IT WAS OUR LAST AFTERNOON in Las Vegas and, caught up in the giddy gaudiness of it all, my husband, Mike, and I decided to get remarried in a quickie ceremony at our hotel’s wedding chapel.
Luckily, the Chapel of the Fountain at Circus Circus was running an $80, 8-minute “vow renewal” special. We would sweep down the aisle as our children, David, 5, and Rose, 2, raised their souvenir plastic swords in solemn salute. Mike even hired the best man in the next wedding to snap pictures.
We stood in the chapel doorway, ready to walk down the aisle. Rosie had been napping in her stroller, so when I picked her up to wake her, she started crying. Then she threw up a quart of Circus Circus buffet on me. (She’d apparently sampled many steam-table treats, but really enjoyed the sausage.)
As the two of us huddled, dripping, in the employee bathroom, Mike and David scrambled for T-shirts in the gift shop while the chapel people quickly canceled our nuptials and, smiling brightly, turned to the next, horrified, couple.
Back in our room, Rosie slept it off and I scrubbed our clothes with complimentary shampoo, thinking ruefully that we’d been robbed of a classic Sin City moment. But then I realized that each of us already had experienced at least one such event during our brief trip.
There was the day I lost my shirt, the night David passed out after too much merrymaking, and the time that Mike wandered down the Las Vegas Strip in the predawn hours. So Rosie’s throwing up just made it official: We were living la vida Las Vegas, family style. Which means that when I lost my shirt-and a lot more-without gambling a cent, it was because Southwest Airlines lost my luggage. David, whose archenemies are Nap and Bedtime, was out cold at dinner for the first time in his life after a day spent exploring miles of eye-popping luxury hotels, splashing in the pool and ogling a white tiger and endless slot machines he wasn’t allowed to touch.
And Mike was indeed prowling the Strip at 6 a.m., but he was pushing Rosie in her stroller, looking to score diapers and toothpaste and fighting off a pamphleteer touting hot strippers.
Our getaway to Las Vegas had certainly blasted us out of our rut. Before then, a family vacation spot meant someplace calm and natural, where entertainment involved sitting on the beach watching the kids build sand castles with a plastic cup. For added excitement, they might throw rocks into the water.
So when we learned our mystery destination, we were a little nervous at first, but then eagerly anticipated the urbane, “Ocean’s Eleven,” Grace-Kelly-in-Monaco glamor that awaited us.
Then we checked into the Circus Circus.
This sprawling hotel and casino, the original family-oriented Vegas venue, is noisy, busy and dizzy enough to earn the name “Circus.” Twice. Trapeze artists flip high over the gamblers in the main casino. The Midway arcade is crammed with carnival and video games. There are three pools, including one for the adjacent RV park, and an indoor Adventuredome theme park. Slot machines extend shoulder-to-shoulder into nearly every corner.
And filling in the gaps were hordes of people: sprawled on the floor around boxes of fresh Krispy Kremes; thronging the endless concourse and elevators in swimsuits and Spandex; and gambling, smoking and screaming with laughter. Mike Tercha, the Tribune photographer traveling with us, called it “the Dells on crack.” We were shell-shocked, but the kids were enthralled.
Still, our room was quiet and cool, and even though the television received only ClownTV (clowns reveling in the Circus Circus amenities) and I was peeved that my luggage still hadn’t arrived, we settled in comfortably for the night. After the kids fell asleep, Mike and I opened the small bottle of premixed margaritas I’d bought at the hotel convenience store, and we toasted our first night in Vegas.
THE NEXT DAY, WE DECIDED to explore some of the newer, flashier themed hotels. We’d been warned about terrible traffic along the Strip, so we didn’t rent a car and used taxis instead.
We’d also heard that Las Vegas had backed off its efforts a few years ago to market itself as a family destination and was going back to its Sin City roots so the high-rollers would keep coming. Even the long-standing Treasure Island pirate battle has become “The Sirens of TI,” with scantily clad women wielding seductive charms instead of swords.
Still, there was plenty of G-rated stuff to see. We went first to the medieval-themed Excalibur, where David and Rose got their souvenir swords and swung away happily at each other all morning. Then we visited the pyramid-shaped Luxor and gawked at the golden sarcophagi, the sphinxes and fountains, and the towering Ramses statues guarding the ancient Egyptian IMAX theater.
Next we went to Caesars Palace and had a delightful lunch at Spago. The kids liked the Mickey Mouse-shaped pizza. Then we took in the Battle for Atlantis animatronic-statue show. David stood so close he nearly got singed as the statues fought for the kingdom with blasts of fire and showers of rain and ice.
Back at the hotel, David and Mike hit the pool, Rosie had a nap and I shopped for replacement clothes.
We went to the Mirage for dinner and to watch the volcano erupt. But by the time we sat down to eat, it was after 8, which was after 10 according to the kids’ Chicago-time body clocks. So they were cranky: David wailed about not getting to drink from the curvy cocktail glass and running out of the “good” crayons. Rosie was so restless and noisy, I had to leave my excellent steak frites to watch her play with garden stones in the restaurant entrance.
Soon, David was out cold in Mike’s lap. He slept right through the volcano eruption. In our hotel room later, Mike and I gulped down another pathetic bottle of premixed margaritas and fell asleep. So much for our futile plan for one of us to go out and gamble while the other stayed with the kids.
We spent the next morning shouting on the phone to the front desk about our elevators, which had been malfunctioning but now were kaput, and the clown-locked TV. We considered fleeing to the Luxor. Instead, we walked a dozen flights down the back stairs and hit the pool and arcade. At lunch, we thought it’d be fun to renew our wedding vows . . .
While Rosie and I were recuperating from that disaster, Mike and David went to the Adventuredome, where David gloried in the bumper cars, Sand Pirate and Frog Hopper.
Mike says he’ll always remember the pure joy on David’s face as he rode the Road Runner roller-coaster.
They came back to our room with fajitas, enchiladas and pizza. And one last bottle of premixed margaritas. It was the best meal of the trip.
Afterward, Mike and David spent another hour at the Adventuredome. As they headed back to the room for the night, David asked whether we’d ever come back to Las Vegas.
“Maybe,” Mike said wearily, “but next time, we’ll stay at a place you’ll like even better.”
David was incredulous.
“Better than Circus Circus?”
– – –
THE DEAL
— TO LAS VEGAS (AIR/HOTEL)
— AIR FOR FOUR: $1,188 SOUTHWEST NON-STOP/MIDWAY
HOTEL: $236 BOOKED SEPARATELY ON SOUTHWEST.COM
— OPTIONS: $1,862 (TWO-WEEK ADVANCE AIR, $1,644; HOTEL, $218)
