While online casino’s popularity continues to rise steadily, land-based casinos are thriving globally too. Offering glamour and epitomising the high life, casinos remain exhilarating and thrilling places to spend your time and, if you have it, your money. As Vegas and Macau fight it out to be high roller heaven, venues are going all out to haul in that whale. Casinos are being kitted out in ever more mind blowing styles and themes. The majority of super casinos all boast top end bars and nightclubs, five star restaurants, hotels, pools and even designer shopping centres. Of course, this is all in place to get people through the door and into the casino itself where visitors can expect every gambler’s want to be satisfied. Here, we’ve listed 5 of the biggest bling casinos from around the world.
The Venetian Casino, Macau
Complete with over 3,000 gaming machines and 870 card tables, the stunning Venetian in Macau is a jaw dropping epic mega centre of elite gaming. Themed on the streets and canals of Venice, the resort boasts almost thirty bars, four pools as well as three huge shopping centres. The casino itself has four themed gaming rooms and an entertainment venue for good measure. The Venetian is also the largest single structure hotel building in Asia, and the world’s sixth largest building in square feet as well making it the largest casino in the world. A younger – but bigger – sister site to the original in Vegas, this advert for excess, has become a tourist attraction in its own right and evolved from being a mere casino resort.
Monte Carlo Casino, Monaco
Staring out over the Mediterranean, this impressive casino, has a historical and cultural class to it that 50’s Vegas or modern Macau, for all their glare and glitz, simply cannot match. Dating back to 1863, the interior is famed for its Bohemian chandeliers and columned atrium, leading directly into the famous opera house. More Bond than Elvis, Monte Carlo is as classy on the inside as you would expect it to be but there is still fun to be had. With the largest collection of slot machines in Europe, and the highest of high end poker imaginable, this really is the casino daddy.
City Of Dreams Casino, Macau
Close to the Venetian, the City of Dreams stands at 420,000 sq feet and, unlike its rival, is marketed towards singles and couples. It features a contemporary design and abstract décor aimed the youthful generation. It also boasts an insane amount of gaming machines (420,000) and poker tables (520). Naturally, the resort also has restaurants and bars a-plenty, all running for 24 hours at full throttle to satisfy China’s new rich elite class, loaded with new money. Brash, loud and bright, from the boutique laced Boulevard to the heavy metal lobby of the Hard Rock café, the Casino City of Dreams is intoxicating in all its florescent glory.
CityCenter Las Vegas
Built at a whopping construction cost of £5.8 billion, the CityCenter is a jaw dropping, all-American response to the new money swagger of Macau. True to form, the mega casino resort is an illuminated sight to behold. Not content with offering a mere 5,900 hotel rooms, CityCenter’s owners MGM Resorts International also threw in 2,400 high-end condos, to boot. Of course, no self-respecting casino would dare of opening up without an upscale shopping centre, lined with luxury shops and CityCenter is no different. It is a whole centre to itself, effectively a city within a city. With seven dedicated towers – Aria is where you’ll find the casino – there would, hypothetically, be no reason to go beyond their own constructed borders. The casino itself, is not one for looking back either. There’s no retro theme or futuristic new age MTV style abstract designs either. It’s all polished metal and glass, and revels in its modernity. The slots floor is flooded with engaging, high-payout machines that are constantly being updated.
Noise and lights got too much for you? Head back to the relative serenity of your hotel, lay back, fire up your mobile and get some more chilled out gaming in.
Studio City Casino, Macau
The newest addition to our list sees yet another visit to Macau where Australian tycoon James Packer opened up his £2.3 billion mega casino in October 2015. Recruited at great expense, Leo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro stared in the Martin Scorsese’s directed launch advert, The Audition (the most expensive ever), for which all three were paid a reported $12 million each.
The swaggering 1,600 room resort, which also boasts lagoon swimming pools in the ‘Riverscape’ water world, a 130 metre high big wheel nestled between the two casino towers and a 4D Batman simulator, really is a rich person’s playground.
The Casino’s insides are an art-deco inspired treat with typically marbled flooring. While it does play host to a crazy amount of slot machines and poker tables, it does not have any VIP baccarat lounges, focusing instead on mass market appeal and the casual gamblers that tourism brings, which is why it describes itself as the ultimate entertainment complex in the gambling destination.