The Mirage Finally Gets More Than a Volcano

Last night I went to a sneak preview of Jet the new nightclub at the Mirage. Also, to open this month at the Mirage is a new restaurant Stack. Both are being run by The Light Group who did this before by creating first Light nightclub(which has been a rare long term success in a fickle business) at the Bellagio and, more recently, Fix, a very hot restaurant, also at Bellagio. So, not surprising is that Jet has similar design elements to Light including a rectangular main room, plenty of tables for VIP bottle service and an all around sense of high-end LA nightlife aesthetics: no camp, no cheese, no tackiness. The large club also has smaller more intimate rooms that feature rock and house music as alternatives to the hip-hop and dance music of the main room.

Both Light and Stack are the fruit of a two year struggle to help bring the Mirage back after the Siegfried & Roy show closed in October, 2003 when Roy was infamously attacked by one of his tigers on stage. Obviously, that tragedy captured the world's attention and almost immediately resulted in the 267 employees of the show being out of work. But Siegfried & Roy were not just any performers; it is safe to say that no casino in Vegas has ever been so entirely branded by their headliners as the Mirage was by S&R. After over 5,000 sold out performances spanning more than a decade attracting millions of customers to the casino: from the rooms to the restaurants to the souvenir shops the Mirage was also devastated. But the Mirage is finally coming back in a big way both with Jet and Stack as well as a planned Cirque show built around the Beatles opening next year.

(photo by Sarah Gerke)