A few weeks before the Tropicana Las Vegas implosion, Vegas Advantage contacted OYO Hotel & Casino. One of its hotel towers faces the Tropicana property and sits about 300 feet from one of the imploded buildings.
OYO and Vegas Advantage agreed on a trade for a comped room. It was an old-school way of doing business, something we have found many independent casino operators still believe in. Thank you to everyone at OYO who helped make this happen.
We checked into the hotel about 4pm after the Global Gaming Expo convention. After that, we went home to pack and returned to OYO around 9pm.
We had the perfect angle of the implosion from the 18th floor
We ended up with an 18th-floor room. The tower has 19 floors.
Before the implosion, Kristina bought a multipurpose tripod and a new high-end webcam. She wedged it between the safety bar and the window. After several tests, the positioning of the camera was perfected.
As we waited to start the stream, maintenance knocked on the door. They were there to inspect the window, which originally opened. That was not on purpose. A previous guest broke the screw that kept it locked. Luckily, we cleaned the window’s exterior before they got there to ensure a clear feed.
Friend from our world record night joined us
Our friend Jason joined us just before midnight. Our livestream started a few minutes later. It started out small and grew to over 2000 live viewers in a couple of hours.
We discussed many topics on the stream. Much of it was related to gambling and Las Vegas history. Many viewers added great information to these discussions.
One story we discussed was that our guest Jason holds third place for the most casinos gambled in during 24 hours. That is because he was with us during our 2023 casino world record run when we visited 93 casinos in less than 24 hours. Jason waited outside Stage Door on Flamingo Road behind Cromwell while we played, making his total 92. It was about 2:30am. He met some interesting passersby out there.
Stage Door was the perfect casino to miss. It requires a wanding by a metal detector to get in and does not permit backpacks. Since we were hiking the Strip from Encore where our private driver dropped us off to Mandalay Bay where Circa was scheduled to pick us up, we needed backpacks for supplies. He held ours while we played slots inside.
As the chat box filled up, Kristina did an incredible job keeping up. I appreciated that when I took over to give her a break and I fell behind in seconds. I was relieved to see her return to the computer.
Fast wireless connection with one small hiccup
The wireless network speed was quick for a hotel. We got about 50 Mbps in download and upload speeds. The cellular data in the area was overloaded and slow.
Hundreds of spectators lined up in front of the MGM Grand exit. Police eventually ran them off. The road closed around midnight.
Unfortunately, the internet connection dropped for a minute around 2:15am, which crashed our live feed. Unable to reconnect to the original feed, we created another stream. Only about half of the 2200 people on the original stream made it to the new one. That was the only problem of the night, so we accepted that it went very well. We got the new feed live about 10 minutes before the fireworks and drone show started.
A viewer said the show was about to begin because officials started the presentation in the media staging area to our left. We could not see that very well from our room. It was about 1/2 mile from us. Within a few minutes, the fireworks started. We stopped talking and watched out the window while we left the stream run without much commentary.
There was some concern that the fireworks smoke would be too thick to see the implosion. Much of it dissipated before the buildings fell.
A dust cloud took over the area after the implosion
Within a minute, the dust began to make it impossible to see outside. Within five minutes, nearly all buildings were obstructed by the dust cloud. We could smell a small amount of gunpowder in the room from the explosives and fireworks. It was not enough to bother us. However, an additional tip for implosion viewing is to seal the windows with masking tape when possible.
Tropicana Avenue was covered in dust. It looked like snow covered the road. It took about two hours for road crews to clear it. Tropicana Avenue reopened after 5am. We decided to leave when we noticed that.
OYO’s parking lot had been cleaned like Tropicana. However, dust covered cars, curbs, and nearly everything besides roads. The air had mostly cleared up when we left.
Kristina and I got home about 5:45am. We had been up 22 hours as we spent the day at G2E before the Tropicana implosion. We slept a few hours before having a wasted day and made up the sleep the next night.
