Bellagio Power Failure
 

The Bellagio in Vegas lost power on Sunday and have yet to restore it. Read below.

One of the biggest hotels on the Las Vegas Strip is in its second day of a power outage it blames on a mechanical problem.

The Bellagio casino is closed while officials hope to truck in portable transformers and fix a device similar to a surge protector in time to be back up and running by Monday night.

But the hotel's also trying to find other accommodations for 1,000 guests still at the 3,000 room resort.

Even the "Dancing Waters" attraction on the Las Vegas Strip is still.

Authorities do not suspect a criminal or terrorist act. That's according to an MGM Mirage spokesman who traces the problem to a power surge about 2:00 AM Sunday.

The hotel's trying to make it as easy as possible for guests accustomed to pampering and premium rates at the Strip's top-end hotel.

The Bellagio had been full for the Easter weekend, but about 2,000 guests checked out Sunday.

My son just called me at 9:00 am PDT this morning (he and his wife arrived at the Bellagio yesterday morning to a dark hotel) to tell me that the power there is still out and that they are going to be moved to another hotel (possibly the Mirage). He says it's been quite a hike up the 9 floors to their room.

Ken

PS: Last trip they took, they missed a connecting flight in LAX to Hong Kong and ended up spending 36 hours at the airport scrambling to find another flight with empty seats.

Don't think I'm going to be planning a trip with them anytime soon.

:)

Ken

Correction - once the backup generators kicked in the elevators were working again, but no lights in the rooms and no hot water.

Ken

WOW, we were on the 23rd floor last visit, now THAT would be a hike!
Are we sure it isn't some sort of Big Oceans 11 kind of robbery:)

Hmm, power failure in Vegas. The conspiracy theorist in me sees an ulterior motive. Blackout one MGM casino, shift the players to your other properties (thus retaining the gambling action) then offer your high-rollers and anyone who complains a comp room for another trip - BINGO you just increased your visitor count!

On the consipracy theory side, I'd vote for an attempted and/or successful robbery, but we'll never find out the truth!

Are you suggesting that the casino operations hide/shade/manipulate information (accounting and otherwise) to suit their interests?

Maybe the 3000 room hotel just didn't feel like staying open with only 1000 guests. That's, what? 2500 empty rooms?

Are the lights on?

It is hard to believe that a hotel of that calibre could be without power for the better part of 2 days, or more (according to last night's news, power went out on Saturday).

Power was restored to the entire city of NY last summer after 12 hours.

I can relate.

This is the third straight day of my own personal power failure.
I-)I-)I-)

:>, me too, Kal. Do you have a circuit breaker you can flip, or like me, sticking with the old fashion screw in fuse.

That's not a circuit breaker, SoBe...I'm just happy to see ya'll! #-O

As for conspiracy theories, anybody watching "24"? Very scary.

LOL, Kal!!! Oh, ho, I can top that for scarey .. how 'bout Bush in primetime! Subtext: ongoing power failure in Crawford.

Update:

Las Vegas -- The luxurious Bellagio hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip remains closed, due to a power line failure that blacked out the resort.

Management says thousands of feet of cable will have to be replaced before the hotel can re-open Tuesday morning, at the earliest.

A Nevada Power spokesman calls the power outage an internal problem at the Bellagio.

Thousands of guests have been relocated to other hotels.

Nevada Power and hotel engineers are investigating.

The "pampered people" who were staying at the hotel seem VERY perturbed when interviewed. Guess they are just not used to having ANYTHING ever go wrong in their lives! Welcome to the real world, folks!

I'm hoping that some of them will post here when they come home!

Clark: it's not so much a sense of entitlement (that nothing should be allowed to go wrong) but that if you're going to pay top dollar, you should get what you pay for. If the power goes out at the Stratosphere and you're paying $19.95 per night, it's still a big inconvenience, but expectations are lower.
Ask anyone who works in sales or service at a Mercedes dealership or at a very high end restaurant. If people pay a lot, they expect perfection. Anything less is considered unacceptable (a generalization, of course).
And, for what it's worth, I believe that the legal profession in the USA has fostered a lot of this attitude. If it's not perfect, sue the pants off 'em.

Update:

Seems Bellagio will re-open tomorrow.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Bellagio casino in Las Vegas expects to reopen on Wednesday after a three-day power outage that shut the resort on Easter Sunday, a spokesman for owner MGM Mirage said.
The resort emptied 2,000 rooms on Sunday and Monday after an unexpected electrical failure, and the shutdown is likely to lower MGM Mirage profits by 2 cents to 3 cents per share in the second quarter, spokesman Alan Feldman told Reuters.

That is the net cost after recovering some losses from business interruption insurance, he added.

Financial analysts on average expect earnings of 50 cents a share in the second quarter, according to Reuters Research, a unit of Reuters Group Plc.

A power system failed at the Bellagio around 2 a.m. PT (5 a.m. ET) on Sunday morning. The resort switched to back-up power but had to evacuate guests and shut down all systems to make repairs.

Guests in some 2,000 rooms were moved to other hotels owned by MGM and rivals.

By Tuesday the company had replaced cables and was preparing to test power systems to bring the hotel and casino back on line.

Bellagio guests will start checking in on Wednesday after noon, if all goes according to plan, although the resort will probably not be completely back to normal until Friday, Feldman said.

I think it's unrealistic to expect perfection at any price. But again, I would wonder why 3 days to remedy?

Clark, you really are naive. Clearly, you assume someone with money must not have worked for it and doesn't know anything but luxury.

Wake up to the real world sport. A good portion of the people with money got it through working their tail off or simply outthinking everyone else. Certainly, there are a few who hit the gene pool lottery and simply had to be born to enjoy money. As for the rest of us, we got it through our own efforts and a country where you can achieve to the best of your ability.

I've stayed at the Bellagio numerous times. We had one really bad experience due to things like a room that wasn't clean, keys that wouldn't work and a not-particularly bright security person. The reason these people are annoyed is likely the same reason I was - you pay a premium to NOT deal with those things. You pay the extra amount to maximize enjoyment.

it sounds as if the guests may have been evacuated in the middle of the night on sunday. if that's so, and depending on how they were treated (as i can't imagine there are enough bell hops, etc., on duty at 2am to help everyone), i can see that not being the best vacation -- although a good story after the fact.

and i still think that the casino was robbed!

Just came home from Vegas. Thank goodness we were at the JW Marriott and not the Bellagio. From what I heard, guests woke up to no power. There weren't any stories of a middle of the night evac. We were on the strip Sunday afternoon. We had heard that the O shows were canceled but didn't know why. Then as we walked past the Bellagio there were a lot of security people directing cabs away from the hotel. We found out about the problem when we jumped into a cab after Mystere to go to see the fountains. Of course, no fountains. I just feel very badly for the desk staff and management. They were on the front lines and there wasn't a thing they could do.

TedTurner: Can you book me a room at the Stratosphere for $19.95 a night? For that amount, I wouldn't mind being at the "wrong end" of the strip!

"Pampered people"..ok I see a large chip on a shoulder..So what if some people are pampered...so what if they arent....people deserve to get what they pay for no matter what kind of money they pay for it with..whether they worked their ass off to get it or through inheritance..Good gosh , who would ever think of such....

One has to be very naive to believe that this was just 3-day power failure caused by a simple power surge.

Just imagine how much money the robbers run away with. The Ballagio is one the biggest hotels in Vegas having one of the biggest vaults in town too.

Another Update:

LAS VEGAS -- The lights were back on Wednesday morning at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

But the resort will remain closed to the public until 5 p.m. Wednesday evening when it reopens for business on the Las Vegas Strip.

Workers are busy testing complicated computerized security and sensor equipment, and getting the posh 3,000-room resort ready.

The power was out since a main electricity feed blew about 2 a.m. Sunday.

Still no official word what caused the outage -- but officials say they are convinced it was not criminal or terrorism-related.

The hotel says it will probably be Thursday before gourmet restaurants and the art gallery can reopen.

It might also be Thursday before performances of the Cirque du Soleil show "O" can resume.

Employees are being asked to contact their supervisors about when they should return to work.

With almost 100% certainty, I can guarantee that this was not the result of a robbery or attempted robbery. While it is fun to speculate on a "Ocean's 11" type heist, the fact is that MGM is a public company and it's made certain public statements that would leave its officers and directors in some real hot water with the SEC if they hid the truth. (Not to mention the numerous shareholder lawsuits they'd be subject to.)

As hard as it is to believe, this really may just be one of those things that no one planned for.

I'm sorry that some guests were bothered by having to relocate to another hotel when their precious Bellagio went dark. However, in the scope of life, this doesn't seem like a big deal. People weren't hurt, vacations weren't ruined (in fact the story of what happened could be the hit of your vacation).

I was one of the guests of the Las Vegas Hilton when it burned in the early '80s. When you spend the night after watching people die and not knowing where others in your party are and if they are okay you feel little sympathy for problems as minor as the Bellagio.

I'm with you, kkj. That must have been a terrifying experience.

But please remember that on this site, Bellagio is revered, so that any relatively minor thing is viewed as catastrophic.

Leona,
Who made any type of comment on this board that would give you reason to suggest that anyone viewed this as a catastrophe? I think you are overstating the magnitude of the view of this situation.

Boy, I think some of you are being a little hard on the people that were staying there. Wouldn't you be perterbed and annoyed if you had spent months planning a vacation to Las Vegas, researching the best hotel for you, getting the best room rate, scheduling the best itinerary and all of a sudden you wake up and have to evacuate your hotel and move somewhere else? I mean, I know it's not the end of the world and these things happen, but I don't think anyone can claim that they WOULDN'T be upset about this. I don't think it has anything to do with entitlement or being "pampered".

Perturbed, yes. But expecting that paying a hefty room rate somehow entitles you to protection from an unforseen disaster is ludicrous. Welcome to the real world for a change.

We use the words "disaster" and "catastrophe" too easily to describe an event where no one lost their life. We build montrously large buildings that are incredibly complex and expect nothing to go wrong. Goodness, the place has a theater filled with water that has platforms that rise and fall. Yes, we are too pampered if we can't go with the flow and realize that sometimes things can go wrong.

clarkgriswold I have a question for you. Do you think it would be big news if a Motel 6 in a remote corner of LV lost power for 3 days?
Why is it big news that Bellagio lost power?
I'm curious what your answer will be.

If the Motel 6 lost power, tv stations would interview the guests and they'd be saying "oh well, guess I gotta move to another motel...these things happen, the power went out what can you do?" and the TV station would go "ho hum" and not feature it on the news.

When it's the Bellagio, and you have people screaming "Oh my god the wedding cake melted and NOTHING ever goes wrong in my life, NOTHING!"...then it becomes fodder for the Tv reports.