"Jubilee!" showgirl Holly Haynick-Dean gives a tour group a behind-the-scenes look at the Strip show. Photo by John Gurzinski. Tourists check out the scenery that sits backstage in the Jubilee Theater at Bally's. Photo by John Gurzinski. Showgirl Holly Haynick-Dean shows off some of the feathered costumes worn during "Jubilee!" Photo by John Gurzinski.

It takes a lot of hard work and more than a little luck to put together a production such as "Jubliee!" night after night, year after year.

Backstage buzzes with activity, before and during the show. Stagehands run around carrying pieces of scenery; dancers dart on and offstage in a chaotic two-step that can include broken heels, torn costumes and other mishaps.

The scene sometimes gets ugly, which is why people pay to see the finished product.

But those who have always wondered just what goes into putting together a classic Vegas show can pay to peek behind the curtains to see the dirty laundry of one of Las Vegas' longest-running productions, "Jubilee!"

The All Access Backstage Walking Tour takes guests where few outsiders have been allowed: down the steep stairwell leading into Bally's basement, through the hallways and past dressing

rooms and wardrobe, into rooms full of feathered hats and boas, and up close to the pieces of scenery that are assembled, then taken apart each performance. And they're led by an honest-to-goodness showgirl, dressed in a red sequined costume that reveals a fair share of leg and cleavage.

"It sounded interesting, what goes on backstage," Elizabeth Williamson of Colorado Springs said about why she paid $15 to go on the tour. She also brought her husband, and their children, 16-year-old Beau and 21-year-old Sarah.

She was fascinated by the factoids that tour guide/showgirl Holly Haynick-Dean dropped throughout the one-hour tour. For instance, the 85 or so cast members perform two shows a night, six days a week. They have to audition for their jobs every six months and they burn quite a few calories running up and down the stairs after every performance. Sometimes Haynick-Dean and her fellow dancers will run 2,000 stairs during a single show, wearing 3-inch heels and headdresses weighing more than 7 pounds.

And, when the tourists got to see those headdresses, some weighing as much as 35 pounds, they learned that some are made with five kinds of feathers: ostrich, pheasant, marabou, rhea and cockrel. The plumage is a veritable rainbow of teals, navy blue, black and other colors.

"I've actually had people ask where we find teal ostriches. And I think they're serious," Haynick-Dean said, getting a laugh from her group.

There's something about a Las Vegas showgirl that mesmerizes and entrances people, whether they're from Paris or Peoria, and this crowd hung on to Haynick-Dean's every word about the feathers, the rhinestones, the hip pads and appliques. Everyone but Beau Williamson, who at times seemed less than interested.

Ooohing and aahhing over feathered headdresses and rhinestone-covered G-strings isn't at the top of a 16-year-old boy's list of things to do in Las Vegas, Beau admitted. He won't be bragging back home to his friends that he took the backstage tour because they probably wouldn't know what "Jubilee!" is anyway, he said.

Still, "it was pretty cool," he mumbled in typical teenager fashion.

During the tours, offered every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 2 p.m., guests can pose questions to their dancer-tour guides, hearing firsthand about the glamorous life of a Las Vegas showgirl. It costs $10 for those who have tickets to see the show and $15 for those who don't.

"This is the bra we wear during the opening number," Haynick-Dean told her recent tour group, holding up a crystal-covered steel bra in the wardrobe room. From the audience, she added, it gives the impression that the women are wearing only rhinestones.

"When these bras break, we have a welder come in here to fix it," she explained.

"You take it off first, right?" asked Charlie Urbanowicz, an anthropologist from California. "Is there an opening for that job?"