Circus Circus brings back vintage Las Vegas, one token at a time — PHOTOS
The rare sound of clanging tokens rushing out of slot machines at casinos on the Las Vegas Strip is now a near constant at Circus Circus’ Slots A Fun casino area.
This separate casino area located next to Circus Circus’ main building has about 75 token-operated slot machines — a mix of 25 cents, $1 and $5 machines.
Circus Circus relocated all its token slot machines and bought 30 more from vendors in Las Vegas and Iowa to give Slots A Fun a revamped vintage Las Vegas feeling, said Shana Gerety, general manager of Circus Circus.
She estimates the casino now has hundreds of thousands of tokens to run these slot machines.
The revamped Slots A Fun debuted in the middle of February. In addition to the old school slot machines in the area, and the plastic tubs to carry tokens, the casino is offering prices reminiscent of a past era of Las Vegas, with $2 shrimp cocktails, hot dogs, popcorn and beer and $5 table game minimums.
“With all of the new casinos that were popping up, it was important for us to create something that would allow Circus Circus to stand out again,” Gerety said. “And old vintage Vegas and the old coin slots was definitely something that draws people in.”
The hope is that Slots A Fun’s direct access to the Las Vegas Boulevard sidewalk and its cheap prices will attract people from other resorts in the area, she said.
This hope seems to be working as Gerety said the casino has already needed to bring in video poker machines and expand the table games area due to customer demand.
To go along with the vintage revamp of Slots A Fun, there have been some small paint updates to bring brighter colors to the casino’s ceiling, which was needed since the area was “tired and worn out” and didn’t get much use, Gerety said.
Circus Circus wants to add more vintage slot machines to Slots A Fun but is waiting on vendors to make more available, Gerety said.
“If we could buy some more games tomorrow, we absolutely would,” she said.
Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X.
