Yes, we all know kids are not allowed in the casinos for a long period of time. By passing is fine so long we don't linger around. We did get a little push away at the Paris hotel for stopping on the casinos floor for few minutes. Move-on...move-on...now, where did we go with our little ones for some entertainment?
After we're situated at our hotel and done some hotel hoping, time to explore fun things kids could do while in Vegas. I bet there are way more things young kids can take part in, but with the limited time we have on hand, we only managed to include a few.
M&M's World
Chocolate-lover heaven. Not only for kids, adults too. Can your teeth handle all these sweets? It's nice seeing and fantasizing all the candies you can possibly consume, but not wanting to welcome cavities. We did buy a small little bag of candies for the boys and two M&M dispensers for keepsake.
There are 4 floors in the M&M's World Las Vegas, which is few stores away from the MGM Grand hotel. On one of the floor, it has a little theater where they play M&Ms video, but kids are just not interested when they are surrounded by all these candies. They're too busy deciding on what to buy.
Across the street is the Hershey's Chocolate World, next to the New York Hotel. You do need to take the sky bridge crossing the street, which is conveniently located nearby MGM Grand. We spent quite sometime at the M&M's World so enough of the chocolate land.
Freemont Street Experience
According to our Uber driver, Freemont street is where all the older casinos are at. The Freemont Street experience would be much nicer at night when the huge LED canopy lights up over your head. We knew it would be tough by evening with over exhausted children so we went during daytime.
Meanwhile, on the far end of the street, there's a tree house playground inside the Container Park, the kids get to play for a little bit while daddy is enjoying his beer.
Transportation
Taxi can be found relatively easy, but we opted for Uber, Lyft, shuttle and the Monorail as mentioned in an earlier post. Those were cheaper options for us at the time especially with holiday promotional codes offer. Remember to check any promotional codes out there. In our case, there were 2 free Uber rides (up to $65 value) from airport with AMEX card, and also free $10 first 5 rides for new Lyft user. It was also mommy's first experience with Uber and surprisingly not bad at all. It is convenience and time saving. Definitely recommend this option for your next Vegas transportation. From the airport to the strip is roughly about $20 each way and no need to worry about payments and tips as it will be taken care of from the Uber app.
Some hotels have free shuttle to airport and some designated attractions. Some come with a fixed schedule like every 30 minutes to/from the airport which is not too far from the strip. Do check with the hotel concierge. According to the Las Vegas law, there is no free shuttle from the airport to the strip hotels. Most free hotel shuttles are for hotel located off the strip.
Las Vegas strip is about 4 miles long. Walking on most part of strip would be very tiring and challenging with young kids. Road transportation sometimes may not be ideal when there are heavy traffic, imagine the holiday crowd. This is where Vegas monorail comes in handy, and they allow stroller. Here is the Vegas monorail map starting from MGM Grand station at the south, ending at the north strip of the SLS station.
There are also few free short monorail tracks on the west side of the strip. Notice that they are not all connected like the track on the east side.
Single ride for the monorail cost $5 per person and unlimited day ($12) and multi-days pass (eg. 2 days pass for $22) are also available. Children 5 and under ride free. We found that Chase ultimate rewards have the cheapest monorail tickets for 2 days pass (for 2434 points, ~$24 for two adults) so we bought it from Chase. To get to the circus circus hotel, we took the monorail from MGM Grand station to the last station, SLS and walk a short distance.
Good bye Vegas
Las vegas was a great one-time experience for my family. One-time is good enough and as usual, it is always better to go to a place once than to hear it a thousands time. Now, I've been there and visited, Las Vegas is a place where you spend money like there is no tomorrow. Even a tall Starbucks Mocha inside the Signature hotel costs $6+, where it normally costs $3-$4.
Hello California, here we come...
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