4 Best Sights in Las Vegas, Nevada

Those who love hi-tech art served with a Burning Man or Electric Daisy Carnival vibe—and with the addition of air-conditioning—will gravitate to this indoor amusement park inside a giant warehouse next to Interstate 15 (the name is a play on both the highway and the mysterious Area 51). The very fluorescent interior (the black-light averse may feel like they are trapped in a giant Spencer Gifts) even features two big Burning Man art installations: a giant skull covered in video graphics and the fantasy hot rod known as Flux Capacitor.

While admission to the facility is free—though advance reservations get you in faster—most of the attractions require you to pay a separate admission: Omega Mart is an otherworldly convenience store, which leads into a walk-through funhouse full of immersive art from the Santa Fe–based arts collective Meow Wolf; Wink World is full of art and tech surprises courtesy of Chris Wink, a co-founder and original member of the Blue Man Group; Museum Fiasco is an immersive, disorienting clublike bombardment of light and sound. Peripheral attractions include axe-throwing and rides on ski-lift chairs suspended from a ceiling track.

The Lost Spirits Distillery is an immersive tasting room with theme-park and show elements. Or, simply chill out with a cocktail under a canopy in The Sanctuary lounge or beneath a luminescent tree in the Oddwood Bar in the center of it all. Maximize this new era of carnival midway with a Korean Corn Dog from the Todd English restaurant The Beast.

There's also the indoor climes of The Portal, a 7,000-square-foot indoor venue where projection mapping augments everything from a Van Gogh exhibit to name deejays. The instant popularity of AREA15 meant the quick addition of an adjacent building housing The Illuminarium, with immersive simulations of outer space and Africa. An announced 20-acre expansion on the north end includes plans for a Universal Studios haunted house attraction featuring its famous movie monsters. Admission is free, but online reservations let you skip lines out front and may be required on busy nights.

Formerly known as Pole Position, this is still the place to floor it in electric miniature racers (think: souped-up golf carts) and reach up to 45 mph. You and up to 12 competitors zip around the ¼-mile indoor track full of twists and turns. Computers track your overall performance from race to race, and over multiple visits. You'll get a score sheet giving a detailed score breakdown to compare with your friends.

Swanky nightclub meets gun range in this only-in-Vegas addition to the scene. In an industrial neighborhood just west of the Interstate, "MGV" (as it's known) offers 10 indoor shooting lanes, including two in an ultraexclusive VIP area, as well as a number of outdoor lanes. Visitors have dozens of firearms to choose from, and you can be part of "Seal Team 6" or a "Femme Fatale." If you have the time, they will even take you out into the Mojave Desert to shoot outdoors. Package deals all include multiple guns and supervised instruction. 

"Fat Mike" Burkett of NOFX is behind this two-story, 12,000 square-foot tribute and repository of in-your-face rock. The artifacts come to life if you opt for guided tours from a rotating list of veteran punks, representing bands such as Bad Religion, The Vandals, and Less Than Jake. In true Las Vegas tradition, there's also a wedding chapel and a bar called The Triple Down (a spin-off of the punk-enough Double Down near the UNLV campus).