Issue 23
February 14 - 20, 2001
Volume 1
page 1

This Issue

Gaming News
New Era For MGM Theme Park

Sun International Wants Hawaii Casino Resort

Masque Publishing Offers Top Slot Machine Computer Games

Hong Kong Jockey Club Fears Competition From The Internet

Showboat A/C Closes It's Bowling Center

London Club International Up For Sale

Mohegan Sun to Donate Bingo Equipment

SunCruz Founder Murdered

Columns
Friedman's Designing Casinos to Dominate Work
Must-Read For Every Casino Exec

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New Era For MGM Theme Park
By JEFF SIMPSON, GAMING WIRE

LAS VEGAS, NV - Less Disneyland, more MGM Studios, that's the mantra for recent changes at the Grand Adventures theme park behind the MGM Grand. Starting with its name, the amusement park has been renamed The Park at MGM Grand.

Many of the amusement park's rides have or will soon be sold, and the park's theaters are expected to begin hosting movie premieres, concerts and television shows.

Closed to the public for the autumn and winter, the theme park will not reopen this spring.

Instead it will only be marketed to groups of 50 to 7,000 people, and general admission tickets for individuals or smaller groups will no longer be sold.

"As the market has evolved, there is greater value for the land, and for the company, than having a theme park," MGM Mirage Vice President Alan Feldman said February 8.

The newly named park will add new team-building attractions, such as rock-climbing walls and obstacle courses designed to build corporate staff cohesion. Property officials declined to disclose the price of the new additions.

Three of the park's rides will remain: the 250-foot-high Gateway Arch-shaped Sky-Screamer swing ride; the 69-foot-high, 30 mile-per hour Lightning Bolt roller coaster, and the Parisian Taxi bumper car ride.

Grand Adventures was one of the MGM Grand's weakest profit generators, and company executives have been increasingly willing to admit its shortcomings.

MGM Mirage Chairman Terry Lanni jokingly referred to the theme park at a June press conference, as "our small theme park, which is likely to get smaller. ..."

Three months later, MGM Mirage was seeking partners to redevelop the 18.8-acre parcel. "To be competitive as a theme park it needed to be much, much more than it was," a source said in September. "There's no desire to keep the theme park unless they can find some way to make it more profitable."

When it opened in late 1993, Grand Adventures was a centerpiece of Las Vegas' short-lived flirtation with becoming a family friendly image.


Sun International Wants Hawaii Casino Resort
HONOLULU, HI - Butch Kerzner, president of Sun International, spoken with key legislators February 7 about his plans for an $800 million casino resort at Ko Olina.

Of the fifty states, only in Utah, Tennessee, and Hawaii have no legalized gambling; but Kerzner is asking the Hawaii Legislature to allow gambling on a single piece of property in return for casino taxes and fees that could be used for college scholarships.

Kerzner thinks the combination of a world-class resort and casino would be a natural in Hawaii. "There is a real opportunity to develop a product that will catch the Japanese market," says Kerzner.

In December 2000, Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano traveled to see Sun International's elaborate Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas, which Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham says should be credited with regenerating the once declining tourism and hotel sector.

Gambling critics argue that saying "aloha" to any casino gambling in Hawaii would just be a step in legalizing gambling across the state and bringing in organized crime and problem gambling.

House Speaker Calvin Say doubts whether Kerzner can persuade the Legislature. "I'm not sure if there is the critical mass," he says.

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