Las Vegas Strip

What it is

The Strip is not a single attraction but a corridor of them. The big resort casinos are built to be looked at, with replicas, fountains, towers, and themed facades facing the boulevard, and the gaps between them have closed in over the years so much of the center feels continuous on foot. Inside, each resort holds its own casino, restaurants, shops, and often a theater or showroom.

The free spectacles are the draw for many visitors. The Bellagio's fountains perform on a lake out front, choreographed to music and lit at night, and several resorts run their own outdoor shows, gardens, and themed displays. You can spend an evening walking from one to the next without paying for anything, then choose where to eat, drink, or catch a show. The mix of free sights and paid attractions is what lets the Strip suit almost any budget on the same night.

A short history

The Strip sits on the stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard outside the original city limits, which is why it grew the way it did. The first resorts went up along this then-rural highway in the 1940s and 1950s, when being outside city control made the land cheaper and the rules looser than Downtown. Over the following decades the casinos got larger and more themed, from the mid-century clubs to the volcano, pyramid, and canal-and-tower resorts that arrived in the 1990s.

That theming is the through line. Each major resort tried to top the last with a recognizable hook, a replica skyline, an erupting feature, a fountain lake, so the boulevard reads as a row of competing landmarks rather than ordinary buildings. Knowing the resorts were built as attractions in their own right helps explain why so much of a Strip visit is just looking, and why the walk itself is the point.

Walking it

The center section, roughly from the Bellagio down toward the Cosmopolitan and Caesars Palace, is the densest and most walkable, with the fountains, the Forum shops, and a cluster of shows close together. Crossing the boulevard is done on pedestrian bridges at the busy intersections rather than at street level, which keeps foot traffic moving but adds stairs and escalators to every crossing.

The full length is longer to walk than it looks. Distances between the north and south ends stretch past four miles, and the heat makes that harder in summer. Pace yourself, use the Deuce bus or the Monorail to cover the longer gaps, and concentrate the on-foot time in the center where the sights are packed closest. Comfortable shoes matter more than people expect, since the resorts are deep and you often walk a long way through a casino just to get from the sidewalk to a restaurant or theater inside.

What to do here

Beyond the casinos, the Strip holds an observation wheel, a tower with views and thrill rides at the north end, themed shopping arcades, and a deep roster of restaurants and bars. Many of the city's shows and residencies play in Strip resort theaters, so an evening usually means pairing a walk with a booked show or a meal. The fountains at the Bellagio run free on a set schedule, on the half hour through the day and every 15 minutes after 8 p.m. into the late evening, and high winds can cancel them.

Most of the paid attractions, the wheel, the tower, the shows, sell timed tickets, and the popular ones sell out around weekends. Watching the fountains and the outdoor displays costs nothing, so a Strip night can be as cheap or as splurgy as you choose. Budget for the add-ons that creep in, though: resort fees and parking are charged on top of room rates, and the headline price rarely matches what you actually pay.