The Sphere
We have come to Las Vegas to see the new extravaganza called The Sphere, brought to us by James Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and much more. I figure that anything worth putting $2.3 billion into to change the attractions landscape is worth a look. So, I gathered some enthusiasm for an excursion from San Diego by convincing Mike and Melisa to join me and Kim for a roadtrip. The ride here itself was uneventful. We’ve done that 5-hour trek quite a few times over the years and it doesn’t change much. It ranges from moderately busy traffic to jam-packed traffic. Lucky for us, the Monday morning traffic heading west was not at all bad, with only a few construction-related delays in Victorville. From my experience, very few good things ever happen in Victorville unless you’re a lizard. We combined Mike’s idea of an ideal ride stop (Walmart) and my ideal ride stop (McDonald’s) and made it onto the Strip more or less on time. THe first thing that was hard to miss was that they are preparing for the upcoming Formula 1 race here this next weekend. THe amount of steel fencing and barriers on every street of the central Strip area is quite amazing. The infrastructure needed to protect spectators and provide signage is startling. It is actually hard to imagine how the economics of such an event can possibly make sense. I can only presume that someone has figured out how to make the logistics more cost-effective than they seem and equally make the revenue opportunities or arguments (we know all about soft collateral revenue opportunities, don’t we?) more significant than I can imagine. And remember, as a guy who spent 6 years building out a major NYC attraction (The New York Wheel), I have a well-developed revenue imagination.
After a five-hour roadtrip, we were ready for the bard, but the barn (in the form of the Flamingo Hotel) was tantalizingly difficult to approach due to the Formula 1 race barriers. Traffic on the Strip was, as always, a disaster and hardly moving, but after a very long trip around what Vegas calls a block, we at least got a preview of The Sphere, which is off the Strip, just beyond the Las Vegas Convention Center. That back way turned out to be the only way to get into the Flamingo main entrance. Once in the hotel we had the added challenge of checking-in. Mike is our hospitality guru as he spent his career in the arena. He had dutifully booked us both, upgraded us for early arrival, upgraded us again for slightly more premium rooms and done everything needed for pre-check-in. That should have made our arrival seamless, but hey, this is Vegas and nothing is without seams. After sorting that out, I take great pride in averting another disaster as the gang headed to the nearby elevator bank. I knew that they always made you walk through the casino in Vegas and I dragged the team through the casino to the correct elevator bank in the back. Las Vegas doesn’t change. THey may have done away with coinage in lieu of card-driven slot machines, but they have also decided that the people that come to Vegas for the thrill of it all, still need the bells, whistles and flashing lights to drive them into a modern-day version of an epileptic gambling fit.
We agreed to meet at 4:15 down by the taxi stand since I insisted on taking a taxi to the Sphere for comfort even thought it was reported to be a mere fifteen minute walk away. Talking about an easy walk in Vegas is like talking about an easy commute in NYC, its all a big lie. I decided to try my hand at some Blackjack before we met so I attacked a $25 minimum table and managed to do the unmanageable, which was to walk away $100 up after an hour of play. My years of Blackjack experience have taught me that the only way to win at Blackjack is to time your departure for that one moment when you are up. Lucky for me, that moment came at just about the right time for getting to our meeting place a few minutes early. We gathered at 4:10 to be safe and jumped into a cab only to find the inevitable in modern life, a cab driver who neither knew English nor his way around Las Vegas. Add to that the complexities of the Formula 1 debacle and $12 latter we were at the Venetian with the commentary from the driver in broken English that he could do no better for us. After getting misdirected by at least two Venetian staffers (no one knows nothin’ and nothin’ is anyone’s job), we finally encounters a regular array of people presumably paid by The Sphere with little directional signs. I took that to be a very bad sign since it meant that we had a long way to go and that many people were going to be trying to go where we were going. Sure enough. As we wended our way through the Venetian and past the Palazzo, we ended up out on the street corner with a sliver of a view of the Sphere. Walking in Vegas under normal conditions is always a challenge. Walking in Vegas right before a route altering Formula 1 race is near impossible. By the time we got to the grounds of the Sphere, my back and my temperament was in a fine fettle.
Once at the venue, it seems that we were 180 degrees away from our specified entrance, the closer one reserved for VIPs, which we had chosen not to be because I saw little value therein. My back noted that assumption for future reference. We met up with sister Barb and her clan of Kathleen and Katie, and we entered the Sphere and were told that our seats were up in the nosebleed section on the sixth floor. THe whole robot introduction part of the experience was a bit of a bust. Back in 1963 when you saw Abraham Lincoln talk to you through the marvels of audioanimatronics, that was one thing. Watching an AI-driven bot try and sound as robotic as it could when you know it can speak in normal tongue is really not a compelling experience. So, we headed up to our seats. Once in the Sphere it is a lot like any other big stadium. Getting to your seats is always a challenge. In this case, the trip down the very steep concrete steps was perhaps the most exciting part of the day so far. It has been said that with 18,000 seats in the Sphere, there isn’t a bad seat in the house. I would agree that the cheaper seats are every bit as good as the expensive seats, but that’s a far cry from calling any of them “good” seats. They certainly all have the same view of the Sphere, but they are also cheap stadium seats that are good for a maximum of about an hour before your derrière is likely to go numb.
I will say this about the Sphere and the Darren Aronofsky movie Postcard From Earth, it really is a spectacular and one-of-a-kind experience that is totally immersive. That alone makes the trip and the other petty annoyances worth the trip. This is no IMAX, it is so very much more and it certainly keeps you amazed while you are experiencing it. Unfortunately for us, that was only the start of the adventure. We left Barb, Kathleen and Katie to go get their Uber or Lyft and we started back to the Venetian for our scheduled dining plans. Rarely has a quarter mile racetrack ever been scarier. You have to remember that besides the hordes who are working their way out of the Sphere, there are an even greater number trying to work their way toward the Sphere for the next show. James Dolan and the City of Las Vegas officials should be sued for all they are worth for the dangerous crowd control (or total lack thereof) that existed in that span of sidewalk. The ADA violations alone would curl your hair. I didn’t think it was possible, but my temperament was actually worse when we arrived at the restaurant than it had been when we arrived at the Sphere. The good news is that the human brain cannot remember pain. The3 bad news for Dolan and City officials is that I am capable of calling them out on this abject failure of planning. A soft opening for an attraction is normal. A juggling act with competing attractions in Vegas is pretty normal. Putting 20,000+ people at risk like they are doing is not normal and not acceptable. My advice is to go to the Sphere, but make sure you do it when there isn’t a Formula 1 race on.