These Las Vegas attractions are free -- and they're fun

Author: By Richard P. Carpenter, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, April 7, 1996

Page: B2

Section: Travel

Well, your luck isn't all bad. On the Las Vegas Strip, you can have a full evening (or afternoon) of free entertainment. You can watch a spectacular pirate fight, see a volcano erupt, view gorgeous antique cars, enjoy circus performers, gaze at wildlife (no, not that kind), stare up at a fire-breathing dragon and even watch jolly statues come to life and talk to you.

All of this is part of the ``new'' Las Vegas, which is striving mightily to become a family destination while at the same time providing ``lures'' to get you into the glittering casinos that sponsor the free entertainment. It works, and it's fun.

What is undoubtedly the most spectacular of the free shows happens in front of the two-year-old Treasure Island casino, where a bay has been created and two ships are poised for action. The Buccaneer Bay Pirate Battle begins when one of those ships, the frigate HMS Britannia, steals around Skull Point and spies the pirate ship Hispaniola unloading its booty. Surrender! shout the British! Phooey on you (or words to that effect), reply the pirates -- and the battle is under way. A pyrotechnic war ensues, with cannons booming, masts snapping, buildings flaming and sailors catapulting through the air. Finally, one of the ships is hit dead-center. It tilts, then slowly sinks as its captain goes down with the ship. We won't tell you who wins, but the result is the same at every show. Moments later, as the crowd is still looking on in amazement, the sunken ship rights itself.

From Treasure Island, it's a short walk to its sister casino, the Mirage, where a volcano erupts every 15 minutes. And I do mean erupts. The action occurs in the South Seas garden at the casino's entrance, where waterfalls cascade over rockscapes 50 feet to the lagoon below. Suddenly, the volcano erupts, spewing smoke and fire 100 feet above the water. It's a brief show, but an important one, being one of the earliest symbols of the ``new'' Vegas, having first erupted in 1989.

Stepping into the Mirage gives you a chance to see Siegfried & Roy's famous white tigers even if you don't see the show. The magnificent animals are on display around the clock, except, of course, when they are in the show, and even then a garden-variety tiger is present to give strollers something to see. Near the front desk, meanwhile, is a 20,000-gallon aquarium stocked with sharks, rays and angelfish swimming in a sunken undersea city. (The Mirage has a dolphin habitat, too, but there is a small charge to visit.)

If it's animals you like, also check out the Wildlife Walk inside the Tropicana. Residents range from brightly colored macaws and toucans to pygmy marmosets, among the world's smallest monkeys. Cockatoos, lorries, Amazon parrots and exotic butterflies are also there. Looking down onto the resort's 5-acre water park, you can spy peacocks, flamingos, Mandarin ducks, African Crow cranes, black swans and koi fish. But the Wildlife Walk is best seen in daytime, since many of the creatures are moved elsewhere at night to get their well-deserved rest.

If you fancy machines, however, you can find some very fancy autos in the Imperial Palace collection, housed in the casino's parking garage. Strictly speaking, this isn't a free attraction, but admission coupons can be as easy to find as losing Keno numbers. The coupons are often present in giveaway tourist booklets; mine was handed to me in front of the casino. (I was also given a chit good for five free nickels for the slots, which I parlayed into a 50-nickel win. My excitement was high until I realized that 50 nickels equal a mere $2.50). In any event, the Imperial collection includes more than 800 vehicles, of which more than 200 are on display. Among them: Hitler's 1939 Mercedes sedan and autos driven (or at least ridden in) by presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, among others. There are cars of the stars and of the ultra-rich. And there was a shiny Coca-Cola truck that I took a shine to.

Let's ride to a fantasy land of talking statues. They can be found in the Forum Shops section of Caesars Palace. There is plenty to buy here, with 72 stores ranging from Versace to Disney. But every hour, visitors gathered under the domed rotunda are treated to a 7-minute show at the Festival Fountain. Bacchus, the god of good times, appears to already have had a gallon or two of wine when the festival comes to life. He decides to do what he does best -- throw a party. So Apollo, god of music, plays the lyre; Venus, goddess of love, makes an entrancing appearance; and Plutus, god of wealth, brings the fountains to life with cascades of jewellike effects. Bacchus, talking up a storm, summons a laser-animated chariot of the sun. Apollo, meanwhile, commands a beam of light to strike Bacchus' wine goblet, which explodes with laser and color effects set to music. The fountain, and the forum, has been popular enough so that a Phase II expansion, which will double the Forum's size, is scheduled to open next year, with a golly-wow ``Atlantis'' show, featuring both human and animatronic figures, as the entertainment.

There are more free attractions. At Circus Circus, a pioneer in free family entertainment, jugglers and trapeze artists put on shows most of the day and a goodly part of the night. At the castle-shaped Excalibur, which has a medieval theme, costumed singers, jugglers and musicians roam about, and the king and queen appear from time to time. And when visitors look up to the rotunda towers outside the resort, they may see a damsel in distress, a fire-breathing dragon and a knight in shining armor. The characters are part of the ``Timeless Tale'' show, in which a glockenspiel clock tells a 5-minute fairy story about a beautiful princess who is saved from a fiery dragon by a heroic knight, who wins her hand in marriage. The tale is told every 15 minutes, with the glockenspiel powered by 20 motors and plugged into a computer program.

There, too, is free admission and a variety of street entertainment at the 33-acre theme park portion of the MGM Grand Hotel, Casino and Theme Park, but the rides will cost you. Away from the Strip, on revitalized Fremont Street, there are nightly light-and-sound shows, with 2.1 million lights, each capable of producing 65,536 color combinations in a ``Space Frame'' that is 90 feet high and five blocks wide.

And it's a kind of free entertainment just to look at some of the newer casino-resorts. Among them: the pyramid-shaped Luxor, with its giant sphinx; the MGM Grand, with its giant lion (Las Vegas does go in for gigantism); and the Stratosphere Tower, opening this month, whose 1,149-foot tower is the tallest free-standing observation tower in the nation.

Then there are the giveaways. Tourist literature often features coupons good for free souvenirs at various casinos, and it is not unusual to see dedicated freebie fans clutching coffee cups and visors as they make their rounds.

There is one other ``giveaway,'' though, that disturbs some. Hawkers often hand out literature about nude ``entertainers'' -- and not just to men walking alone. The booklets are also found in racks on the Strip and often wind up tossed on the street, with the pictures of scantily clad -- or unclad -- women on view for families walking by. I have never been accused of prudery, but it seems to me that if the Las Vegas Strip wants to be thought of as a true family destination, it will find a way to legally get the sleaze off the street.

The Imperial Palace Auto Collection is open from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. on the fifth floor of the hotel's parking facility. The Imperial Palace is at 3535 Las Vegas Boulevard South.

Free circus acts are held at Circus Circus daily from 11 a.m. through midnight. Circus Circus is at 2880 Las Vegas Boulevard South.

The Festival Fountain at Caesars comes to life hourly from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The Forum Shops at Caesars is at 3500 Las Vegas Boulevard South.

The ``Timeless Tale'' glockenspiel show at Excalibur runs every 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The Fremont Street light-and-sound shows, part of the revitalization project called The Fremont Street Experience, blaze away on the hour from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. and last 7 to 10 minutes.