Explore some of the most imaginitive plans for Las Vegas that were never built. Simply click the image to toggle between what the Strip looks like today, and how it could have looked had each resort been given the go ahead.
Desert Kingdom
Desert Kingdom should be one of the most iconic hotel resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, and at the time, would have revolutionised Sin City.
Scheduled to open in 1997, ITT Sheraton were prepared to spend $750 million to construct this excessive theme park, hotel and casino resort and lay claim to a series of firsts for Sin City, including a riverboat ride which flowed beneath the casino and onto a spectacular lagoon for a night-time water show.
It wasn’t to be though, and the plans were ditched soon after the hotel chain bought Caesars Palace and instead, invested heavily in the existing Vegas resort.
Today, the Wynn and Encore resorts overlook the vast stretch of land where Desert Kingdom would have stood.
Features
3,500 hotel rooms
135,000 sq ft casino floor space
Nine restaurants | Riverboat ride
The Titanic
The Titanic Hotel is one of the more renowned proposals which never made it onto the Strip.
The $1.2 billion project was to include both the ‘unsinkable’ ship and the iceberg that sank it, with 1,200 hotel rooms located in the latter.
At 400ft long, the ship was going to be a huge new attraction for Las Vegas Boulevard, with a casino, hotel, theatre, amusement park and zoo all planned for the resort.
A nightclub named ‘The Ice Breaker’ was also proposed for the resort in 1999, before it sank without a trace.
Features
1,200 hotel rooms
400ft long replica ship and iceberg
Nightclub named "The Icebreaker" | Amusement Park | Zoo | Theatre | Casino
London Resort & Casino
Ever wanted to see Paris, Venice, New York, Lake Como or Ancient Rome?
You can visit them all with a short stay in Vegas, and once upon a time you might have also heard the gongs of Big Ben resounding around the Strip from the London Resort & Casino.
The resort was to include a 535ft replica of the Houses of Parliament, alongside Tower Bridge and an observation wheel inspired by the London Eye.
While the idea of a London Resort has been revisited many times over the years, we’re yet to see a changing of the guard in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
Features
Over 2,000 hotel rooms
90,000 sq ft casino floor space
550,000 sq ft retail and restaurant space replicating British neighbourhoods
Houses of Parliament and Big Ben replica towers | London Eye-inspired observation wheel
Xanadu
Xanadu would have been the resort that changed everything.
First proposed in the 1970s, long before today’s glittering superstructures dominated the Vegas skyline, this $150 million resort would have been one of the biggest on the Strip.
Its downfall was to be much less glamorous. The city’s sewer lines were unable to cope with the project at the time and so the plans were, rather aptly, flushed.
The Excalibur Hotel & Casino now occupies the plot of land left vacant by Xanadu, with the remarkably similar Luxor Hotel & Casino just next door.
Features
1,700 hotel rooms
Casino | Convention centre | Parking garage (a first for Las Vegas) | Pyramid design with large central atrium | Showroom | Gym and tennis courts
