LAST 30 SECONDS OVER LAS VEGAS

It started out a typical warm June day in 1999. A meeting was called by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority (LVCVA). In their large meeting room dozens of casino representatives came downtown to meet with the Grucci Bros. If you haven't heard of the Grucci Bros. they make fireworks, but not JUST fireworks, these guys are the best in the business. They did the 4th of July display for Boston over the harbor, the great New York City fireworks display on the 4th. Here in Vegas, they did the pyrotechnics on the Dunes explosion. They did the opening of the Stratosphere Tower, still considered one of the most innovative displays ever from a standing tower, they've done the Rio and Luxor openings as well as past New Years and 4th of July displays here and the plan they had for Las Vegas on New Years Eve 2000 was mindboggeling.

Something they've never done before and sure to grab the attention of the entire world. Everything was blueprinted to the last detail at the Grucci Bros. expense knowing when they tabled this event, the casino owners would do whatever it took to get it done. It meant millions to the casinos in gambling, as well as the exposure from the worldwide media. The only three places they had to focus their attention was New York City, Washington DC and Las Vegas. And of those three, when you hear the plan, Las Vegas would surely have been the only one that would garner full media for most of the proceedings and for sure the LAST THIRTY SECONDS.

And so the blueprints hit the table and Grucci spoke; "The plan here will be the most innovative we've ever undertaken. Our plan is for a countdown to take place in fireworks down the entire length of the Strip. Each of twenty hotels will have fireworks on their roofs that will fire in sequence starting at the Stratosphere Tower with number thirty and work it's way down to the end of the strip at Mandalay Bay. The television coverage alone will be incredible. TV crews on hotel roofs, in Blimps and on the ground covering the entire strip, just imagine the competition for coverage.

Now the fireworks themselves contain the numbers within the flash (shows a video on a large screen tv while he's explaining, showing the white flash and the blue number 1 inside the white flash, then #2, #3 etc.) And of course, the last one is a package of four numbers being 2000. The cost of the project is $2 million dollars, or $100,000 each. "And that's when the real fireworks began. From the Stratosphere "If we're to get #30 then most of the people will be waiting at the other end of the strip for #1 and why should we pay the same as Mandalay Bay if everyone's going to crowd down there and not at our property?" That was followed by the Sahara, the Stardust and others on the northern end of the strip to reiterate the sentiment. To which Grucci replied "We're talking anywhere from 500 to 750 thousand people, don't you think there's plenty of business to go around." "I think what he's saying is visitors will come with or without fireworks" said Glen Schaefer of the Mandalay Group. "Turning Las Vegas into a block party is not a solution. People don't come to Las Vegas for fireworks." And that was all that had to be said. Grucci picked up the blueprints, rolled them back up, grabbed the vcr tape, tucked them under his arm and said "I thought you people were ready for this, I didn't even consider anywhere else to propose this, frankly, it couldn't be done like this anywhere else and now it won't be done here, not with you guys."

But while major cities across the globe like Sidney, Seoul, Paris, London, New York and Washington DC garnered heavy worldwide television coverage of fireworks-laden midnight celebrations, coverage of Las Vegas was sporadic and almost non-existent at best. "For only $100,000 a property, we could have had the biggest fireworks display in the world" said Jonathan Swain, GM of the Hard Rock hotel and former executive at the Tropicana, "but we dropped the ball and it cost us millions" Rob Powers, spokesman for the LVCVA said "The feedback we got was that the hotels had already spent considerable sums of money on their own entertainment for their guests and quite frankly, there was not a strong appetite to spent more since they had charged such outrageous prices and the occupancy rate wasn't much more than half until they started to slash prices just days before new years to try to attract customers. "Our best customers would have never seen it. The people who would have seen it would have been standing out in the street and we don't make money from people standing out in the street. I'm sorry the Paris's Eiffel Tower or the Bellagio's water fountains or the Volcano isn't enough." said Alan Feldman of Mirage Resorts. And so the egos clashed and when the question was brought up by the MGM Resorts "Who gets second #1 and more, who gets #2000" Well that was the end of it all. Grucci noted that since Mandalay Bay was at the end of the south Strip, they would get it and the party would be contained from Spring Mt.Rd. to Russel Rd. with the bulk of people, expected to top 500,000, would crowd from Flamingo Rd to Tropicana.

But no one would go for it, everyone wanted to be #1 and for $100,000, it was too healthy a price tag. Well maybe for Little Rock Arkansas, but for Las Vegas, it was one rack from a blackjack table, the drop from a few slot machines on a good weekend. But this wasn't old Las Vegas, these guys weren't casino executives, they were corporate puppets that couldn't make a hundred thousand dollar decision. Manny Cortez, long time president of the LVCVA said "Frankly, we were outdone by the rest of the world. This town missed out on millions of dollars of revenue for a lousy two million dollar decision that let egos dictate it's outcome. I don't think we'll ever have an opportunity to fix that. The biggest p.r. fiasco in this city's` history was New Year's Eve 2000. The lack of preparation sent the media scrambling for coverage somewhere else, anywhere else." Cortez said.

So how did casinos fare during the New Year's Eve weekend? The estimated cost spent by the casinos was $60 million (Not including the $10 million MGM spent on Barbara Streisand) their total take was just over $35 million, not including food and beverage revenues. Hearing these figures, casino owners were outraged. Stock prices dropped on Park Place (Bally's, Flamingo, Hilton, Paris) Mandalay Bay Resorts (Mandalay, Luxor, Excalibur, Circus Circus) as well as Rio and Harrahs. The estimated take had the money been spent on the fireworks, had the 500-750,000 people appeared. Had hotel occupancy been at the 100% that was expected but only close to 80% was actually realized and that was only due to the last minute scrambling by the casinos to cut prices and give out as many comps as possible to fill rooms, could have been close to $75 million including television revenues that also never appeared. Many people are still put off at the Las Vegas mentality on New Years 2000.

The idea of $2000 a night rooms. Hundreds of dollars per person for even the meagerest New Years parties, some casinos hiring lounge bands to entertain at the cost of Rolling Stone's tickets. And so egos clashed and once again we paid for it. (New Year's eve tips were the lowest EVER reported from casino dealers as well as cocktail waitresses and bartenders and food servers. And so as Benjamin Franklin said, "For want of a horseshoe nail the horseshoe was lost, for want of the horseshoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the messenger was lost, for want of a messenger the battle was lost and all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

PS: By the way, the Millenium doesn't start until January 1, 2001. Remember, the first year AD was 0 (1/1/00)-12/31/00) but the first century didn't start until 1/1/01 that's why the 20th century was in the 1900's and the 21st century was 1/1/2000, so the 2000th year doesn't start until 1/1/01 (THE END OF THE 2000TH YEAR), just like the same date as the beginning of the first century, so you don't count from 1, you count from 0 ......

And though I hate to tell you, they get another shot at you all if they decide to spend some advertising money and cash in on the REAL MILLENIUM.

---Ken Pearlman