Workers put the final touches on a Lego-brick reproduction of the Strip. The exhibit will open today at Legoland in Carlsbad, Calif.
Photos by The Associated Press.
Chris Gardner paints a fountain outside a Lego New York-New York at Legoland. The Las Vegas model's scale starts at 20-1 at the base.
CARLSBAD, Calif. -- What happens in Legoland Las Vegas will stay in Legoland Las Vegas -- if the designers have anything to say about it.
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With just hours to go before the official grand opening of a $1 million-plus scale model of the Strip, builders spent Wednesday snapping and glue-gunning the final few thousand bricks into place on replicas of 10 casinos -- from the smooth black Luxor pyramid to the towering 20-foot Stratosphere, complete with a tiny working roller coaster shuttling green-faced passengers up and down the central spire.
Piles of little 3-inch to 4-inch Lego figurines -- including scantily clad women, men handing out girlie fliers and partygoers toting neon green hurricane drinks -- were stacked in bins and on the roofs of the waist-high casino buildings awaiting placement.
"We've got to get 2,000 little people in there this afternoon," design manager Pat DeMaria said as he surveyed the team of landscapers and engineers who were preparing to fill empty pools with water and digging holes for tiny cactuses.
After years of complaints about the Disneyfication of Las Vegas, the Strip is getting the theme park treatment from DeMaria's designers. The new, 2 million brick model re-creates a handful of landmarks in intricate detail, from the bas-relief carvings on the campanile of The Venetian to the chic Tangerine bar set into the facade of the newly remodeled Treasure Island.
The scale starts at 20-1 at the base, so the brick people don't seem dwarfed, and shrinks to 60-1 at the top, designers said.
About the only thing missing is any hint of gambling. Fiber-optic light boards advertise dolphins at The Mirage and fake cabaret shows -- in some cases headlined by the Lego designers' alter egos -- but the constant jangle of slots and video poker machines is absent from the set.
Instead, there is a water-spitting Lego elephant, a two-track Lego monorail and automated Lego limousines that disappear into hotel-registration carports and then reappear on the other side. Kids can punch a button to see a parade of newlyweds come out of the Strip's infamous Little White Wedding Chapel -- some in white gowns and tuxes, others in less formal nuptial garb.
