Quash It: TI Pirate Show, Rio Show in the Sky and Excalibur Dragon Show Aren’t Coming Back
The amount of Vegas-related whimsical nonsense we see every day is at an all-time high. This installment: A flood of misinformation (what the kids refer to as “bullshit”) around the return of TI’s pirate show, Excalibur’s dragon show and Rio’s “Show in the Sky.” Despite what you might have heard, none of these things are coming back!
The reason false stories gain momentum is twofold: 1) Terrible journalism. 2) Influencers are thirsty. 3) A lack of reading comprehension. See? You barely noticed we said “twofold,” then gave three reasons! Please refer to #3.
Let’s leap headlong into the festering pile of bat guano, shall we?
The origin of today’s disinformation dipshittery comes from none other than Las Vegas Review-Journal hack and intellectual property thief Johnny Kleptometes.
In his story, Kleptometes amplifies the dreams and fantasies of an unhinged dreamer nobody’s ever heard of, Kelly Warnell.
Warnell regales Klepto with “visions” of reviving several attractions gone due to the demise of loss-leaders.
To his credit, Kleptometes says Warnell’s dreams are pure fancy, but content creators skipped that part and have gone into clickbait hyperdrive on their social channels, passing along the news like these attractions are coming back.
They aren’t.
The reason? While beloved, free attractions don’t generate revenue for casinos.
They are money sucks that casinos realized may bring bodies, but bodies looking for free things aren’t sticking around to gamble.
It’s just as true today as it was back in the day. Just ask the folks at Golden Gate, giving away free booze and free play every day, how many people pull out even a dollar to play or tip?
Warnell doesn’t have magical powers.
She says she’d been working on bringing back Excalibur’s dragon “for the first time in 22 years.”
Kleptometes says Warnell has been “working on this project for three decades.”
Rio had no clue about Warnell’s forays into fabrication, at all.
We are both proud and annoyed to be the self-appointed hero of the people (slogan: “If you aren’t elected, you can’t be impeached!”) for calling out the mountains of malarkey, pyramids of poppycock, hillsides of hogwash and cathedrals of charlatanry.
High school band alert!
We love the cheesy Las Vegas attractions of old as much as anybody, but that ship has sailed.
We have heard rumblings about TI talking to a major animatronics company in California about mermaids, but in our humble opinion, even if TI enhances its lagoon with animatronics, that’s not the “show” being touted. That’s robots, and the more the merrier.
Such stories are sort of dumb-funny until you realize sloppy and reckless journalism has a real-world impact. We love a good rumor, but rumors should be presented as such. As opposed to this cavalcade of content clusternuttery.
Crapola reported like it’s real can be dangerous, especially when it undermines public trust in news organizations rarely held accountable for enabling hucksters to, well, huck. See also the high-speed train, the A’s ballpark, Bally’s resort, the Las Vegas Spaceport, the list goes on and on.
Please make it stop. Watchdogging is very distracting when we are very busy with important work like getting robot massages, making up 69 jokes and losing our retirement funds at video poker, the way Mother Nature intended.
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