Your Complete Guide to Downtown Las Vegas

09.04.2024 - 15:39 / travelpulse.com / North America

Did you know the City of Las Vegas is not the Las Vegas Strip? For that, you would have to go to the unincorporated City of Paradise.

The City of Las Vegas, which is centered in Downtown Las Vegas, has its own themes, schemes and reasons for being that have little to do with the Strip but a lot to do with weird, wonderful and wild ways to have fun while on a Las Vegas vacation.

For starters, life is less expensive downtown. For seconds, the history to be found there is older than the Strip—make that twice as older than what rose along the desert byway that became Las Vegas Boulevard sometime in the mid-20th century. The games are looser, the come-ons are crazier and the walkways are less crowded—but likely as colorful—as the crushed sidewalks of the Las Vegas Strip. Better yet, if you look hard enough you can find free parking and the mountains and nearby off-Strip attractions, whether urban or natural, are close by.

Thus, for some visitors, a stay in Downtown Las Vegas is a stay that is manageable when frenzy is not the order of the day. For those with a sense of humor or in search of quirkiness, hubbing in Downtown Las Vegas could be just the right combo of odd and odds.

Filling this order, the City of Las Vegas declared “Down for Anything” the new tagline to describe a spot that is no longer your great grandfather’s favorite getaway.

“Downtown Las Vegas is a place of unlimited potential, and a place where you are not defined by age, education and income, but instead, by how you see the world,” said city mayor, Carolyn Goodman, adding “Downtown Las Vegas is authentic, historic, a little bit edgy, and we wouldn’t have it any other way."

Downtown Las Vegas in front of Binion's. (Photo Credit: Lark Gould)

New attractions are bringing in the crowds, if only for happenings that cannot be found elsewhere. This includes Slotzilla, the free-flowing zip line ride that runs under the four-block light show canopy that is the Fremont Street Experience. Some 1,400 thrill-seekers climb the 12-story slot machine-themed platform each day to zoom 800 to 1700 feet with four other brave souls at speeds of up to 45 mph above the meandering crowds.

Other attractions are a bit more subtle. They include some wacky museums: The Neon Museum, The Mob Museum and, a bit farther afield, The Haunted Museum – created by Zak Bagans of Ghost Adventures fame.

The Neon Museum, often called the Neon Boneyard, is where all glorious Vegas signage goes to die. But does anything ever really die in Las Vegas? Many of the flashing marquees of yesteryear are alive and well in this neon maze that is best visited at night and makes for a fantastic event backdrop. Or visitors can take the free drive through Vegas neon history along Las Vegas Boulevard