As some of you may know, I’ve been taking partner acrobatics classes at a circus school for a bit over a year now and I’ve gotten really into it. My acro partner, Felix, and I wanted to go to Vegas to see high quality circus shows–and we did! This is going to be a long post because it was an action-packed trip. 

Disclaimer, I wrote this on the plane. It has many typos and misspellings of Cirque du Soleil. I don’t feel like fixing it. 

On Friday I took the day off work and boarded a plane to Vegas. Upon arriving, we rented a car and drove to Red Rock Canyon which is right outside of Vegas. This park is appropriately named because it has some great rocks that are very red. I learned from my road trip last year that the desert is awesome and it did not disappoint. We took the scenic drive around the park and stopped at a few lookouts that seemed cool. 

We did a hike called Ice Box Canyon because I heard that it was cool (temperature wise). I’d say this was just an ok hike. I thought we’d be in the shade of the canyon but the sun was setting right between the mountains we were hiking between so it took a long time to get to the shade. We saw a bunch of people hiking out with rock climbing gear and saw some people repelling down the sides of the mountains. On the way out, there was an old guy standing by the trail exit who asked us if we’d seen anything interesting. This turned out to be a trap because he then talked to us for like 10 minutes about things he’d seen and gave us random advice about how we should write things down for our grandkids. Weird. 

We headed back into the city in a bit of a rush because we had to catch our first circus show: O by Cirque du Soleil. We weren’t allowed to take pictures during the show so here is the trailer for O if you want to have a better idea what I’m talking about through this next paragraph. 

The show is called O because that’s the French word for water and the show is water themed. It’s at the Bellagio hotel and has a dedicated theater that was designed just for this show. The theater itself was soooo cool. The stage has a huge pool and there are all these mechanical parts set up so a floor can rise up from the pool and various circus apparatuses can be brought in on the ceiling. I was really impressed with just the grand spectacle of this show. There were a bunch of scenes where there was so much stuff going on I wasn’t sure what to look at and honestly I wish they had toned it down a little because I wanted to be able to take it all in. The two best acts of the show were one where acrobats were swinging from this cool pirate ship apparatus and another where people were launched off swings and did a bunch of flips before diving into the pool (see trailer for examples). These acts are particularly cool because they can only happen in this this theater. The show was great except that there was this clown act that appeared twice during the show and it was not funny and so boring. It was frustrating that during many parts of the show they had so much going on at once but during the clown acts there was nothing else so I HAD to watch the boring clowns. Another issue I had with this show is that is had some really strange elements that seemed to be trying to tell a story but it was absolutely impossible to tell what that story was. At the very beginning of the show, there was a faceless legless torso suspended above the pool–it was pretty creepy. I thought something would happen to explain the presence of the torso but it never did. It was so weird but apparently meaningless. Some characters descended from the ceiling while riding carousel horses–also never explained. But the horses turned out to be boats when they touched the water so I’ll forgive them for that. Besides the clowns, the show was great and I recommend it. 

The next show we went to was Rupaul’s Drag Race Live. I’m a big fan of drag race so I was excited to see this show even though I thought it would probably be pretty cheesy. It turned out to be absolutely fantastic. They had a group of five queens competing and apparently the cast rotates each night. On the night we went, one of my favorite queens, Bosco, was there and it was fantastic to see her live. They did a bit of a recreation of a drag race episode where they did some challenges–all that were dancing and performance based–and the performances were all really good. They had great outfits and well-choreographed numbers and a team of backup dancers who really made the show. The host of the show was a drag queen who was genuinely so funny and had great audience interaction. She also did at least a dozen costume changes throughout the night. I was so entertained throughout this whole show–it was great and way better than I was expecting. 

The next day we drove about an hour out of the city to get to Valley of Fire State Park. This park was an excellent desert experience. First we stopped at a spot called the beehive which had porous-looking red rocks that were climbable. I knew this would freak my mom out.  

Next we stopped at some petrified wood. These were not very exciting. The park had a few logs of petrified wood and had put fences around them, making it feel like a weird sad zoo. Felix wasn’t impressed and I’ve been to Petrified Forest National Park so I was particularly not impressed. 

As we continued down the park’s scenic drive road, the landscape drastically changed from red rocks to these pastel colored rocks with gorgeous swirls. We did a hike called “Pastel Canyon” that took us through these rocks and it was so beautiful. We also tried to get some acro pics with the rocs to varying levels of success. 

Our hike looped around, taking us out of the pastel canyon and into a different area that contained a spot called the “Fire Wave”. This spot is a big park attraction and there were a lot more people around here. It was nice but I was less impressed because we thought the pastel canyon was better. Also got some acro photos here. 

We stopped at another viewpoint where we did more acro. Then saw some petroglyphs–which were fine, and an arch that I was so unimpressed by I’m not going to bother including a picture of it.

We headed back to the city to go to our next show: Ka by Cirque de Solei. Once again, I couldn’t take pictures during this show so here is the trailer so you’ll know what I’m talking about. This was Felix’s favorite show so he was particularly excited about. This show, unlike O, had a relatively clear plot. We were late and missed the first act but I could tell it was about a well-to-do (maybe royal) family who rejected a guy who invented gunpowder and he kept attacking them. Like O, this show had a dedicated theater that was specialized for the show and thus was very cool. There were a bunch of treehouse-like towers that extended into the audience and there was a stage that could move around and rotate vertically. The stage was flat for some of the show, then it slanted, and at some points it was completely vertical and the cast was climbing up it. There was some clowning in this show but it was better than in O, still not my favorite thing to watch. There was one scene that I loved where the main character fell into a jungle and there were acrobats swinging above the audience and huge bugs crawling around. Once again, I wish I had some pictures of this but photos weren’t allowed. Ka was good but my critique of it is the opposite of mine for O. There was a lot of time dedicated to advancing the plot and I wanted more circus stuff. Still quite good. 

The next show we went to was called “Atomic Saloon” and it’s a Spiegleworld show–which is a competitor to Cirque de Solei I guess. This show was in a small venue and it’s intended for adults, as opposed to the Cirque shows that are family friendly. This show was not great. The plot was that a lady, the show host, owned a brothel in the wild west and she made so many sexual jokes that were not funny at all. The circus acts were decent but were so small scale compared to the Cirque de Solei acts. The one notable act was that there was a hand balancer who brought out a little dog that sat on him while he did handstands. There were also some people who did Irish step dancing and that was unique. Overall I would not recommend you see this show. 

The next day we stayed in the city during the day to do some things on the strip. Oh I forgot to mention that we were staying at the Venetian because Felix got a good deal on a room. It was quite fancy. 

We had brunch at a restaurant at the Venetian and I ate a 90-dollar steak. It was quite good and tender but I don’t think it was radically better than a 50-dollar steak. 

We did a bit of walking around the shops of the Venetian, Ceasar’s Palace, and the Bellagio. Everything was crazy expensive. 

Then we went to the New York New York hotel because it had a rollercoaster that I wanted to ride. It was a pretty good roller coaster and we rode it twice. 

We had a bit of time to kill before the next show so we went to the shark reef aquarium at Mandalay Bay. It was a pretty small aquarium but had some good sharks. There were black tip reef sharks, bonnethead hammerhead sharks, zebra sharks, and saw sharks. 

The next show we went to was the Tournament of Kings at the Excalibur hotel. Prior to this trip, I watched a video of some youtubers who stayed at every hotel on the Vegas strip and this show was one of their favorite activities. After watching the show, I’ve concluded that those youtubers didn’t watch enough Vegas shows because it was not good in comparison to everything else we saw. I guess it’s a lot less expensive than the other shows we saw. This is a medieval times-like show with knights, sword fights, and jousting. You root for a character based on the area you sit in. All the knights are representing countries like France and Norway and then there’s one section called Dragon and that section gets to root for the bad guy. The main reason I wanted to go to this show was because I wanted to root for the Dragon and that was the most enjoyable part of the show. I really liked cheering for the bad guy and booing everybody else. Our guy shot fire and was pretty awesome. Dinner was included with the show and they give everyone the same meal which is some small chicken-like bird, and some potatoes and other stuff. The chicken was actually really good. They make you eat it with your hands which I found to be a fun touch. But overall the knights stuff was not very exciting and there was a lot of filler so I don’t recommend you see this show. 

The next show we went to (I’m starting a lot of paragraphs with this sentence– we saw a lot of shows) was another Cirque de Solei show called Mystere. Here’s the trailer. Felix saw all these shows a while ago and this show was not on his “must see” list but it actually turned out to be fantastic. It had a clowning act that I actually thought was funny. It had a partner acro act, a flying trapeze act, and a Korean plank act (two people jumping on a seesaw-like thing and doing flips) that were all great. It was all these acts that we wanted to see and hadn’t seen in other shows. Basically just gave us everything we wanted. This show also had a lot of strange random elements, but unlike in O, I was more accepting of this unexplained weirdness because the theme is “mysterious”. For some reason, babies and pregnancy was a theme throughout the show. The show ended with a giant inflatable snail on stage. No explanation but I didn’t care–it was mysterious and that’s on theme. Felix and I were so impressed and pleased with this show that we bought some shirts for it after the show. 

We were supposed to fly home on Monday but we were having such a good time and wanted to see a few more shows so we decided to stay an extra day. I did a half day of work from my hotel room on Monday morning. In the afternoon, we checked out the pool at the Venetian and I got to feel fancy and sip a pina colada in a hot tub. 

Then we took a cab to the Strat hotel and went to the top of the tower to go on a roller coaster. It was the kind that just goes up and down which is my favorite because I love drops. It was so high up that you can’t really comprehend how high you are because everything around you is so far away. The roller coaster was great and we rode it twice. My mom would’ve had a heart attack. You could also do bungee jumping off the tower which I genuinely considered but I’d need more mental preparation to do that. 

We headed back to New York New York to see their resident Cirque de Solei show: Mad Apple. This show was taking a note from the Spiegleworld and was intended to be more sexy and for adults. It was New York-themed and had some acts that I hadn’t seen before but at this point we had some circus burn out so I wasn’t super impressed. There was an act where people did flips while dunking basketballs. They did a wheel of death act, which was decent. There was a wheel of death act in Ka and Felix was disappointed by it because they didn’t do any flips, just did some jump rope tricks on top of the cage. In the Mad Apple act they did one front tuck on the cage–so that’s a tiny bit better. 

I snuck a picture of this act to show you guys.

There was a stand up comic in the middle of the show and it was this lady who absolutely sucked. She didn’t have a set, just talked to audience members and tried to do some really unoriginal jokes. She’d ask where people were from and then say people from there were trash. She also tried to make sexual jokes that were uncreative. Some people think that just mentioning sex acts constitutes a joke but it does not. Atomic Saloon was very guilty of this. There was another comic who did some magic and he was pretty good. Overall this show was mid and I recommend you see a different Cirque de Solei show. 

After this show we got dinner at Gordan Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen just because it was close to our next show. I got a short rib and it was good. 

Finally, we went to our last show: Absinthe, which was a Spiegleworld show. We overhead some guy on the street say that this was his favorite show in all of Vegas so we thought it was worth seeing. At this point, Felix and I were very tired and had seen A LOT of circus so we were thinking we probably wouldn’t enjoy this show but it was actually fantastic. It was an adult show and made a lot of sexual jokes but they were actually funny. The show was in a bigger venue than Atomic Saloon but much smaller than the big Cirque shows and they did a really good job given the size of their venue. They had a hand balancer doing handstands on a big stack of chairs, a sword swallower, and MULTIPLE partner acro acts. As mentioned earlier, Felix and I do partner acro so this is what we love. They even had a people do partner acro on a unicycle. I loved this show and strongly recommend it. 

Tuesday morning we got ready to head back to Boston. We had a bit of time to kill so we went to Madam Tusseua’s(?) wax museum purely because it was close and convenient. It was not very exciting. It took me a while to get used to the wax figures and I kept thinking they were employees standing around the museum. I had to take a picture with Rupaul, obviously. They had some silly stuff throughout the museum like a seasaw shaped like a blunt in front of Snoop-dog’s figure, and a pool full of casino chips that felt like a sad adult ball pit. 

Then we went back to Boston. This weekend was action packed and amazing and I’m exhuasted.