Some chill at the Chill’M bar, where a $52 slushy and 100 oz. It’s check-in time at the Trop, new arrivals clutching cans of beer and inflatable inner tubes as they make their way to their rooms, favoring cargo shorts and denim over the designer duds once de rigueur here.
In its place, a pair of curving escalators and an abundance of open space informed with a palpable sense of emptiness on a recent Friday afternoon. Gone is the original showroom, where Folies Bergère dancers high-kicked to the chandeliers for decades, Muhammad Ali held public training sessions for his fight against Ron Lyle in 1975 and live tigers once roamed the stage.
Once among the most upscale properties on the Strip, a gilded treasure box of showgirls and celebrities, a destination spot in a destination city, the Trop courts a different clientele these days. Gaze up at the domed, stained-glass ceiling that brightens the Tropicana casino floor with Art Nouveau-inspired elegance, and you’ll see a different hotel looking back at you than when said ceiling was constructed in 1979 with a reported seven-figure price tag. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal) mirrored, million-dollar canopy remains as it always was the same can’t be said of the surroundings reflected in its silvery depths. A view of the Tropicana Las Vegas exterior, the site where the Oakland A’s are looking at building a ballpark, is seen on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, in Las Vegas.
