- This article is about the current MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas. For other uses see MGM Grand (disambiguation).
The MGM Grand Las Vegas opened in 1993 in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, as a Hollywood themed resort. It has 5,044 rooms, 3,153 of which are no smoking, making it the largest hotel in the world. It also houses a casino, numerous shops and night clubs, and an arena that is a major concert venue. It is owned and operated by the MGM Mirage company.
The building is 293 feet (89 m) high, with 30 floors, five outdoor pools, a 380,000 square foot (35,000 m²) convention center, the MGM Grand Arena, CBS Television City, and the Grand Spa. The casino at 171,500 square feet (16,000 m²) is the largest in Las Vegas.
The Lion Habitat in the MGM Grand
The Tropicana - Las Vegas Boulevard intersection, where the MGM Grand is located, is extremely busy. Pedestrians are not allowed to cross at street level. Instead, the MGM Grand is linked by overhead pedestrian bridges to its neighboring casinos: to the south across Tropicana Avenue, the Tropicana, and to the west across the Strip, the New York-New York.
History
Before the current MGM Grand was built, another hotel known as the MGM Grand was located about a mile (1.5 km) north on the Las Vegas Strip. That site is now occupied by Bally's Hotel & Casino.
In 1990 Kirk Kerkorian bought the Marina Hotel to obtain the site that would become the home of the MGM Grand. During that time, the Marina was known as the MGM-Marina Hotel.
When the latest MGM Grand opened on December 18, 1993, it was owned by MGM Grand Inc. At that time it had an extensive Wizard of Oz theme, including the green "Emerald City" color of the building and the decorative use of Wizard of Oz memorabilia.
Originally, the main entrance on the Strip was inside the mouth of a giant cartoonish lion, but this entrance feature was quickly changed to a more traditional entrance as it was learned that some Asian gamblers were avoiding the casino due to the cultural view of entering the mouth of a lion as "bad luck" (stemming from the phrase "sending a sheep into a lion's [or tiger's] mouth", which implies that a person can be shaken down and there is nothing anyone can do about it) A large golden lion statue was added above the entrance to keep with the MGM Lion theme while not offending their more superstitious guests.
The MGM lion guards the entrance to the MGM Grand Las Vegas.
When the MGM Grand opened, it included the Grand Adventures theme park behind the casino. The plan was to make Las Vegas more "family friendly" by providing activities for children who were too young to gamble. The theme park performed poorly, and did not reopen for the 2001 season. On December 5, 2002, MGM Mirage announced that the former theme park would be developed as a luxury condominium and hotel complex.
In 2000, in an attempt to appeal to a more mature clientele, the hotel underwent a major renovation and almost all traces of the "Oz" theme were removed. The theme is now more of the Art Deco era of classic Hollywood and the hotel started billing itself as The City of Entertainment. A monorail was built using old trains from the Walt Disney World Resort to connect the MGM Grand to Bally's. The track was extended and became the Las Vegas Monorail. The station was refurbished and the trains were replaced with Bombardier M-VI's. 2005 MGM opened the West Wing adding modern amenities such as flat screens, DVD players, and bathroom TV's.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Grand_Las_Vegas under GFDL
