Ryan Trahan stepped off a near-empty flight from Montana and walked straight into a Las Vegas terminal full of slot machines, hiking shoes still on his feet from the day before at Yellowstone. That whiplash is the whole point. This is day six of a ten-stop mission to find America’s single best tourist attraction, and the shift from bison-blocked roads and geysers to neon, fried food, and a 2.3-billion-dollar sphere is exactly the kind of tonal chaos that makes this countdown worth following.
Fish and chips with the king of Vegas
The first stop was Gordon Ramsay Fish and Chips on the Strip, a restaurant Trahan had flagged as one of the most visited on the entire stretch. No reservation needed. The food arrived looking, in his words, ‘absolutely incredible,’ and he and his travel companion Haley noted they were already deep into what he called ‘a diabolical run of eating fried food.’ A Gordon Ramsay cardboard cutout greeted them near the entrance, and Trahan treated it with full sincerity. After lunch, a digestion walk through a souvenir shop yielded keychains and what he described as ‘comically undersized memorabilia.’
From there, the pair made their way to the Sphere. The structure is, by any measure, a lot: the largest LED screen on Earth, built for 2.3 billion dollars, seating 17,600 people. The public consensus heading in was that it is ‘appropriately rated,’ a designation Trahan confirmed by reading aloud a selection of one-star reviews about terrifying stair angles and motion sickness before balancing them with a five-star entry praising the tornado, falling apples, and flying monkeys of The Wizard of Oz experience inside. The screening delivered on every count. Wind blew through the theater during the storm scene, leaves flew around the seats, and the speakers were loud enough that Trahan noted it ‘literally feels like you’re on the verge of death.’ He tried to catch leaves mid-air and failed. Haley admitted the tornado genuinely scared her. They left with a Wizard of Oz apple from the gift area, which went straight into the trip’s keepsake box.
Medieval dinner and a very windy fountain
The evening belonged to the Tournament of Kings at the Excalibur. The format is simple and committed: everyone gets the same meal (chicken, potato, corn, and bread), everyone is seated under a country banner, and everyone cheers for their knight. Trahan and Haley were assigned Hungary. There is no menu, no substitutions, and no ironic distance available once the jousting starts. Haley summed it up afterward: ‘Once they actually do the jousting and the sword fighting, genuinely impressive. Had me laughing from shock and surprise.’ Their king lost.
The night ended at the Bellagio Fountain, or was supposed to. High winds canceled the show twice during the 15-minute windows they waited. They watched other people react instead.
Back at the Paris Hotel, with a view of the Eiffel Tower and the Bellagio down below, the scoring happened. On their three-category rubric of experience, scenery, and magic, Trahan and Haley each called out their numbers on a countdown. Experience: both landed on 7. Scenery: both landed on 5. Magic: both landed on 4. Total: 16 out of a possible 30, placing Las Vegas at number six in the overall countdown.
The bucket list book, open to a page decorated with baseballs
Haley’s hand-drawn Las Vegas page in the keepsake book sits decorated not with Las Vegas stickers, which she could not find, but with baseballs. They stand in for the Sphere.
Las Vegas sits sixth with four stops still to come. Trahan noted the competition ahead is ‘so awesome,’ and that Las Vegas, despite its spectacle, could not quite close the gap on experience alone. The Sphere, he said, was ‘probably the coolest experience so far’ outside of Hamilton in New York City. The scenery score told the honest story: iconic, but, as he put it, ‘not necessarily real.’
