2025 comes alive! Las Vegas celebrates with concerts, New Year wishes

Carter Aldavé-Walthall stepped outside the Flamingo to take a smoke break in her wedding dress, winter coat and pearl-studded veil while her wife rested in their hotel room a few hours before 2025. The two got married earlier Tuesday at the Sure Thing Wedding Chapel on Fremont Street.

“Vegas is the New Year’s Eve capital of the nation, and it fits our vibe, so we decided to just do it,” said Aldavé-Walthall, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her now-wife.

She said the two of them realized they loved each other during the first New Year’s Eve they spent together.

The couple was one of hundreds of thousands in Las Vegas’ tourist hotspots on New Year’s Eve, which marked the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 with festivities downtown and along the Las Vegas Strip that culminated with an eight-minute fireworks show with pyrotechnics fired off from nine hotel roofs. The Review-Journal staff were across the city to report on the last moments of 2024.

Celebrating love and the new year

Across the city earlier that night, a different couple was celebrating a milestone. Charlene and Byron Babbel of St. George, Utah, were waiting to see Creed in concert at Caesars Palace on Tuesday night. The two stood with a small crowd waiting for the Colosseum to open before the show started at 9 p.m.

The Babbels said they like to go to concerts together and traveled to the Las Vegas show to celebrate their recent 37-year wedding anniversary.

“There’s more people here than I’ve ever seen,” Charlene Babbel said about the crowds, adding that she still wanted to catch the fireworks after the show.

And on Fremont Street, a Washington resident and pirate cosplayer who goes by the name Five handed out gold coins to partygoers.

It’s Five’s fourth year in a row coming to Fremont Street for New Year’s dressed as pirate and giving out shillings. This year he purchased 600 coins, which cost between $40 to $50, he said.

He likes “to make people happy, because who doesn’t love a metal coin?” he said.

This year marks an extra special occasion for the pirate cosplayer. He planned to propose to his girlfriend, who he met in Vegas, at midnight.

Another couple, Lisa Heffernan and Tim Klacick, were spending their first New Year’s Eve together as a couple and wanted to make it memorable.

While standing in line for The Bar at Times Square inside New York New York casino hotel around 8:30 p.m., the duo said they purposely chose this place to grab a drink because of the obvious connection to the New York City destination. They planned to have a drink at 9 p.m. in Las Vegas as the ball dropped in Times Square at midnight.

Best wishes for the new year

Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley took the stage at the Fremont Street Experience with about a minute until midnight to ring in the new year. She wished everyone a happy new year and celebrated as the clock struck 12 with Flo Rida, who held a bottle of sparkling wine. Behind the stage, the fireworks show began, and Flo Rida led the crowd in singing “Whistle.”

On the Strip, the Ovadan family cheered, took photos and blew horns as the fireworks lit off shortly after midnight. Hailing from Canada, the family of three has travelled to Las Vegas for the past seven years to celebrate the new year — the fireworks being their favorite part.

“We come to Las Vegas for the restaurants, parties and community,” said mother Lola and her two daughters Elisha, 13, and Olivia, 16.

In the 2025 they hope to bring new beginnings, peace and joy.

For Indiana resident Mendy McQueen — who spent the night at the Fremont Street Experience — the last two years have not been kind. She said she lost 15 people close to her, including her parents and uncle.

McQueen hoped for “abundance and freedom” in the new year.

“2025 will be full of love and light,” she said.

Back of house

Others spent New Year’s Eve catering to the party-going visitors. Professional dancers Tera Perez and Sara Crossan — clad in old-Hollywood styled red sparkles — waited in line at Capons in the Fontainebleau food court on their dinner break. Both girls are dancers at Papi Steak and do performances at the top of the hour.

This holiday, the girls looked forward to their burger and fries.

“Eating a burger and working is usually how my New Year’s goes,” Crossan said.

Meanwhile, Vanice Bowie greets customers in front of Reunited Luxury, a used luxury bag store, before it closes inside Resorts World at 7 p.m.

“This is the busiest I’ve seen it since working on this property a month ago,” Bowie said. “Since the holiday season, this week has been the busiest.”

Vegas thrills

Others came to Vegas to enjoy the unusual on their last day of 2024. Near the Venetian, the oohs and aahs are instantaneous as hordes of people caught their first glimpses of the Sphere.

“I never though you could get this close,” one woman said to her family before taking out her phone to take a photo.

Anyma, a DJ who recently launched a residency at the venue with guests like Ellie Goulding and FKA twigs, performed at 10 p.m. Thousands were lined up to enter, while others stood outside, consumed with amazement of the structure.

Even frequent visitors said they had something new. Candice Fuller has been to Las Vegas “hundreds” of times. The Los Angeles native has rung in the new year here before, too, in 2019 and 2022.

On Tuesday night, Fuller did something she had never done during any of her previous trips to Vegas. She took a selfie while standing in the middle of the Strip.

“How many times in your life do you get to do something like this?” Fuller said while smiling and posing for her iPhone at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.

At Mandalay Bay that night, one Las Vegas visitor chased a multi-day hot streak. Nate, who did not share his last name, said he hit “six or seven” handpays (a machine payout of $1,200 or more) over the last few days.

On Tuesday, he was hoping to get lucky one more time before closing out the year. He played the Lightning Link slot machine, placing max bets.

“I’m convinced the only way to win any money playing these machines is to max bet,” he said, barely looking away from the screen. “I’m planning on getting a handpay before midnight, and this is the only way to do it.”

Review-Journal reporters Emerson Drewes, Jessica Hill, David Danzis, Katelyn Newberg and Alan Halaly contributed to this report.