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Trop Watch: Oh Shit
Three weeks ago, Tropicana abruptly cut short Gladys Knights froshly announced residency at the Tropicana, weeks after giving her an extension.
Two weeks ago, Tropicana terminated their agreement with Nikki Beach brand to operate their lux daylife pool.
Two days ago, the executive tasked to turn the Tropicana disaster area into a hopping, four star service at three star prices with a hopping South Beach theme, Mr. Thomas McCartney, resigned his post as President and COO after just over a year on the job. The Vegas Gang was honored to have Tom McCartney at the final VPP last October... he was a great guest and gave me as much ribbing as I gave him.
Today, it was leaked that Brad Garrett is moving his self-titled comedy club to the MGM Grand in February 2012.
We're changing everything!
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Comments & Discussion:
"Persons with disabilities shall proceed to the nearest stair and await assistance."
There are some problems with this statement. "Shall" is synonymous with "will" and those two words may be used interchangeably according to the New Oxford Dictionary of English (1999 Oxford University Press). Therefore, the above statement becomes a declarative sentence instead of an imperative sentence (which as you know brings it out of second person and into third person).
Shit, the Trop can't get anything right.
In the legal world, "shall" is synonymous with "must". (FWIW) So in that sense, it is an imperative statement.
Excellent point but as an astute follower of several legal writing blogs, I can't help but refer to professor Wayne Schiess over at University of Texas at Austin who wrote a blog article on this very subject.
http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/wschiess/legalwriting/2005/05/shall-vs-will.html
Professor Schiess points out "shall" is the most misused word in the legal profession. He contends, "When 'shall' is used to describe a status, to describe future actions, or to seemingly impose an obligation on an inanimate object, it's being used incorrectly."
Damn, the lifetime pass to Brad Garrett's Comedy Club that they forgot to present to me was only good for 9 months anyway.
Well since he is only moving across the street he can do it in less than an hour.
This really is unfortunate. I only peeked inside the Trop but the place really does look fantastic after the renovations. It seems so much is falling apart. What's wrong?
No suprise, I think they are the changes we all would all make.
When I heard years ago about the trops future plans I hated to think they would implode it and build a new mega resort , but they didn't instead opting for a total makeover . I was little skepticle they could actually do a good job. But they did a decent job from all reviews I have read. But now it seems that instead of the building imploding the management structure and themes are imploding and I think this looks worse then the dust cloud a building could have made. A total trainwreck .
inb4 Caesars takeover!
I was thinking that they may be ripe for a takeover, which I would usually hate the idea of losing an independent operator on the strip, but I almost think in the long haul the Trop may be better off under the MGM portfolio or even Caesars for that matter. The whole thing is kind of misguided. The new Trop is obviously a mid-market property, and it needs to stop trying to be Encore. They had/have the opportunity to do something rather unique here given the Trop's long history on the strip and it's busy location. It's TONS better than what we had just three years ago, but these recent developments mean something bigger is going on behind the scenes. In the long haul, they would be better of knocking down the current Tiffany theater and part of the adjacent garden rooms to build a new state-of-the-art theater complex... or give up on having a theater all together and maybe put a beach club there- oh wait, they already tried that. Failed.
Yeah, sandyastrogl1de, your Brad Garrett pass did as much good as my Nikki Beach VIP status!
What does all this change portend?
Without a doubt, I think that within 12-18 months, the Tropicana will be under new ownership. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the "other Tropicana" ends up with it.
Sounds like time for another VT expose, ala the ARIA unrest of last year ;-)
This is their chance to realign with the customer base that works for them, and in most cases is already frequenting the Trop. My advice to the Trop, take advantage of it. Time to 'change everything' with marketing.
I'm sure Caesars would love to swoop in and switch Trop over to Total Rewards before Imperial Palace goes offline, but with Linq going full steam ahead I think it would be difficult for them to scrape together the cash and manpower they'd need to execute a takeover and transition successfully.
Trop and Hard Rock are both examples of places that barged confidently ahead with their 2007-era dreams with the assumption that if they build it, people would come, and both of them have had it unfortunately blow up in their faces. They might have been better off if they had slammed on the brakes while they still could, but of course SBE/Sahara tried the "wait-and-see" approach and we all know how well that worked out.
MGM already has several mid-market properties; Monte Carlo, Luxor, NYNY and the MGM Grand to name four close by (admittedly, MGM Grand is a broad-market property rather than a mid-market property, but the point still stands). I am an MGM loyalist but I wouldn't want them buying up the Tropicana. Competition is healthy.
I think if Trop positioned their club a little more mid-market and a little less "trying to compete with the Encore Beach Club" they'd do somewhat better with it. The problem wasn't so much a daylife pool per se, but the fact it was yet another ultra-luxe daylife pool. If it were a mid-market daylife pool, you'd have a better chance.
Add the Vegas Mob Experience at the Trop to the list too. It's either been either shut down or revamped, minus all the "actors", etc. Of course, location helped kill that place, but still...
As has been pointed out on this board for the past year or so, all the renovations were wonderful, individually, but collectively you had no idea WTF was going on. When I stayed there in July it was very disorienting. The Club Nikki crowd had no interest in Gladys Knight, whose crowd could not have cared less about the Mob Experience. Brad Garrett's place was like an afterthought, and the old timers who used to frequent the joint were getting squeezed by the club/douche crowd that management was aiming for.
My second night there I said "I miss the Celebration Lounge." It was total cheese, but I used to have a blast there.
Anyway, I still enjoyed my stay, but I did wonder when I left if I would ever return.
^ agreed on Celebrations Lounge, always a good drunken time.
I would hope someone like Penn National buys the place before MGM or CET, if in fact it goes on the block. The near-duopoly on the strip is getting ridiculous. How's Penn doing with M?
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