Family-friendly Vegas
Gambling mecca offers a surprising number of kid-appropriate pursuits
LAS VEGAS — For magician Mac King, making a wriggling guinea pig disappear isn’t nearly as tricky as raising a teenage daughter in Las Vegas.
“Las Vegas is a city that’s selling sex,” he said bluntly. “All the billboards and signs for strip clubs … set a weird example.”
Singer Marie Osmond, who has lived in Vegas since she and her brother Donny launched their headliner act in 2008, agreed. The mother of eight and grandmother of three said the city’s adult playground image is unavoidable along the world-famous Strip.
“You can’t look up, you can’t look around and you can’t look down because they leave those nudie photos [fliers] all over the sidewalks. So there’s no place their little eyes can look,” she said.
Welcome to Sin City, where the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority does absolutely zero marketing to families. In 2015, only 8 percent of the 42 million guests were under the age of 21.
Despite what the statistics suggest, Osmond described the gambling mecca as a great place for families to vacation, given its “variety of entertainment, from the outdoors to great shows.”
The singer and the magician shared some of their families’ favorite destinations, including unique outdoor pursuits. To the west there’s the stunning Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. To the east there’s massive Lake Mead National Recreation Area, created by the construction of Hoover Dam.
The lake offers plenty of boating and swimming options, and the dam itself is a must-see. Tours of the engineering marvel fascinate children and grownups alike as they travel deep into the bowels of the concrete beast.
Within the recreation area, bikers and hikers can travel the 4-mile-long Historic Railroad Trail, built for trains moving heavy equipment to the dam in the 1930s. Along the way, there are five tunnels.
“It’s a really great walk along the edge of the lake,” King said.
At Red Rock, a wealth of activities — including hiking, horseback riding and rock climbing — can be found along the park’s awe-inspiring, 13-mile scenic drive.
King recommended Lost Creek Children’s Discovery Trail. Along the nearly mile-long trail, families learn about desert life and view ancient petroglyphs before arriving at a waterfall hidden in a canyon. But the water only flows certain times of the year, he noted.
“The dead of summer or fall, it’s either a trickle or not there,” King said.
Southern Nevada gets only 4 inches of rain a year. But on the handful of days when it’s pouring, people are warned to avoid washes; the region’s lowlying, usually dry creek beds can quickly become dangerous raging rivers.
Visitors can witness nature’s fury from a safe vantage point at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, 333 S. Valley View Blvd., a living museum on the site of the now dried-up springs that attracted 19th-century settlers.
The preserve’s flashflood exhibit re-creates the tranquil beauty typical of a remote canyon. Then a thunderstorm erupts. Soon, 5,000 gallons of water are gushing through the canyon. With the thrill of a theme park ride, visitors atop a sturdy steel platform are sprayed with mist as water rushes beneath them. As quickly as they arrive, the floodwaters disappear. A ranger then explains the desert’s dos and don’ts when bad weather looms.
Whether it’s raining cats and dogs or just scorchingly hot, resorts along the Strip offer a surprising number of family-friendly attractions.
Topping the list is Circus Circus, a resort true to its name thanks to the acrobats, clowns and jugglers who perform daily along the midway. Among the acts are unicyclists from China, trapeze artists from Peru and a Russian who wows the crowds with her twirling hula hoops. All of the shows are free.
While at Circus Circus, kids will clamor to visit Adventuredome, a 5-acre theme park that’s oblivious to the elements thanks to its dome of pink glass. A variety of age-appropriate rides includes the Canyon Blaster, billed as the world’s only indoor, double-loop, double-corkscrew roller coaster, reaching speeds of 55 mph.
While many of the showrooms along Las Vegas Boulevard gear their entertainment to adults, there are G-rated acts the entire family will enjoy, including “Donny & Marie” at the Flamingo and “The Mac King Comedy Magic Show” at Harrah’s.
Marie Osmond said children ages 5 and up generally enjoy her show, thanks in part to the “chemistry” of “the brother-sister relationship.”
While Mac King’s afternoon gig is peppered with rib-tickling double entendres that go over kids’ heads, his sleight-of-hand tricks amaze guests of all ages. A guinea pig named Colonel Sanders is among his menagerie of props.
“There’s such diverse livestock,” he said. “There’s an earthworm, a goldfish, a guinea pig and a bear.”
Osmond pointed to MGM Grand’s “KA,” one of several Cirque du Soleil productions in Vegas, as a show well-suited for multigenerational audiences.
“It gets them [children] used to a theater type of a show,” she said. “It’s just the basic war between good and evil, but the stage is just so phenomenal and there’s enough special effects going on that I think it holds their interest.”
King and Osmond both said it’s almost impossible for Vegas visitors to escape the billboards and taxicabs featuring scantily clad women and men. But when it comes to King’s 15-yearold daughter, he believes that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“It can make for awkward conversations,” he said. “But because of that, we do talk about it [sex]. I think she has a really healthy attitude.” Jay Jones is a freelance writer.