LOST VEGAS: More Secret Relics Vegas Won’t Let You See

Posted on: July 24, 2025, 04:02h. 

Last updated on: July 26, 2025, 04:42h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Vegas Myths Busted.

What closes in Vegas sometimes stays in Vegas. Often, it’s more cost effective for Strip resorts to wall off and forget old attractions and rooms that have outlived their usefulness than conduct a full teardown and rebuild.

The Circus Circus tram, closed in 2004, still waits for passengers that will never board. (Image: Chris Holmes/X/@seventensuited)

Last year, Casino.org showed you “Hidden Relics of Sin City’s Past You Can Still See,” such as the remnants of “Star Trek: The Experience” and the Holiday Casino hidden in plain sight. We also showed you “Secret Relics Vegas Won’t Let You See,” including the old Excalibur dragon, Hunter S. Thompson’s original Mint hotel room, and a secret adult theater walled off in Circus Circus.

Here are two more examples of the latter, revealed recently by intrepid Las Vegas explorers…

A tram gets added to the Circus Circus Sky Shuttle’s original Manor line in May 1981. (Image: Vintage Las Vegas)

The Circus Circus Tram

The Circus Circus Sky Shuttle debuted in May 1981 as the Las Vegas Strip’s first automated transit system. Predating the Bally’s-MGM monorail by 14 years, it traveled 1,300 feet (3.6 football fields) between the casino entrance and Circus Circus Manor, the 800-room motor lodge built in 1980.

Propelled by cables powered by electricity, the 18-foot elevated tram was designed by VSL Corporation and cost $5.5 million to build. It featured two air-conditioned cars and was fully automated, though monitored by closed-circuit TV.

Another recent drone shot of the West Tower tram line . (Chris Holmes/X/@seventensuited)

In 1986, the shuttle was extended with a second arm connecting the casino to the new, 1,012-room West Tower, which was about 800 feet away.

The Sky Shuttle’s Manor tram stopped running in the mid-’90s, reflecting the property’s shift to more modern accommodations and the increasing cost for maintenance and repair. Its track was dismantled.

But the West Tower, which operated until 2004, is still intact. Some fantastic drone work from Chris Homes (@seventensuited on X) shows one of its tram cars still waiting in a long-deserted bay beside the West Tower for passengers that will never board.

A long-shuttered Imperial Palace room collects garbage in a closed-off section of the Linq. (Image: Instagram/@niteryders818)

Vintage Imperial Palace Rooms at Linq

When the Imperial Palace underwent a $223 million renovation to become the Quad (today, the Linq) from 2012-13, all of the old Imperial Palace rooms were assumed to be redone.

Last month, a man named Peter P. (@niteryders818 on Instagram) stumbled into an exception.

“So I used a service elevator, and look what I came into at the Linq,” he narrated in this video of a dilapidated hallway featuring peeling wallpaper and rooms locked with latches from the outside.

This closed-off hallway is on the first floor of a tower added in 1989 to the Imperial Palace. (Image: Instagram/@niteruders818)

One unlocked room he explored appeared to have been used for storage that has since become garbage (old pipes, electronic equipment and an old standee from O’Sheas, which closed in April 2012).

Some social media users shared the video claiming it showed rooms from the original Flamingo Capri. The Imperial Palace was built atop this 1959 motel from 1977-79. But this find wasn’t that historic. The very last of the Flamingo Capri rooms — contained in a three-story east wing added in 1974 — were demolished in 2011.

The rooms shown in the new video are from the first floor of the final tower added to the Imperial Palace in 1989. And we know because we asked former Imperial Palace president Ed Crispell.

We’re not in the habit of instructing readers how to trespass, but this photo shows the probable location of the video shoot. (Image: Facebook/@Michel Moya)

“That was the newest tower,” Crispell told Casino.org. “There are no coffered ceilings like in the older tower, and the old palm wallpaper is showing through the wallpaper I did the corridors with.

“Rooms like that were only in that tower, and they were serviced by a special elevator.”

Crispell said the Imperial Palace only rented those rooms out when there were no others available, due to their undesirable location. (They also sit right above where the Flamingo Wash was purposefully designed to flow through the property’s parking garage during rainstorms.)

And that’s apparently why Caesars decided to close the rooms off instead of renovating them.

“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.