The Sphere

On Saturday, December 6th, we slept in and took our time leaving the hotel.  It was about 10:00 a.m. when we boarded the Monorail, and it was a short trip to the Linq/Harrah's Station.  We walked through the Linq Promenade, but it was still too early to eat so we kept going across the street to Caesar's Palace.  We walked though the Gallery to look at the shops and displays for about an hour.  We could see Harrah's across the street that was advertising a show with Donny Osmond.  I wanted to see if we could buy tickets so we went to the theater, but it looked like he was sold out or not performing until January.  We decided to eat lunch at Five Guys before going to the Venetian.  As we were walking to the Venetian a barely clad tall woman walked past me and slapped my rear.  It was a little embarrassing, so I avoided walking too close to those women.  We also didn't care for the strong and steady smell of pot everywhere we went.  After getting into the Venetian and walking the Grand Canal Shoppes we couldn't find a way to the Convention Center to take us to the Sphere.  We had to exit out the front and walk around the Venetian Resort to get to the Sphere, but we had still had 15 minutes to spare when we arrived.  We got into our seats, and we noticed that the round ceiling was not smooth but had different heights.  There were also large speakers hanging near the front, and we wondered how that would look when the movie started.  We were amazed to see that the movie was clear and smooth when it began with no sign of the speakers.  The movie was great, and when the tornado scene was done, accompanied by a pretty forceful wind, rumbling sound effects and tissue paper leaves swirling around the auditorium, the audience erupted into applause.  We were also able to retrieve two foam apples that fell from the ceiling during the tin man scene.  The apples had the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere printed on them, and people commented how lucky we were to get them.  After watching the movie we decided to return to our hotel.  We rested for a bit, and then I suggested that we go to the Fremont Street Experience.  We took the Mazda and drove to a parking lot at the Encore Hotel first to take photos of the Sphere at night.  Then we drove to Fremont Street and found a parking lot about a block away.  I really wanted Wendy to see the lights which were amazing, but I didn't realize how wild it would be.  It was a Saturday night and the street was packed with people.  There were three different live bands playing loud rock music and the smell of marijuana was very strong.  We watched as people rode a zipline from one end to the other.  We were hoping to eat a nice steak dinner at Tony Roma's but the line stretched far into the casino, so we decided on a slice of pizza and a quick getaway.