America's Party will return to Las Vegas on New Year's Eve with eight minutes of fireworks over the Strip.
"No other place in the world throws a party like Las Vegas," Fletch Brunell, vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said at an event today at Fashion Show mall detailing the upcoming show. "Our biggest party of the year is right around the corner."
The fireworks, intricately choreographed sequences of dynamic shapes and patterns — "swimming" stars and pyrotechnic happy faces, hearts and Saturns — will shoot into the sky from eight hotel rooftops, the result of 11,500 electrical circuits programmed to make a precision light show, said Scott Cooper from Fireworks by Grucci. This will be Grucci’s 21st New Year’s Eve production in Las Vegas.
The show is a huge undertaking but one that was conspicuously absent last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. So was the block party that takes over Fremont Street downtown, although thousands of people still gathered in both locations to bid 2020 a less-than-fond farewell.
Now, with coronavirus activity lower than before if not yet eliminated, visitors and locals are ready to let loose the way they normally do.
“No one deserves a party to ring in the new year more than Las Vegas,” said Clark County Commissioner Jim Gibson, who also sits on the tourism board.
Fireworks will be launched from the MGM Grand, Aria, Planet Hollywood, Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, the Venetian, Resorts World and the Strat. The big show comes after a countdown – or rather, a count-up — that will race up the Strat’s tower, then the playing of the traditional melody of “Auld Lang Syne.” Party music will also help keep things lively into the night. The theme: Deuces Wild. For the ‘22.
“This is a celebration that shows how strong we’ve been through everything,” Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said at today’s event, a few minutes before Grucci gave a teaser in the form of sparkling, snapping indoors pyrotechnics in the mall’s main corridor.
Downtown, the Fremont Street Experience will again welcome revelers under its canopy with an ’80s and ’90s-themed dance party headlined by Vanilla Ice, the Village People, Tone Loc and Bobby Brown.