The Coronavirus pandemic has led to some very unusual situations, and one of those is the 24/7 casinos across the country being closed for an extended period. While some casinos are beginning to open up as this post goes live, there are quite a few that are still closed.
Many questions came up from people as casinos started to close, such as do machines actually get shut off? How about lights? Are the rumors casinos can’t shut lights off because they don’t know if they’ll turn on true? (Hint: Not True.) Let’s take a look at a few videos that show what casinos have looked like closed.
The D Las Vegas is in the downtown area of Las Vegas along Fremont Street, and has a strong reputation as being a player-friendly facility that balances the classic Las Vegas with a more modern approach.
They recently had completed a remodel of their second floor, replacing a show space with a new sports book and opening up some more gambling area. They still have their classic Sigma Derby machine, believed to be the last active of that game time available anywhere. Vital Vegas got the exclusive look.
For a photographic view, here were a couple of pictures from the Plaza Las Vegas, showing what it looked like with machines turned off.
Closer to home for me is this piece from Nightline showing what Foxwoods looks like as part of a piece around precautions being implemented as the property looks towards reopening when the time is right. You can see some of their slots areas, as well as one of the table games setups they had showing the social distancing measures.
Finally, a Las Vegas institution, Caesars Palace is eerily dark when shut down. This local piece shows what they had to work through when shutting down the casino, given this wasn’t something that would have ever been planned to take place.
Right now most parts of the U.S. are going through a phased reopening, and with it, some casinos are now opening too. This may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but a closed casino (aside from going out of business) is indeed a possibility, one that many of us didn’t think was all that real, but became a reality in the midst of an unusual pandemic worldwide.
