Vegas, Baby!

Meow Wolf Vegas is just as trippy at the Santa Fe installation!

Waaaay back in November 2021, Adele announced that she'd perform a residency in Las Vegas starting in January 2022. Getting tickets would be a multi-step process. Fans would first have to register for the opportunity to purchase tickets to any one of four pre-selected show dates. Then, if selected for the opportunity to purchase tickets to one of those dates, fans would be given a day and an hour, along with a special code, to purchase up to four tickets for one performance. 

Knowing that chances were slim, myself, my sweet friend Caron, my co-worker Rob, and Rob's husband Matt made a deal - we'd all register, and if any one of us had the opportunity to purchase tickets, we'd buy four of them so we could all attend. 

So, we registered. And of all of us, only Caron was selected for the opportunity to purchase a ticket to one of the show dates in March 2021 that we'd selected. By some miracle, she was able to get into the system, buy four tickets, and get out! (I am frankly embarrassed to tell you what we paid, but this is ADELE we are talking about here.) 

We were ecstatic! We hurriedly booked flights and lodging, and I began scouting for sequins. (Because if you can't wear sequins in Las Vegas, where can you wear them?!)

When I say Meow Wolf is trippy, I mean it is TRIPPY. 

And then, in January, right before Adele's first show of the residency was to begin, she cancelled the engagement. She'd struggled to get the show ready in the face of Covid restrictions and supply chain bottlenecks. At first, we thought she'd be able to get the show together by March, but it quickly became clear that she was cancelling all of the dates and focusing on a complete regroup. We were crestfallen. 

However, Ticketmaster (and Adele herself) assured fans that the residency would be rescheduled, and if we held onto our tickets, they would remain valid for a rescheduled date. We tearfully cancelled our flights and our hotel rooms. And waited.

Nearly a year later, we got word from Ticketmaster that the residency had been re-launched, and that our tickets were now valid for a late January performance! Woo hoo!! We took our Vegas Adele dreams out of their dusty box on the closet shelf and gave them a shake. We re-booked our flights and hotel rooms, and we made dinner reservations and other plans! Caron and I schemed up a long weekend in town, meeting up with Rob and Matt for dinner and the Adele concert. 

And so, after a year of waiting, HERE is how we finally did Vegas:

Two cuties at Meow Wolf! 

Day 1

We left Jackson at around 7 a.m. and, after two blissfully uneventful flights, we arrived in Vegas. We hopped in a cab to the Paris Las Vegas, dead center in the Strip and with some fun new bar/dining options since my last visit to town in 2016. After waiting about 20 minutes, we checked in. (We arrived at 2:40 p.m., and check in is officially at 3 p.m. If you want to check in even a minute before that, this property will charge you $25. I thought this was extremely poor customer service, and it also led to long lines for the hotel staff at 3 p.m. But we grimly waited it out. I realize this is Vegas, but $25 for 20 minutes is more than a bit ridiculous.) 

We freshened up a bit and caught an Uber to a newer attraction - Area15. This place hadn't even existed the last time I was in town, and I couldn't wait to explore it! By the time we got there, we were hungry. We started out with food and drinks at The Beast, which is a Todd English restaurant inside the property. Think upscale bar food. We started with the bang bang shrimp, which were delicious, and then quickly moved on to wild mushroom pizza and a HUGE Cuban sandwich with fries. Everything was really yummy. (From a cursory look, I think this may be the only restaurant in Area15. I was kind of surprised that there weren't more dining options in this complex. There's enough entertainment to easily keep you here for a whole day, but what are you supposed to eat?) 

Lost Spirits Distillery is incredibly
atmospheric, and the rum
is GOOD.

Our hunger sated, we were ready for our next attraction - Meow Wolf Vegas. I've been to the original Santa Fe Meow Wolf installation twice, and I was interested to see how the concept would be adapted for Vegas. The Vegas concept is Omega Mart, a large supermarket (with clear Wal-Mart undertones) where everything is not quite as it seems. Much like in Santa Fe, there's an elaborate backstory, with clues to the series of events hidden all over the facility. The membrane between Omega Mart and other dimensions is thin, and there are places where visitors can punch through it and explore other, parallel worlds. Trippy lighting, music, and interactive installations suspend time a bit and take visitors outside themselves. The fictional Dram Corp and the artists' sly digs at consumerism (in Vegas, a city that is clearly focused on MORE) provided some food for thought. We loved this place and spent nearly three hours here. Highly, highly recommend. 

We had a little time after Meow Wolf to wake ourselves up a bit with coffees before our next engagement - a rum tasting and entertainment at Lost Spirits Distillery, which is also out at Area15. As soon as I learned about this place, I knew we would go. The 7 p.m. tasting/entertainment ticket gets you and unstructured tasting of four generous rum varieties, as well as all the water you need. But you *also* get access to their super-cool atmospheric facility, where you roam around, sipping your rum, and enjoy singers, aerialists, dancers, and more. There's an awesome jazz lounge with a singer and a band, and we loved the couple that did the tango! There's a burlesque stage, and the aerialists do everything from silks to hoops. There's also a bar where you can order additional/other drinks. The whole place is lit moodily, and some of the spaces where you can just dig in and sip your drink are marvels of stagecraft. (One long room mimicked a bar in a submarine, with fish floating by the windows and gently swaying chandeliers. Just incredibly evocative.) We LOVED this place, and I'd recommend it to anyone. 

After basically shutting this place down, we caught an Uber back to the hotel and sacked out!

More to come . . . 

Care to tango? The dancers at Lost Spirits Distillery were fantastic!