is intended for existing customers, grown older and richer - it's aimed squarely at the next generation, not yet tied down by kids and eager to party at the House of Blues and its other music venues.
The name "Mandalay Bay" is supposed to conjure up romantic images from Rudyard Kipling's poem The Road to Mandalay . Though Mandalay itself is a real city, in Myanmar (which Kipling knew as Burma), the theming of the property remains generic. Landscaped gardens and walkways at both front and back abound in Asiatic motifs like pagodas and winged dragons, but both inside and out Mandalay Bay makes little effort to entertain rubbernecking tourists based elsewhere. Instead it opts to combine an overall soft-focus tropical feel with providing a full-on resort experience for its own guests. Unless you're staying here, you won't get to enjoy its superb open-air pool complex, complete with a scallop-shaped wave pool fringed by a sandy beach, and the "Lazy River" tubing ride. The beach is actually a bit too small to cope with when the wave machine is turned on at full blast, so it very seldom is, and the atmosphere around the pool is even more laid back than the designers intended.
When the Hacienda was built in 1955, it stood well over a mile south of the Strip. Though Mandalay Bay now counts as being on the Strip, it's still perceived as off the beaten track. For motorists, it's easy enough to reach, with its own dedicated freeway exit. Pedestrians, however, face a discouraging slog; that few bother in the heat may explain the rudimentary feel of the Strip-level entrance. Most visitors instead approach Mandalay Bay by means of the monorail that leaves from outside Excalibur at the intersection of the Strip and Tropicana Avenue. By Las Vegas's usual standards, this is a convenient ride; at least it's out front rather than right at the back. However, just to make sure you don't give Mandalay Bay a miss, the trains don't stop at Luxor on the way south, while on the return trip they don't take you back to where you started, but force you to walk through Excalibur .
Entering Mandalay Bay from the monorail stop or the parking garage, you arrive close to the House of Blues or "Restaurant Row" respectively, both of which are accessible without setting foot on the central casino floor. The dominant feature when the casino first opened was a huge statue of Lenin outside the Red Square restaurant. Allowing such a communist icon to overlook this cathedral to capitalism was too much for many palates, however. To mimic the destruction of similar statues in eastern Europe, Lenin was splattered with paint and then beheaded before, in a last indignity, his head was stolen by persons unknown.
Mandalay Bay 's one major attraction for sightseers, Shark Reef (daily 10am-11pm; $14, under-12s $10), is a long walk from the Strip, well beyond the far end of "Restaurant Row" at the back of the property. Aquariums are big business throughout the US these days, and despite its hefty admission price this one is drawing in visitors at the rate of a million a year. Its emphasis is more on eye-catching monsters than education, with video display panels rather than lengthy written captions next to each tank. The basic premise is that you're exploring a steamy, half-submerged temple complex, encountering crocodiles and jellyfish as well as, of course, several species of shark. Sharing their living quarters are some miserable-looking fish, many of them bearing large serrated bite marks and missing significant portions of their anatomy. An excitable marine biologist provides a running commentary on individual "audio wands," though for all his expertise he's somehow failed to spot that all the so-called "coral" on offer is actually a multicolored mix'n'match plastic kit.
It's at night that Mandalay Bay really comes alive. Boasting over a dozen top-class restaurants certainly helps, but the cornerstone of its strategy to lure hip contemporary customers is the House of Blues . Run independently as part of a national chain, this venue attracts the kind of big-name rock, soul and rap artists previously to be seen only off-Strip, at the Hard Rock . The crowds that spill out after the show's over tend to stick around into the small hours, grazing in the late-night lounges or gambling in the massive, ultramodern Race and Sports Book. For really major events Mandalay Bay also has its own 12,000-seat arena, while the uninspired revue Storm plays six nights a week in a separate theater.
The Mandalay Resort Group's plans to build yet another megacasino south of Mandalay Bay are currently on hold, but it's pressing ahead with the construction of a giant shopping mall between Mandalay Bay and Luxor , which may well open during the lifetime of this guide.
Finally, windows from the main hotel lobby - which centers on another mock temple, this one encasing a tank of tropical fish - look out on an attractive tiled fountain topped by a griffin, but oddly enough the pool beyond belongs to the Four Seasons hotel and not Mandalay Bay . The 424 guestrooms of the Four Seasons occupy floors 35 through 39 of the Mandalay Bay tower, but they're accessed not only via separate elevators but through an entirely different lobby building. If you're curious, you can stroll in using a discreet door alongside the Sea Breeze juice bar on the lower level of Mandalay Bay . As a gaming-free zone, the Four Seasons is eerily silent, the clamor of the slots being replaced by the clink of bone china teacups.
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