by Berl Colley
As most of you read this, you hopefully have already filled out your pre-registration forms and have submitted them, either on-line or via the mail. When you looked at the tours, you probably noticed that some tours I had talked about in previous articles were not listed and others had changed some. ACB will have 15 tours this year. Some recent changes are:
We have dropped both tours to the Elvis-A-Rama museum and Ethel M's; we have moved the second Liberace tour to Wednesday afternoon; we will not have a Monday night tour; we will not have the Bally's slot machine manufacturing tour; and the Star Trek tour is being conducted separately from ACB tours.
Elvis may be alive, but he wasn't alive enough to work out contractual paperwork for ACB. This means that, for the first time in a long time, we will not have a Sunday afternoon tour. Also, Ethel M's candy has remodeled its tour area and it is no longer worth taking the time to go there. If you want to purchase Ethel M's candy, you can find an outlet in the Riviera that sells it for less than you'd pay at the factory.
We moved the second Liberace tour to Wednesday. This allows us to have a one-hour concert of his music on both tours. We are hopeful that we can work out audio description for this tour.
Try as we might, we were unable to put together a roller coaster or events tour that was cost effective for ACB tour-goers. Fortunately, there are a number of wonderful activities scheduled for Monday evening.
After touring the Bally slot machine manufacturing plant, we were pretty excited about the tour possibilities for ACB, but we were contacted by the company in April and told that the company had decided to turn down our request to have a tour there.
The pre-convention tour to see the London Bridge has been enhanced. After eating lunch at Shugrue's, there will be a well narrated, one-hour boat trip around Lake Havasu on the Dixie Belle. While in Oatman, we will learn some interesting information about Oatman from Jackie Rollen, a long- time member of that community. Bob Keller will be telling us about Havasu and the London Bridge while we are eating lunch. Later that night, July 1, someone from the Laughlin area will speak to us after dinner. Before returning to Las Vegas, there will be time to walk the boardwalk along the Colorado River or ride the $3 casino shuttle across to Bullhead City or down to other properties. There will also be time to go to Laughlin for those who wish to try their luck there.
There will be two city tours, one on Saturday morning, July 2 and the other Sunday morning, July 3, with narration by Charlene Cruz from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Other tours include a Saturday morning, July 2 float trip below Hoover Dam on the Colorado River; a visit to Mormon Fort in downtown Las Vegas; Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum at the Venetian, on Monday afternoon. We will also take a very informative tour to the Blind Center of Las Vegas to learn about what services are available in Nevada, and a tour to a re-created old mining town at Bonney Springs on Tuesday afternoon.
In addition to the Liberace tour on Wednesday, we will be going out to Sheri's Ranch to visit the world's largest legal brothel. This is a 21 and older tour. On Wednesday night, 100 of us will be on the Desert Princess for a three-hour dinner and dance cruise on Lake Mead. Finally, on Thursday afternoon we will be going to the Hoover Dam, the largest dam in the United States. The companion tour will be a visit to the Clark County Museum to learn about how this desert area has developed.
Please note, there will not be any Saturday night event on July 9. If your tour is sold out and you want to go on it, please check in the registration office or at bus side to see if any tickets have been returned, or to see if there are any no-shows. Please make sure you have your ticket with you when you get on the bus.