Trying Again on Millennium

LAS VEGAS —  Odds are, this New Year’s Eve celebration will be the best of the century in this party town.

That won’t be hard, given how last year’s over-hyped Millennium Bang busted.

“People around the world look to Las Vegas for entertainment, and perhaps it was noticeable last year when we did nothing,” said Kirk Hendrix, president of Las Vegas Events, a nonprofit organization that will stage this year’s activities.

“But all those other cities jumped the gun last year,” he said, invoking the argument that the new century really begins with 2001 because 2000 is really the last year of the old century. “This is the real millennium celebration, and this year we’re going to entertain people in a spectacular way.”

Just how remains undecided, but among the options are a $500,000 pyrotechnics spectacle blasting off from atop hotels up and down the 3-mile-long Strip.

There are plans to set off fireworks beneath downtown’s Fremont Street illuminated canopy, something akin to a fiery waterfall.

Whatever happens will surely eclipse last year’s party, which was widely viewed as a dud.

Though a select group of high-rollers enjoyed lavish parties and concerts last year, the masses who gathered on the Strip had only one special attraction: a light show and a confetti drop from the Strip’s half-size Eiffel Tower, suggesting the image of an uncorked champagne bottle.

And that event grew tragically somber virtually at the stroke of midnight when a spectator who had climbed atop a 30-foot power pole was electrocuted and fell to his death as thousands watched.

Put off by Y2K fears and astronomical room rates that dropped precipitously only at the last minute, people stayed away in droves. Attendance, at 300,000, was well below the normal New Year’s sellout crowd of half a million.

This year, hotels are returning to normal holiday rates. Few one-night headliners are booked, reflecting the disappointing ticket sales from last year. Some hotels are still licking their wounds after paying exorbitant entertainers’ fees and, at the last minute, having to fill empty concert seats with complimentary tickets.

“We found that people don’t necessarily want to be locked into a concert or a sit-down event on New Year’s Eve,” said Gordon Absher, spokesman for Mandalay Bay, which hosted Bette Midler.

This year Mandalay Bay will present Journey and REO Speedwagon at its events center on Dec. 30--but the huge arena will remain dark on New Year’s Eve.

Some locals complain that the Strip resorts should do more for the town on New Year’s Eve--and remember how, four years ago, the old Hacienda hotel-casino was imploded precisely at 9 p.m. (midnight on the East Coast, for the sake of live television coverage). The boast that year: Times Square can drop its ball; out here we blow up hotels.

But there aren’t enough old hotels in town to implode one every year, and casinos have other business: entertaining high-rollers with free rooms and extravagant parties, said Alan Feldman, vice president of MGM Mirage.

“New Year’s Eve is the single biggest night of the year for casinos,” he said. And the richest gamblers come to town.

For the city, however, grabbing the imagination of a worldwide television audience is one of the goals of this year’s festivities, said planner Hendrix. “We hope to create something on such a massive scale this year, we’ll accomplish three goals,” he said.

“We’ll get international media attention, which will promote Las Vegas. Secondly, we’ll entertain the tourists who do come to town. And third, if we do this as grand as we would like, even our local citizens will be able to see it from their homes.”