Vegas for non-gamblers?

A coworker and I are going to Vegas for a trade show in mid March. The show is 2 days, we'll be there for a mandatory week for set-up/take-down. Our actual time for that is minimal, so we'll have time to kill and a company card for eats and drinks. I'm not a gambler, but I do enjoy good food and strong drink. My coworker is Mormon, but does have an interest in good food. Not so much the drink. He's kind of a car guy too. We're staying at Mandalay Bay, and this is my first time in Sin City.

What should we do?

Supercar track rental.

Take the dam tour?

After being there in October, I can tell you that there is plenty to do that is not gambling related. There is a lot of good food on the strip itself if that's where you'll be.

I went to the Pinball Hall of Fame and it was a time warp and also a good place to dispense $20 worth of quarters in a short period of time.

Your with a Mormon in Sin City. Step 1 - Ditch that guy.

Mandalay Bay has a great pool. Well, it's actually a waterpark next to the hotel, but sitting there with a drink and watching the beautiful people go by is always fun.

If it's your first time in Vegas, go see all the free shows, like the pirate attack at Treasure Island and the fountains at the Bellagio and the show at Circus Circus.

Go look at the hotels: one is a pyramid. One has a canal inside. One has a mall underneath with talking statues. One has a priceless art museum that is free. One looks like Paris. One looks like New York City and has a rollercoaster in the lobby. The glasswork at the Bellagio alone is worth a walk around. Walk around and explore, that will fill up a week quickly.

Go down to Fremont Street and "old" Las Vegas for an evening. They put a ceiling above the street with a huge light show on it, and you can find an all-you-can-eat buffet for $7.77 (but you may want to pay more)

Rent a motorcycle and head North up into the mountains. Great roads, great views, cool places to stop. Or go out and see the Dam.

There is a "European Style" beach/bar/club at Mandalay Bay. That means topless. See if you can talk your coworker into that.

The point is, you won't be bored.

lots of good food, drink and entertainment designed to attract those with new found fortune to blow it all before they hit the airport.

Seeing that your co-worker is Mormon, be sure to get him multiple hookers so that he'll feel like he's at home.

As Mazdadeuce said--- the Hoover Dam tour is pretty cool from what I've heard. There are also helicopter rides that will take you over the Grand Canyon--- which sounds pretty awesome.

Spring Mountain raceway is about an hour outside of town--- it may be worth a trip if something is going on.

"Old" Vegas----ie Fremont St. can be a lot of fun---even without boozing or gambling. The light show is kinda hokey, but also pretty cool.

Plenty of great places to eat---- I really like Firefly which is a tapas joint just down the street from the convention center. Gordon Bierch is a decent steak / American food chain when you want to escape from the Vegas madness. If you don't mind the casino atmosphere, the buffet at the Bellagio is pretty amazing.

I'm not a big gambler either, but I do like going to the Hard Rock casino. It's really more of a bar / entertainment venue than a casino--- you can walk around, look at all the cool memorabilia, and not feel bad if you don't gamble. Chances are there will be a good show going on at some point too!

Vegas is.......well, Vegas. there is nothing else like it. I still haven't figured out if that is a good thing, or a bad thing!

If you have a rental car and like hiking/nature there are a lot of good parks you can make a day trip out of, including Death Valley and Zion National Parks. Red Rock park right outside of the city is pretty nice too. Hoover dam is indeed pretty neat if you've never seen it. It's Vegas, so lots to see and do. The free stuff (pirates, circus, etc.) is entertaining but not super substantial. You should see what kind of stage shows are playing. I saw a production of Phantom of the Opera the last time I was there and quite enjoyed it.

You might be there coinciding with the rugby sevens tournament, for me that's a good time.

Just walking around taking in the sites is easy and free entertainment.

Little tip if you just want some drinks while exploring, beer is cheaper at the drug store on the strip than the bars, and there aren't open container laws. Of course just putting a $20 in a slot machine can get you free drinks for a long while.

The The Auto Collections at the Linq, I was there around this time last year, I never thought I'd ever see an RS200 in real life, and I saw 3 the same day, an Evo and a pair of Homologations, they're all for sale even. They have an XJ220 and an 037 Stradale, as well as a lot of other cars you're average Big 3 fan wouldn't give a second look, but well worth the $13 admission for your typical GRMer.

I've made 2 different 4-5 night trips in the last 3 years, I don't enjoy gambling. First trip I made ~$33 last a really long time at black jack and slots, but that's as much gambling as I did. Second trip I didn't gamble at all.

We've seen several shows and ate at a lot of places.

Blue Man Group was fun, Jersey Boys was WAY better than I expected, KA was amazing, Bodies: The Exhibition was really interesting and a little creepy. Penn & Teller, and Michael Jackson One, both were really good as well. I'm not much of an MJ fan, but those Cirque folks put on one hell of a show. We went to the aquarium at Mandalay too, I was pretty underwhelmed by it, I recall not feeling I got my monies worth there. I didn't care for Fremont St., the Discovery Chanel show I saw about the LED cover was better than seeing it in person.

Food/Drinks:
Henry (Cosmopolitan) - Good breakfast.
STK (Cosmopolitan) - Awesome steak, get the truffle butter, great lobster mac & cheese. Holds the record for most expensive meal I've ever eaten.
Burger Bar (Mandalay Bay) - Nothing spectacular, great beer selection.
Noodles (Caesars Palace) - Good authentic Asian grub, there were a lot of actual Asian folks eating there, cheapest meal I had in Vegas.
Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab (Forum Shops) - Surf & Turf! King Crab was great, steak was great, Oysters Rockefeller were great, service was outstanding, best waiter I've ever had.
Diablo's (On the Strip near NY-NY) - Came highly recommended, it was typical Tex Mex, nothing phenomenal.
Holstein's (Cosmopolitan) - Best burger I had in Vegas pretty high on the list of all burgers I've had, it's called the "Gold Standard."
Vesper Bar (Cosmopolitan) - conveniently located by the elevator to our room, a little snobby, but I discovered my new favorite mixed drink, Moscow Mule.
Bond (Cosmopolitan) - GoGo dancers, girls swinging from the ceiling, looked fun. There were several empty tables, we sat at one, waitress came and told us it was a 1 bottle & $275 minimum, our jaws on the floor we got up and left quickly.
The Chandelier (Cosmopolitan) - A 3 story bar that IS a chandelier, drinks were nothing special, service sucked, but the bar was neat.
Mon Ami Gabi (Paris) - Great food, steak, muscles, pâté, cheeses, sit on the patio and watch the fountains at the Bellagio.
Hexx Kitchen (Paris) - Decent food, their take on chicken & waffles is a little weird, I wouldn't recommend it. Their complementary chocolate was the bitterest thing I've ever tasted, maybe they didn't like me?
The Grand Wok (MGM) - Only had the Sushi, it was good, but for what I paid, I'd expect better.
Tom Colicchio's Craftsteak (MGM) - Recommended by our concierge at Tropicana, it was good, steak was good, but STK and Joe's are better.
MGM Grand Buffet (MGM Duh?) - Go early or late to miss the crowd, kind of pricey, but everything is, endless mimosas provided with your meal, everything was above average for a buffet, but they don't know how to make gravy, and the chef(s) seemed to want to put chorizo in everything.
Tender Steak & Seafood (Luxor) - Scallops were great, had a cheese platter, you got to pick 3 cheeses from a big list, and it came with quince paste, we didn't know what a quince was, but we liked it.

Well, I got a lot done at work this afternoon.

If you have transportation, or can find a shuttle/tour, Techatticup mine about 45-minutes outside Vegas is a great way to waste 1/2 a day, and you can drive on down the road to the Colorado River landing which will probably be mostly vacant.

Adrenochrome?

The Mob Museum is really neat and can eat up 3 hours easily.

There's an outdoor bar near Harrah's where a cover band called The Crashers plays. They're pretty decent. The piano bar right inside Harrah's is cool, too.

Red Rocks is awesome. You can spend a whole day hiking through there or you can just do the drive through tour.

If you get off the strip, there are some decent normal places to just go have food and drink.

The Harley dealership rents bikes. Lots of nice riding out in the desert, but it'll still be pretty chilly at that time.

I like to walk up and down the strip at night and people watch. Talk about all types...

Walking through the hotels was fun. The scale is impressive. Being the awful person I am i also also found going down to the casino floor at 3-4 am and watching people with real problems throw their kids college money at poker dealers.

I just came in to point out that Vegas are always a bad gamble, even though the Cosworth version is kinda cool.

At least a few years ago you could rent a c6 vette convertible through Budget for only about $200. A fast dash to the desert and around some parks is time well spent. I went to Valley of Fire state park and it was amazing.

Just recently did almost exactly what you are describing... Neither SWMBO nor I imbibe, and we wanted to see the place on the absolute cheap, so we each gambled precisely one dollar in the penny slots. Lost it all but four cents, but can at least say we gambled in Vegas. The casinos themselves were as depressing as any Indian reservation special, but the surrounding city they pay for is damn impressive. We stayed in Circus Circus, and just walking in the front door and up the stairs to our room (admittedly on the 23rd floor)was over 3/4 of a mile of walking!
We hit all the Discovery/History channel show sites that were open, Pawn Stars, the Toy Shack, and so on. First night's dinner was at the Heart Attack Grill. Cheesy, but entertaining. The next days breakfast was on the Wicked Spoon buffet line, an awesome selection, and not killer expensive if you are used to city prices for food. Our final gastronomic act of seppuku was a noticeably more expensive dinner at the Bacchanal buffet. It's hard to put into adequate words just how much stuff there is on these smorgasbords, but a teaser is that the dessert island is bigger than a Ryan's or Golden Corral's entire buffet, and manned by at least six cooks and a chef. I wish I had seen the rental prices on the supercar beaters near the south end of the strip before we left...

Pay the $10 and tour the Ferrari dealership in the Wynn hotel.

Shelby-American is on the South end of the Strip. It's good to kill half an hour.

Send me a PM if you want anything from a Local.

dculberson wrote: At least a few years ago you could rent a c6 vette convertible through Budget for only about $200. A fast dash to the desert and around some parks is time well spent. I went to Valley of Fire state park and it was amazing.

Yes, this. My wife and I don't drink and we don't gamble, but we love Las Vegas. Admittedly haven't been there in a really long time simply because of the kids, but plan to return fairly soon. When we went, we could spend several days just walking around the casinos taking it all in. They have tons to just "see", and many have displays/shows, such as the fountains at Bellagio. There are various car displays around.

Like dculb said, you can rent a car cheap and take a quick ride. We rented a V6 Mustang convertible...had thought about a fancier car, but the Mustang was like $40 for the day so why not. We went to Valley of Fire State Park, which if I recall was only an hour drive. Absolutely stunning place.

I'm heading out there this sunday for 2 days for work and I know I'll be hitting up red rock and getting a good 3 hour hike in and hitting up the auto collection and shelby. The team dinner is at STK so I'll be eating well on some one else money.

Evel Pie

On Fremont Street. $5 slice and a pint (of PBR). Have the Mormon order a water, and you get 2 beers and a slice for $5. The pizza is excellent (NY style). The decor is fantastic too--all Evel Knievel.

I was out there in December with the girlfriend--we went 3 times in 4 days to this place.

Walk through all the Hotels/Casinos...

Go to the top of the Strat--even just to look around.

Gold/Silver Pawn--it's small but cool.

Kounts Customs.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Nellis AFB

Hoover Dam

I'd rent a BMW GS from Eurocycle or Eaglerider, load the panniers up with bottled water and go ride Death Valley or head out to Lake Mead and do some hiking.

Either of those is going to me more interesting than yet another night in a town full of shiny happy people.

Great stuff guys. I think we have just enough stuff every day for work that renting a car and heading out might be problematic. Sadly, no company rental since the show is in the center where we're staying. I'd love to rent a Ferrari for an hour, but $200 of my own money isn't in the budget. Auto collection, pinball museum, and Shelby sound like good things. Good reccos on the food and drink too.

Since we're at Mandalay and about as far south as you can get, what's the best way to get around? The closest monorail looks like a 4 block walk. Bus? Uber?

The RTC runs busses up and down the strip and to Fremont Street, with stops at Mandalay.

Oh, and if you do get a car, get down to Whiskey Pete's in Primm and check out the '34 Ford that Bonnie and Clyde were killed in. It's next to a '31 Cadillac owned by Dutch Shultz and, later, Al Capone. My son and I day of Primm, the Hoover Dam, the Atomic Testing Museum and the Pinball Hall of Fame and Museum and enjoyed them all.

Yeah, we're nerds.