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What is Neon Dice?
Far fewer travelers are arriving in the casino town by air this year. Harry Reid International Airport reported 30.2 million passengers through July—a 6.9% drop from the same period in 2025—with international traffic down nearly 9%.
The LVCVA and Harry Reid International Airport have not yet released their August reports. Truist Securities analyst Barry Jonas isn’t expecting a major rally.
Jonas projected on Friday (Sept. 18) in his Las Vegas room survey a soft third quarter. Jonas said Q3 rates for Las Vegas Strip casino rooms are “mostly lower,” with MGM Resorts rooms down 9% and Caesars Entertainment down 11%.
What is Neon Dice?
The barge functioned as an intimate stage graced by legendary performers, including Dionne Warwick, Blues Traveler, Matt Goss, and CeeLo Green. Its final performer was another Vegas icon rumored to be powered by hydraulics: Wayne Newton. His “Up Close & Personal” residency in 2019 was the lounge’s final act before the pandemic shut down the Strip for 90 days and closed Cleopatra’s Barge for good in March 2020.
The lounge enjoyed one last moment in the spotlight in 2022, however, when Adele—on the eve of the debut of her long-delayed residency at the Colosseum—tweeted a photo of herself goofing around nervously on its abandoned deck.
The Cleopatra statue itself was removed to storage in late 2023, as the space was transformed into today’s Caspian’s Caviar and Cocktails.
How to play Neon Dice
That’s the commonly told story of how the Naked City, a community of low-rent apartment buildings and houses in the shadow of the Stratosphere just north of the Las Vegas Strip, got its nickname.
Not a single newspaper reference to Naked City appears in a Las Vegas newspaper before a June 20, 1982, Las Vegas Review-Journal cover story headlined: “’Naked City’ a Las Vegas Battleground.”
In that story, Lt. John Conner reported investigating 10 killings in the neighborhood in 16 months. “Most of them appear to be drug-related,” the homicide chief said.
