We Almost Had A Star Trek Hotel in Las Vegas.
When Las Vegas had come out of the 80's and into the 90's it saw a vast decrease in tourist coming to spend their hard earned cash in the famous downtown gambling halls. This led for the city to start thinking of ways to not only attract gamblers but families as well. They had designed the new Las Vegas Strip with families in mind leading more tourist preferring to stay near there for the convenient area. The strip became the place to be and downtown Las Vegas was dying a slow death. Many investors began thinking of interesting hotels they could place downtown that the whole family would want to stay at and partake in activities together, leading to the idea of a Star Trek Enterprise hotel, having tourist boldly go where no man has gone before.
A new hotel was needed downtown.
A contest was held in which people would send in different ideas of what would attract tourist. It was down to two different ideas, the Fremont Experience, which exist today, and the Star Trek Enterprise being built, it seemed the investors wanted to go with a Star Trek idea. The idea was brought forth to have a hotel built that would be an exact replica of the Enterprise which would be an amazing site, but this hotel would not have a casino. The casinos in the area would fund the plan to get more tourist to come near their casinos and pay out the big bucks. The Enterprise would have an interactive experience, a restaurant, and of course an attraction. One of the engineers of Disney's EPCOT had come in to see if it was possible to build the hotel out there... and of course it was. They quickly bought the rights to Star Trek and had moved forward with the plans; Startrek.com (an awesome site, you should check it out) quotes Garry Goddard, a former imagineer for Disney who was hired for the interactive hotel attraction, “ The consortium of downtown casinos and hotels approved the project’s budget and the mayor had signed off on the project.... this was really a done deal.”
At last minute Paramount shut it down.
Every thing was signed and estimated and ready to go, and even with costing around 150 million dollars the town was on board. But it seems in the meeting the Paramount studio's CEO, Stanley R. Jaffe, basically shut down the whole thing. He thought that if the Enterprise had not been successful (how could this amazing idea not be successful, wtf?) it would look bad for Paramount and the Star Trek legacy, it would cost too much to tear it down so it would stay abandoned forever at the end of the main road downtown. Goddard stated, “It died in one day, in Stanley Jaffe’s office.” With even a couple of executives at Paramount pushing for this idea to become a reality, the mayor willing to build it, and the nearby casinos wanting to fund it the idea was not able to come into fruition. In its place is the popular Fremont Experience, a giant screen that has beautiful displays over a shopping center. But nevertheless, I feel personally attacked by Stanley R. Jaffe.
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Star Trek: The Experience at the Hilton.
It seems Las Vegas still had a small taste; Hilton announced in 1995 that a new attraction would be coming to their hotel, Star Trek: The Experience. It turns out that a higher up at Hilton was a huge Star Trek fan and had got the funding to open up a 50,000 square foot Star Trek fan's dream come true. Inside it was set to have an interactive experience, a fun themed restaurant, unique merchandise, and a virtual reality ride. Goddard had been asked by Hilton to come back and help design the concept as he had just built multiple successful rides, including the Amazing Spider-Man ride at Universal (one of my favorites). It took nearly three years to build and finally opened, having thousands of guests its opening day. The main attraction had an awesome effect that made the guests feel like they were actually getting beamed up aboard the ship. It had a super immersive pre show, with many actors making the ship come to life. The guests would end up in a virtual reality pod, which resembled a mix between Star Tours at Hollywood Studio's in Disney World and Back to the Future: The Ride at Universal Orlando , in which the guests would battle and eventually beat Klingons that had taken the Captain. The ride would exit to some really awesome gift shops, and the best restaurant ever. The restaurant would have actually aliens in costumes serving guests and staying in character, the food looked good and the drinks were themed, it sounds like my dream. It breaks my heart but eventually attendance started to fall, even after an update to the attraction in 2004. They could have fought to keep it open but with completely different people in charge then before they didn't feel that the attraction was needed and at the time didn't want to deal with an immersive experience like this, so they decided to cut the whole thing and shut it down in 2008. I feel like throwing up because I missed my mark, I was a freshman in high school and had no idea this experience existed. I will include a video of the experience bellow, and I recommend you search some videos of the restaurant to see some alien servers getting crunk on table tops.
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