A lot of careful thought and planning went into the construction of the world's largest hotel, the MGM Grand ; most of it turned out to be hopelessly wrong. In the early Nineties, the concept of Las Vegas as the family destination of the future was in its heyday, and the prospects of this billion-dollar project were seen as resting on its own theme park , MGM Grand Adventures. From the moment the hotel opened in 1993, however, the theme park was universally panned as being neither big enough nor thrilling enough, and it has long since closed down. What's more, the Grand 's original Wizard of Oz theme has also been abandoned; it meant little or nothing to modern kids, and in any case now that MGM has taken over Mirage the whole idea of luring children into casinos seems to have had its day. And yet the MGM Grand itself has gone from strength to strength, with the disappearance of the theme park heralded simply as an opportunity to add yet more hotel space to complement the original world-record five thousand rooms.
Spreading over 114 acres of a site previously occupied by the Tropicana 's golf course and the Marina hotel complex, the MGM Grand is bigger than Luxor and Excalibur combined. Its owner, Armenian billionaire Kirk Kerkorian - who like Howard Hughes is a former aviator - has twice before erected the world's largest hotel. The first was what's now the Las Vegas Hilton ; the second, also called the MGM Grand , became Bally's in 1985, after being devastated by a horrific fire in which 84 people died. Kerkorian sold everything but the name.
As seen from the Strip, the Grand 's most prominent feature is a seventy-foot bronze lion, towering above the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, and gleaming in front of a copper-colored wall of lights. Pedestrian entrances are located to either side, both at street level and also at the end of walkways from the Tropicana and New York-New York respectively, but the main entrance for hotel guests and all other traffic is a hundred yards or so east along Tropicana Avenue.
Getting rid of the Emerald City attraction that formerly stood just inside the doors - it also said goodbye Yellow Brick Road to the walkway that led on from it, relegated Dorothy to an alcove near the monorail station at the back, and toned down the general greenness of the whole building - left the MGM Grand with little for casual sightseers to look at. Shamelessly taking a leaf from the Mirage and its tigers, it developed the Lion Habitat , a wooded zoo close to the front entrance where real lions lounge around a ruined temple beneath a naturally lit dome. You can either watch the lions from the casino floor or walk through the enclosure via a glass tunnel, quite possibly as they pad directly overhead (daily 11am-11pm; free). Paying $20 entitles you to participate in the grotesque charade of having your photo taken with a cute little lion cub; oblivious to your presence, it's made to look wistful and winsome by having its milk bottle whisked away for a fraction of a second (daily except Tues 11am-5pm).
The MGM Grand is connected to Bally's via a mile-long monorail. It's a long walk to reach it from the Strip, however, as it runs at the rear of those properties.
Each evening, the stage in the huge domed lounge alongside the Lion Habitat does a good job of luring in barflies with a steady procession of Elvis impersonators and the like, while the child-friendly Rainforest Cafe and the all-too-adult Studio 54 nightclub stand nearby. Most of the hotel's prestigious array of restaurants , however - big names include Emeril's, Coyote Cafe , and Wolfgang Puck Cafe - are way back, beyond the casino. Throw in the popular MGM Buffet , stage shows like La Femme and EFX , and of course all those paying guests, and it's hardly surprising that the hotel is always crowded. Even so, it steps up another gear whenever a big-name boxing match or rock concert is being staged in its fifteen-thousand-seat arena.
As for the MGM Grand 's casino, it's so big that it's divided into four separate sections. Just to stock the slot machines in the first place required $3.25 million-worth of quarters - that's thirteen million of them. Turnover on its gaming tables (covered with blue rather than green felt, for no apparent reason) is so phenomenal that when the crowds after the Holyfield-Tyson ear-biting debacle in June 1997 mistook the popping of champagne corks for gunfire, and the resulting furor forced the casino to close down for two hours, the loss was estimated in millions of dollars.
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