G2E 2016 Preview - 2 AGS

Yesterday we looked at Ainsworth Game Technology and some of what we can expect to see on the Global Gaming Expo floor the last week of this month.  Today we want to take a look at another popular game manufacturer whose name you might not know - AGS, American Gaming Systems. You might not recognize the new name, but, especially if you play in Native American casinos, you will certainly be familiar with its popular Cadillac Jack games.  AGS acquired Cadillac Jack as part of it acquisition of rival Canadian company Amaya Gaming for $382 million dollars a year ago this summer. Their goal was to broaden the company's market in both Class II and Class III machines, and the company has been making great strides in this endeavor in the past two years. Information in this preview comes from Frank Legato's articles on the web.

American Gaming System - AGS

Booth 1253

I have never paid much attention to the cabinet slot games are housed in - except of course for the huge displays three screens tall - but slot manufacturers do, and they use G2E to show off the improvements in these cases as well as their games. After AGS acquired Cadillac Jack - a Class II company with some Class III hits - they began work on the new platform which they named the Icon cabinet, a dual -monitor format with state of the art lighting and sound.  They launched the new cabinet last year at G2E 2015, and titles began appearing in our casinos in May of this year. At G2E 2016 this year, AGS will display 36 titles on Icon, part of a launch of 40- 45 new titles.  A second cabinet, called Orion, will make its debut at G2E this year and will house another 10-12 new titles. It will feature a 42-inch flat screen, a high def monitor, providing a continuous screen for expanding reels, bonus features, and other interactive features on a touch sensitive surface. It has been compared to a billboard with LED lighting.

The Orion will be launched with games that have proven to be winners for the company - games like FireWolf II. The original FireWolf series was a hit for the former Cadillac Jack company. It is a PowerXStream game with a 3-4-4-4-3 setup with 576 ways to win and lines that pay both left to right and right to left.  A clone of FireWolf called River Dragons adds interactive animated features like fish that react at the touch of the screen.  The new version will be called Gold Dragon Red Dragon Extreme Jackpots.  Other games include Fire Bull, Fu Panda, and Wolf Queen.  Shadow Sirens is another new game featuring Streaming Stacks. Great Gorilla is another game with the Streaming Stacks feature. You can find thumb shoots of AGS's games at playags on the internet.

Kevin Reilly, the director of slot products, says AGS is aiming for medium-to-high volatility. They want a variety with core high volatility games (gamblers' games) and some entertainment games as well. They say they are still going after the high-limit player, and will be showing 3 or 4 specific high limit games at G2E.  Most of AGS's licensed brand games are about to expire, and the company is debating the future of this type game. Current titles include it Pays to Know Series - Family Feud, Are you Smarter than a 6th Grader, Ripley's. These are not games that get a lot of play in the casinos I visit. 

The company will also be displaying its table games at G2E- with an array of blackjack side bets, progressives, original poker derivative games, and Des, the company's first card shuffler.

If you would like a sample of the demos YouTube videographers will showing us next month, here's a sample of an AGS/Cadillac Jack video filmed by Random$$slots at last year's Global Gaming Expo 2015.

This game is in casinos today, but the video demonstrates not only the game but also gives you a feel for AGS's approach to gaming.  There are several videos of the FireWolf games you can watch on YouTube also.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of these previews in another day or two.

G2E 2016 Preview - 1 Ainsworth

Slot players and game lovers of all kinds will be heading to Las Vegas the last week of this month September 26 - 29 for this year's Global Gaming Expo (G2E) at the Sands Convention Center.  There will be seminars to attend, industry leaders to network with, fellow slot lovers and manufacturers to talk with about your favorite games.  But the best part of all for most of us is the opportunity to walk the floor and see first hand the new games that have recently made their way into casinos and the even newer ones that we'll be seeing in the months to come. The seminars are pricey, but there are YouTubers like Random$$slots who will be filming the talks and showing them in installments to the rest of us on their YouTube Channels. The games are free to see starting Sept 27 for most viewers who have some connection to the industry, slot fanatics, the blog writers, the YouTube videographers and video creators, the casino workers, and the managers whose job it is to predict which of the  many games and displays and cabinets will attract players of all ages to stay and play.  I've been reading articles on the internet by Frank Legato about what we can expect to see when we go this year, and I'll share as much as I've learned with you before I go.  Because many of the games we were shown last G2E have not made it to the many of the casinos where we play, there is some history and information in the 2015 G2E Previews posted in September 2015 that might be of interest too. We'll start with a popular manufacturer relatively new to the North American market - Ainsworth.

Ainsworth

G2E Booth # 2059

Ainsworth is an Australian company founded in 1995 by Len Ainsworth who also founded Aristocrat Technologies two years earlier. When you fly into Las Vegas from the west, you've probably seen the sprawling industrial complex with an enormous stylized A emblazoned on the roof. That A is the logo of Ainsworth Game Technology, a company that has made tremendous inroads into the American gaming market over the past two years. Ainsworth has been in the North American market in some form since 2008, but in the two years since breaking ground on its new Vegas facility the company has gained market share of upwards of 5%, and the number is still growing.  You can view the facility on YouTube. Video creators Alberts Slot Channel, Shinobi Slots, Beam Me Up Slotty, and Slot Lover (and maybe others I'm unaware of) were invited to visit the new facility this summer, and there are YouTube films they posted in late July and August of the building and the new slots they viewed and commented on.  Links to these films showing the facility and new games filled by these video creators will be at the end of the write-up.

With the construction of the new Las Vegas facility, has come marked improvement of Research and Development, including the company's first US based game design studio.  Early this year the company closed on a $38 million acquisition of South Carolina-based Nova Technologies. One of the benefits of the acquisition of Nova has been an instant presence and strong growth in the Class II (Bingo slots) market especially in Oklahoma and California. At the time of the acquisition Nova had an installed base of 1,425 units in 11 states.  Many people can not tell the difference between Class II and Class III slots. That is intentional. Nova's team has technically developed Class III games for more than a decade. At Nova, the Class II games are actually developed first as Class III according to the design staff. According to the company, 12 Nova Class II titles will be added each year to the 30 now available. They also say that two new Class III titles are being made available in the Class II library each month.

So, what can we expect to see at Ainsworth's booth at G2E this year?  Frank Legato says there will be more than 120 games on display at Ainsworth's booth (#2059).  Those games will include between 60 and 70 new titles and they will be shown in all the company's various cabinets. The new A600 cabinet is being launched with six dedicated themes and more than 50 legacy titles, an enormous library right from the start. (The old A560 cabinet will be serving as a workhorse for the entirely new Class II products.)  

The new A600 cabinet will debut at G2E with "Cash Odyssey" -- a series of three games based on literary classics -- Gulliver's Travels, Huckelberry Finn, and Robinson Crusoe. Part 3 of Slot Lover's Ainsworth demo includes these games if you'd like to preview them yourself. Sources say these Cash Odyssey series games feature base games on two separate reel sets, on each of the cabinets dual 24-inch monitor. Each monitor has a Blue Zone and a Red Zone on which a credit prize is awarded every time a Cash Odyssey symbol lands. 

Other new games include two series of multiple-progressive video slots under the themes Quackpot and Thunder Hits.  Albert (affectionately called Mr. Ainsworth by his friends) of Albert's Slot Channel has filmed Quackpot and Thunder Wilds to show us.  His films also include Fortune Fox and Action Dragons.  The new legacy cabinet will include Dragon Lines, Mustang Money, Roaming Reels, Twice the Money, Glitter Diamonds, and Dolphin.  Take a look at the films shown by the YouTubers who were invited to visit the company and see what is new-to-you there.

Press releases say by the end of the year, the company will release win-at-any-bet progressive games. And in the first quarter of 2017 the "hit before" progressives. This type game is very difficult to do with bingo-math (Class II) but Ainsworth plans to be the first to do it in Class II.

What about licensed slots? There will be the usual releases - The Three Amigos, King Kong, Showgirls, and The Sound of Music -- by no means their best offerings according to many players -- but there will also be new licensed brands that are being kept secret until show time.  The company realizes this is not their strong suit but they say they will make an effort over the next 12 months to do more with licensed slots. 

What does the future hold in store for Ainsworth? Well, one thing we should see is its expansion into other markets. There is a pending purchase after regulatory approval of the majority of Ainsworth shares by Austria's Novomatic Group. The process will take about 12 months and should benefit both companies. It will open new markets in Europe for Ainsworth where Novomatic dominates. Novomatic has committed to placing 2,000 Ainsworth games in casinos the Austrian company owns and operates.

It's nice to read about all these coming releases, but nothing compares with seeing it all for yourself. It's not too late to plan a trip to Las Vegas to enjoy the excitement first hand.   If you can't attend, take a look at Albert, Slot Lover, Shinobi, and BMUS' films and then watch the demos filmed by various YouTube channels at G2E. You'll be surprised at how many there will be.  In the meantime, I'll try to find another slot manufacturer to spotlight in the next day of two.

Here are Slot Lover's three demo films:

Here are some demos Albert filmed at Ainsworth:

           

Shinobi and Beam Me Up Slotty, if you have others not shown here, send them to me and I'll add them to the ones I have.

Gamblit Gaming to test skill bases gaming at Harrahs SoCal Resort

Skill based gaming is the wave of the future and Gamblit Gaming hopes to convince young gamers to trade their mobile phones for games of skill at their parents' casinos. The article that follows is taken from the web, but the news involves Harrah's Resort Southern California (formerly called Harrah's Rincon) in northern San Diego County. The new skill-based games will appear in the casino before the end of the year, and if they prove popular, you may see them in Vegas before long. Why San Diego instead of Las Vegas? Proximity to the manufacturer's venue.  Gamblit Gaming is a California company located in Glendale, California,  which is a suburb of Los Angeles, not too far from Burbank -- just a short 60 or so mile drive from Harrah's San Diego.  Gamblit showcased some of these games at G2E last October, and we can expect to see them at Harrah's soon after G2E this month. We'll keep our eyes open.

The article that follows is from CDS Gaming Report, taken from Christopher Palmeri, Bloomberg.

"Caesars Entertainment Corp., trying to convince young people that slot machines can be cool, is rolling out a new generation of devices in its casinos that look like the mobile games people play on their phones.

The largest owner of casinos in the U.S. is trying to buck a trend that’s seen slot-machine betting fall to $291 billion in 2014 from a peak of $355 billion in 2007, according to the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers. While the slow-growing economy is often cited for the drop, casino operators also say millennials don’t play the slots like their parents and grandparents.

The new machines pay out based on a customer’s skill as well as luck, a change that required tweaks to casino regulations. The games, developed by Gamblit Gaming, challenge players to find words hidden on a board or match flavors of smoothies in a virtual juice bar. In Grab Poker, four people stand around a flat, waist-high screen and press buttons to see who’ll snag the card that pops up in the middle. The player with the best poker hand at the end wins.

The games are designed to lure younger patrons, who prefer to gamble interactively and tend to spend more on booze and food. Caesars plans to put six new devices, enough for 25 players, in its Harrah’s resort near San Diego this year and as many as 36, with room for 125 players, in its Las Vegas properties in 2017.

“Typically slot machines are a very solitary experience,” said Eric Meyerhofer, chief executive officer of by Glendale, California-based Gamblit. “Our games are designed to be played in groups with friends.”

Small Wins

Yet unlike typical slots, which are based solely on chance, casinos are challenged to make sure that the new skill-based machines aren’t so easily conquered, leading pinball wizards to break the bank.

Gamblit’s games are designed to create a series of small wins rather than one big jackpot, and over time the payouts should average that of traditional slot machines, Meyerhofer said. A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said he expects some manufacturers to make their games progressively harder as the players score higher, a big change from the static play of a game like blackjack.

Casino regulators in Nevada and New Jersey have been reworking their regulations over the past two years to allow for skill-based games. Major slot machines manufacturers such as Scientific Games Corp. and International Game Technology Plc have been developing their own versions of interactive devices. IGT has a machine based on the Atari video game Centipede in use at MGM Resorts International’s Bellagio casino in Las Vegas.

Party Atmosphere

Other casinos are looking for ways to attract millennials. Wynn Resorts Ltd. redesigned the Player’s Club at its Encore resort in Las Vegas last year to add a DJ booth, lounge seating with flat-screen video slot machines and a white-lacquer billiards table from Steve Wynn’s Manhattan penthouse to create a more party-like atmosphere. Las Vegas Sands Corp. in July installed “stadium-style” seats at its casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. There, players bet based on cards dealt by live dealers at the center of a circular floor, an arrangement some people find less intimating than joining a table of strangers.

“It gives them a bit of time to learn these games without feeling they’re making a mistake and doing something wrong,” said Mark Juliano, president of the Sands Bethlehem.

For Las Vegas-based Caesars, which has been struggling under the debt load taken on during a 2008 leveraged buyout, the app-like games represent a way to compete against simple, addictive games like Candy Crush that have proliferated on mobile phones.

The rollout is part of a larger strategy by Chief Executive Officer Mark Frissora to introduce more technology to the business.

“Our world has shifted,” said Melissa Price, Caesars’ senior vice president of gaming. 'There are a lot of entertainment opportunities that don’t always exist at the casino.'”

Pauma Makes the Papers

One of our local Native American HWY 76 casinos in northern San Diego County has made the news again today.  This time it's their legal battle they've been waging with the State of California.  

My husband and I spend a lot of time at Pauma: an hour -- or maybe even two -- every Tuesday morning depending on whether it is the only casino we're giving our money to that week.  We like Pauma because it isn't a fancy resort. The casino is still housed in a tent between the orange groves and the nearby mountains and has no resort amenities such as rooms for overnight stays or spas and swimming pools to distract us from the reason for our visit -- gambling.  There's a restaurant that they call a buffet with special prices for seniors, but we never eat there because we've been spoiled by the sumptuous repasts at Valley View and Harrah's and Pala just a few miles away.  I should say we don't eat there unless you count the free donuts they feed us if we show up between 8 and 10 Thursday mornings.

Pauma is a friendly casino. The girls at the Player's Club know all of us by name and we know them by name too. They chat and show us pictures of their children and wish us luck when we play.  Sometimes they even pat our machines for luck as a superstitious player would do. The gamblers are mostly gray haired geriatrics. The machines are mostly older classics too, but they do have some newer machines. Last time I visited I played the new Leprechaun slots and Lightning Link and the new Wonder 4 with the wheels.  Besides our free play, every Tuesday and Wednesday morning they let us trade a $20 bill for $30 of play on our card. Wednesdays and Friday nights there are drawings and game areas like we remember from the old days 10 or so years ago.  Every Tuesday they give away pretty nice gifts which we don't stay for because we don't want to play until noon and stand in line. My husband and I are very low rollers, but Joe has had 3 hand pays over the years we have called Pauma home, and I have had my only one on Wicked Winnings II which you all know is my favorite game.

The casino has had some growing pains and some bad publicity over the years too. Go back and read my earlier posts about the women who switched seats on a hand pay and ended up banned for life. But Pauma has learned just as we have, and we don't hear tales like that anymore.  I don't think they allow filming - I have never seen anyone recording their slot games to share on YouTube - and none of the videographers I watch have said they filmed in the little casino. 

So, why are we writing about Pauma today? It's because they're in the news again - this time over a legal fight with the state of California.  I'm not going to rewrite the news article - I'm copying it word for word below because I have nothing new to add.  My information comes from Jim Miller who writes for the Sacramento Bee.

"California will pay $36.3 million after losing a years-long legal fight with a Southern California tribe over a casino deal negotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that traded permission to add slot machines in return for millions of dollars in payments to the General Fund .

Legislation to appropriate the money emerged earlier this month, and lawmakers are expected to act on Senate Bill 1187 before the Aug. 31 deadline to pass bills. The claim is the costliest for the state since at least 2010, surpassing the $24.1 million the state paid last year after a lawsuit stemming from the state’s aborted sale of state office buildings.

The payment follows a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the case between the state and the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians, which operates a casino southeast of Temecula in northern San Diego County. The state in June lost its attempt to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Pauma band was among more than 60 California tribes that signed tribal casino compacts in 1999 that for the first time brought Vegas-style gambling to tribal land. 

The tribe tried to add machines a few years later but the Schwarzenegger administration said there were no more slot licenses available under the 1999 deal. The tribe made a new deal in 2004 that raised its annual payment to the state from about $315,000 to $7.75 million in exchange for hundreds more slots.

In fact, additional 1999 slot licenses were available. The Pauma band’s lawsuit charged that state officials intentionally misled the tribe to pressure it to agree to pay more.

“Since this misrepresentation induced Pauma to enter into the much more expensive 2004 amendment, the tribe is entitled to rescission of the amendment and restitution for the $36.2 million in overpayments made to the state,” federal appeals court Judge Richard C. Tallman wrote in an October 2015 decision.

Because of another court decision, Gov. Jerry Brown’s casino deals have generally brought less cash to the state than those in the Schwarzenegger era."

Jim Miller: 916-326-5521, @jimmiller2

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article97452877.html#storylink=cpy

New Casino Opening Soon in San Diego County

There is a wonderful web site 500nations.com where you can learn almost anything you want to know about our nation's 565 federally recognized tribes. For instance, they tell us that there are 493 gaming operations in the United States. They are owned by 244 of those 565 federally recognized tribes, and they operate in 28 of our 50 states. In 24 of those 28 states, Vegas-style Class III casinos  are allowed. 4 allow only Class II (bingo slots.) 

500 Nations goes on to report that the annual (2015) revenue from all Native American gaming operations is nearly $30 billion, and represents 43% of all casino revenue in the US. 38% of all US gambling revenues come from just 2 states: California ($7 billion) and Oklahoma ($3.77 billion.) These two states are followed by Florida ($2.83 billion), Washington ($2.32 billion), and Arizona ($1.8 billion.)  Indian gaming pays $9 billion in taxes and revenue sharing payments to federal, state, and local governments.

I live in California. California, according to this site, has 69 Native American casinos and 90 "poker casinos" - often called "card clubs". 62 of California's 109 tribes own these casinos and resorts - gaming palaces with over 70,000 slot machines and  over 2,000 table games. You can find a complete list of all Native American casinos and links to their sites on 500nations.com. 

My home is in Riverside County, just north of San Diego County. My local casino is the State's biggest resort: Pechanga, but I do most of my playing in the San Diego casinos just a few miles south.  Currently residents of San Diego can choose from Barona (the local favorite), Pauma, Golden Acorn, Harrah's Resort Southern California (Rincon), LaPosta, Pala, Santa Ysabel, Sycuan, Valley View, and Viejas. Usually my husband and I play at Pauma and either Pala or Harrah's. Sometimes we visit Valley View and occasionally Barona which is really a little to far to drive. But we have plenty of choices and if we're feeling flush, Las Vegas is just a short plane ride away. We don't really need any more casinos in Southern California.

Well, even if we don't need anymore casinos, we're about to get one anyway.  The Jamul Indian Village on Thursday, August 4, signed a gaming compact through 2045 with Governor Jerry Brown acting on behalf of the State of California. If you are not familiar with California gaming regulations, casino gambling is permitted in California only if the tribes have entered into a compact (agreement) between tribe and state regulating the number of games allowed and the payments that must be made to the State each year to maintain the privilege.  Only tribes are allowed to own casinos in California -- though many have entered into agreements with other companies to manage these casinos for them.

The new Jamul-San Diego is slated to begin operations soon, possibly by the end of this month in partnership with a large Pennsylvania gaming corporation, Penn National Gaming. Smaller casinos often partner with other companies to help them manage their casinos.  Jamul Indian Village (JIV) is a very small tribe -- only 54 members, part of the Kumeyaay Nation.  The history of the tribe in Southern California can be traced back 12,000 years. The first European contact occurred in San Diego in 1524. JIV, one of 13 bands of the Kumeyaay Nation, federally recognized as a sovereign nation, traces its roots to these natives.  The reservation is a scant 6 acres located off Route 94. None of the  tribal members live on the reservation itself, but the tribe has been busy building a three-story $360 million casino on the parcel for years. The casino has been in the tribe's plans since the 1990s when JIV was one of the original tribes in San Diego County to sign a compact with the state through then-governor Gray Davis, an agreement that was set to expire in 2020.  The casino was bitterly opposed by local residents, but construction continued despite their opposition and the facility will feature slot machines, live table games, multiple restaurants, bars and lounges, and an enclosed parking structure. 

When will our new gaming venue open? No one is saying, but according to East County Magazine, there are signs posted by Caltrans along State Rt 94 saying "Expect Delays on HWY 94 in Jamul August 15 - 22" so we must be getting close.  Will I visit Jamul? Depends on whether my husband or son want to drive that far to see if a casino will let you win when they first open their doors hoping the experience will encourage you to return again.  If I find out anything I'll update this post, but I probably will not see you there.  Here's a picture of Jamul from the East County Magazine.

August 20 : Update

Controversy Rages on. County Supervisor Diana Jacobs held a news conference at a private home yesterday to address community concerns. She called Route 94 from San Diego to Jamul a "deathtrap" plagued by collisions, injuries, and death. When the casino opens, there will be 9,000 more daily trips on the road. She called the opening "a disaster in the making." The county supervisor  claims safety is their main concern.  The tribe is concerned too and has committed nearly $20 million toward roadway improvements identified by Caltrans, and $3.7 million for roadway improvements identified by San Diego County.  Protestors carry signs saying "No Dice" and "Wecome to Death Alley."  

A few statistics from the SD Tribune article: the gaming facility of 200,00 square feet will house 1,700 slot machines when it opens, nearly 50 live table games, restaurants, bars, and lounges. The underground parking structure will accommodate 1,900 spaces.  No opening date set yet, though they are now advertizing on television and billboards.  We'll just have to wait and see how this all turns out.

King Kong Returns

When my husband and I first visited Las Vegas in late December 1998, we didn't know much about gambling.  Not that it mattered. The trip was a family excursion to California over Christmas break with our three college-aged adult sons.  Two days enjoying Santa Monica and the glorious Pacific Ocean, another for sightseeing in touristy Hollywood, and the final days in Las Vegas enjoying the shows and sights along the Strip.  The boys and I had never traveled West before, but my husband had fond memories of a trip to the Golden State in his childhood, and he hoped to convince me that we should retire there in a few years. Vegas was an afterthought. We were so close. Why not see what all the fuss was about.

There's a lot to see in Las Vegas even without spinning the wheels, but the day before we were to fly back to snowy Indiana, we decided our trip would not be complete without giving the slots a try.  So abandoned by our children who were off riding roller coasters at NY/NY, we bought a bucket of quarters and walked the casino floor searching for a game that appealed to both of us. Then we saw it.

It wasn't like the electronic slots we play today. This game, whose manufacturer I do not know and whose name I do not remember, featured a mechanical gorilla climbing what could have been the Empire State Building. The details are a little fuzzy after almost 18 years, but as we remember it, whenever a certain icon came up -- perhaps a banana --the ape climbed another story of the building. If it made it to the top, the jackpot was won. I think it took 3 quarters to play and I think it had 12 stories to climb. Some spins there were no bananas and the ape stayed where he was. Some spins there were multiple bananas allowing him to climb more than one story.

Possibly the game had a mechanical defect. Likely when the prior player abandoned the game he didn't cash out all his coins. For whatever reason King Kong did not slide back to the ground level and start over. We continued the climb from the level the prior player had reached, and after just a few lucky spins the ape climbed the rest of the way to the top of the building and 240 quarters dropped into the hopper. And we were hooked.  I have always had a spot in my heart for gorilla themed games because that's what started it all for me.

King Kong is about to return.  News articles tell of construction beginning this year on the new Wynn Paradise Park, a 1,000 room expansion centered around a 38-acre lagoon, hosting water skiing, paddle boarding, and parasailing by day and fireworks by night. Though it will not be finished until 2020 if work begins as planned, Paradise Park will feature a new island in the lagoon, a zip line, and King Kong. This isn't the first time the great ape has been featured in Vegas plans - there were plans in 1995 to build a King Kong ride at the Stratosphere Tower that hasn't yet opened. Owners envisioned a 70-foot ape scaling the side of the tower with 30 passengers in the belly of the beast. Obviously it was never built and remains a quirky Vegas footnote.

According to Wynn, there will be two islands in the proposed lagoon. The island in the turquoise lagoon will be like Hawaii, with tall peaks and white sand beaches - irresistible in the arid desert. There will be a restaurant at the top of the peak, and people can zip line to the island or take a gondola car to the peak for dinner. There will be water shows every day and fireworks every night.

On the second peak, there will be an eight-story-tall King Kong who will make an appearance every day before the water show.  The ape will be able to turn 360 degrees and will have a 50-ft arm spread. In his left hand he will hold a girl.  How much will visitors to Vegas pay for the animated eyes and ferocious sound? No one knows.  It seems odd, but so did British ships sinking in a pirate battle on the Strip every 90 minutes.  Maybe it's just what the Strip needs.

The lake will be located at the site of a golf course currently.  The Southern Nevada Water Authority estimates that the golf course uses about 700 to 800 acre-feet of water per year. The new lake alone would use about 300 to 400 acre-feet per year. One acre-foot of water is about enough to serve two average Las Vegas homes for more than a year, according to CDC gaming reports.
  

If you have seen a movie lately or attended Comic Con, you have probably seen the trailer for the new movie Kong: Skull Island. With a release date of March 10, 2017 by Warner Brothers, timing will be good for the opening of the Wynn extravaganza, Paradise Park. 

Hopefully this link will take you to the trailer released at Comic Con this July.  Sorry for the ad.

https://youtu.be/9M8jDZOfs7k

Flying Down to Rio for the Olympics? Don't Drink the Water!

News articles this Sunday are all full of dire warnings about the dangers facing tourists planning to enjoy the XXXI Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro starting this Friday and running through August 21.  Copacabana Beach, Ipanema — paradise immortalized in film and song. Sun, sand, bikinis, waves crashing on the sandy shore - an alluring image of a tropical Eden - and a misleading one. 

Just days ahead of the Olympic Games the waterways of Rio de Janeiro are as filthy and uninviting as ever. Contaminated with raw human sewage, teeming with dangerous viruses and bacteria, and the site of occasional body parts washed up on shore, not only are the 1,400 aquatic athletes at risk of becoming violently ill in water competitions, but tourists also face potentially serious health risks on the golden beaches.  An AP study shows viral levels at up to 1.7 million times what would be considered worrisome in the US. At these concentrations, swimmers and athletes who ingest just three teaspoons of water are almost certain to be infected with viruses that can cause stomach and respiratory illnesses and more rarely heart and brain inflammation according to the Las Vegas Sun. 

Athletes have been taking precautions taking antibiotics, bleaching oars, and donning plastic suits and gloves to limit contact with the water.  But what about the 300,000 - 500,000 foreigners expected to descend on Rio for the Olympics. How will they contend with high bacterial levels and sewage pollution?  Experts advise “don’t put your head under water.”  Swimmers who cannot heed that advice and ingest water through their mouths and noses risk getting violently ill.  Babies and toddlers playing in the sand risk dehydration and contact with hazardous viruses.  Tests over a 12 month period show levels at Ipanema Beach, the city’s most popular tourist spot, exceed those  that would close a beach in Europe or the United States according to the SD Union Tribune. Locals have built up immunity to pathogens in raw waste, but visitors are likely to be at risk.

In Rio the rich live on the flats; the poor live on the hillsides. And the poor are so poor that most don’t have modern waste management systems. So garbage and sewage roll down the hillsides in murky creeks into the world’s largest septic tank.  Sailing, rowing, canoeing, kayaking, open water swimming, triathlon  — about 1000 athletes — are all affected.

This is the first time they Olympic games have been held in South America. Water woes are not the only problem Rio faces. Besides unsafe beaches there are budget cuts, subways that may or may not be finished in the next 4 days, pestilence, corruption, and the Zika virus.  Athletes Bob and Mike Bryan posted on Facebook  this weekend they will not be competing because of health reasons — two of many who have cited similar reasons for dropping out of the games.

It should be interesting. We’re about to find out.


SPECIAL REPLY for NICK S:   I've tried to reply privately to 3 of your comments.  If you haven't received them, contact me at my g-mail address:  spin2win.jen@gmail.com. Thanks.


Thanks to Shamus for showing us what fun we can have Dancing in Rio.