The Vegas guy at the Aladdin

LAS VEGAS, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- Oh my God, they FIRED the harem girls at the Aladdin. Can you believe it?

I know people are a little nervous in Vegas right now, but one of the few things the Aladdin had going for it was those two lithe and lissome babes-were they harem girls or genies or just plain ole belly dancers?--who met you at the door, accompanied by some kind of scimitar-wielding turban-head in balloon pants.

Behind the scenes, people say the Aladdin management decided against emphasizing any Middle Eastern themes right now, but if they were going to start hacking away at Baghdad trappings, shouldn't they have started by eliminating those security guard uniforms, which look suspiciously like Saddam Hussein's army, complete with the little red beret? And as far as I can tell, the Sahara -- the ORIGINAL Middle-Eastern-themed hotel-and the Luxor -- the most ostentatious one -- have made absolutely no concessions to political correctness.

Actually, I blame the Brits. Ever since the Aladdin opened 15 months ago -- the last mega-resort to open on the Strip -- its British management has been just one step behind the curve. All its managers come from The London Club, which runs elegant European-style casinos in places like South Africa and Tahiti, and they just haven't been able to go that extra tacky larger-than-life mile that American tourists expect when a super-casino opens. If you're going to spend $1.4 billion, you need to be OVER THE TOP.

President Bill Timmins -- who is actually a Scot, not a Brit, let's not insult the man -- runs a smart joint, but it's managed with so much reserve and good taste that it doesn't really grab the imagination like its neighbors, Bellagio and Paris. (To give you some idea, the Aladdin even advertises that some of its rooms have views of the Bellagio dancing fountains and the Eiffel Tower replica at Paris.)

But then the Aladdin has always been a snakebitten property. Built in 1966 on the site of the Tally-Ho (a NON-gambling resort--who's idea was THAT?), it was best known for three events. First Elvis married Priscilla there in 1967 (and UPI reporter Myram Borders had the international scoop on that story). Then in the early 80s Wayne Newton bought the Aladdin and almost went broke when NBC News accused him of having Mafia ties, making it impossible for him to ever get a gaming license. (Wayne's libel suit against NBC dragged on for years. He proved that he had no Mafia ties, but a judge threw out a jury judgment, saying that NBC had acted "without malicious intent.")

The third event -- most symbolic of all -- made national news in the nineties when the Nevada Gaming Control Board physically shut down the casino at high noon, covering the tables and taping shut the slot machines, then locking the doors. The various Aladdin owners had been cited for so many violations and shady dealings that they became the last guys in Vegas history to be publicly humiliated like that. (If the same thing happened today, a state-appointed management team would be named, and the doors would remain open. Less bad publicity that way.)

In 1998 the current owners bought it from Japanese investor Ginji Yashuda, who had never been able to do anything with it, and later that year they demolished the building and started all over. The London Club has a 40 percent stake in the new casino, but the majority interest belongs to a New York developer named Jack Summer, whose background is in apartments and shopping centers. Oddly enough, the new owners decided to keep the Aladdin name and theme, even though the Vegas formula for success in the 90s was to eliminate all trace of the previous property. (Hence the Bellagio is built on the ruins of the Dunes, the Venetian on the corpse of the Sands, etc.)

Management made a statement about wanting to pay tribute to the history of the Aladdin name, but since that name was associated with bankruptcy, numerous management changes and the like -- oh, okay, it WAS where both Neil Diamond and Alanis Morrisette made their Vegas debuts -- it was a strange call.

And from the day the new improved Aladdin opened -- August 18, 2000 -- it was besieged by insider rumors. The opening had been rushed. The rooms weren't ready. The casino floor looked unfinished. They had spent too much money on an outdated theme so they were having trouble making their house "nut" (the minimum monthly profit needed to meet bond obligations). They had failed to build a "must-see" attraction, like the Bellagio fountains or the Mirage volcano. They were too generic. They were not aggressive enough.

Perhaps it's that British reserve, but the management was slow to react to the rumor mill, and Wall Street noticed. The bonds were not considered very good paper.

"Sometimes we would wonder if we hadn't built this place on an Indian burial ground," admits Fred Lewis, the casino's director of public relations, only half joking.

Actually the hiring of Lewis was one of the Aladdin's most savvy decisions. The ultimate Vegas publicity guy -- he was one of Howard Hughes' top lieutenants, handling public relations for all five of Hughes' casinos -- Lewis convinced the managers that they needed to start talking to the press every time a rumor popped up. "It's always better to talk," he says. "We had people reporting that we were about to have our doors closed by creditors or the gaming board. That was never a possibility, and we were never doing as badly as people wanted to believe."

In fact, the Aladdin not only pulled out of its public-relations tailspin, but during the past month they've done their best business so far. The reason, ironically, is that they filed Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy, and the judge is being very lenient with their repayment schedule. "Chapter 11 has been a godsend to us," says Lewis. "We can finally do all the things now that we wanted to do."

The Aladdin today is probably the best tourist bargain on the Strip. The advertised room rate sometimes dips as low as $59 -- unheard of for a billion-dollar resort -- and, although it doesn't win any awards for originality, it does have every amenity anyone could ever want. It's surrounded by the Desert Passage shopping area -- 130 shops, leased by the same people who run the popular Fashion Show Mall. They've got 24 restaurants, including the only "twin" of Commander's Palace, the Brennan family's venerable New Orleans institution where Emeril Lagasse did his training. There are two pools on an outdoor deck overlooking the Strip, a Vegas version of the famous Greenwich Village jazz club The Blue Note, and a lavish high-roller salon (called "The London Club," of course), which mingles the look of the south of France with the look of the south of California.

Most impressive of all is the 7,000-seat Theatre for the Performing Arts, which they haven't figured out what to do with yet. Currently they're featuring touring Broadway shows (Ann-Margret in "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas") and superstar one-nighters like Sting. ("The theater is outstanding," says Lewis. "Even Prince played here, and he's notoriously fussy when it comes to sound.") They hope to eventually create a production show. They even thought they had one earlier this year when a producer agreed to create a show called "Lumiere" around Carmen Electra. But that fell through when the producer said he couldn't raise the money, citing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as the reason.

Even with all the amenities, the Aladdin thinks of itself as "a boutique hotel." It may be the only 2,500-room boutique hotel in existence, but that's because it sits near the corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, which has the largest concentration of hotel rooms in the world (almost 50,000 in a four-square-block area).

"We got lucky," says Lewis, "because you have to remember that Bellagio, Paris and the MGM Grand weren't there when this purchase was made. Across the street from this site was the Dunes, which was fast losing its shirt. By the time we rebuilt it, it had become a great location. We came in right on the 50-yard line."

Unfortunately the opening date coincided with the beginning of an economic downturn, first for Vegas, then for the economy as a whole. And the Aladdin just didn't look SPECIAL enough to get the benefit of the usual crowd that will stay at whichever hotel is the newest on the Strip. For one thing, the strange shape of the land forced the architect to design it with a "stacked" layout, leaving it with beautiful soaring walls and impossibly high ceilings -- things that, according to conventional gambling wisdom, players do NOT want. Its drive-up entrance is not on the Strip itself but through a parking garage on Harmon Avenue. And it's so close to the fountains and plazas of the Paris next door that some people think it's part of the same hotel.

The casino floor is classic Vegas, dominated by a 35-foot-high Aladdin's lamp over one of the bars, but it's perhaps TOO classic Vegas. It looks like a typical glittery gilt-ridden casino floor, with the predictable slot machine banks and table games, a buffet (the Spice Market, which gets great reviews for its couscous, shish kebabs, crab legs and shrimp), and "the third busiest Starbucks in the nation." The designers did remarkably little in the way of theme decor. They did try a couple of extravagant illustrations from Aladdin's tales: a 130-foot wall of light with blooming flowers (from the story "Enchanted Garden") and a couple of giant winged horses at the entrance to the race and sports book (from "The Tale of the Ebony Horse").

But the other popular hangout near the casino floor -- besides Starbucks -- is a PF Chang's, one of the "Chinese bistros" that are found in several cities across the country. And perhaps that's part of the problem here. So much of what you see at the Aladdin -- the restaurants, the shops, the decor -- is some version of what you can see closer to home. There's no feeling of being transported to a wondrous land that exists only in Vegas.

So the jury is still out on the Aladdin. On the one hand they still look like they're struggling: they had to lay off 600 people and seek protection from bankruptcy after the terrorist attacks. On the other their occupancy rate is now 97 percent -- the whole world loves a bargain -- and you don't get this level of luxury for this price anywhere else on the Strip. Now if they could just bring back the harem girls. I might just wanna spend more time here.

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Email Joe Bob Briggs, "The Vegas Guy," at JoeBob@upi.com or visit Joe Bob's Web site at www.joebob-briggs.com. Snail-mail:

P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.

[SIDEBAR . . .]

ALADDIN RESORT CASINO

3667 Las Vegas Boulevard South

Theme: Arabian Moderne

Opened: 2000

Total investment: $1.4 billion

Known for: Spice Market Buffet, one of the best on the Strip

Marketing niche: Drive-ins from southern California and

Arizona, midwesterners who buy vacation packages through National

Airlines

Gambler's Intensity: Low

Cocktail speed: Rapido

Dealers: Professional, unhurried

Bosses: Friendly

Tables: 87

Slots: 2,800

Rooms: 2,567

Surrounding area: Heart of the Strip, with Paris and Bally's to the north, Bellagio and the Holiday Inn Boardwalk directly across the street, and the MGM Grand, Monte Carlo, New York-New York, Hard Rock and Alexis Park all within a half block. Across Harmon Avenue is the fashionable Polo Tower.

Web site: aladdincasino.com

Overall rating: 84

Joe Bob's bankroll: Up $40 after a short session of Pai Gow

Poker: total to date: +$15