Walking the “Sneaky Back Way” from Wynn to Planet Hollywood

BigAzMarty shares his secret to keeping cool the sneaky way while walking the strip…

Hi, all! BigAZMarty here with an interesting walking/hiking tip when you are so sick and tired of the strip sidewalk, you’ve seen it all, and just need to get back to your room. Over time, and, with the addition of the LINQ shopping area we’ve found some shortcuts through casino properties that seem way faster than walking the strip. Now, you may get some interesting smells doing this (I have no idea what died between the Venetian and Harrah’s, but you smell that out front as well as in back) and a whole new appreciation for some other things in Las Vegas.

So without further ado… let’s say you are at the Wynn/Encore and want to walk to Planet Hollywood but don’t want to be jostled by a sidewalk packed with people, or, hassled by buskers. Try this out.

1. From Wynn take the pedestrian bridge to the Palazzo and go into the shops. Walk through the shops to the Venetian side shops and just past the food court. On the Venetian side is the hallway that goes to the elevators for the Venetian parking garage. Take the elevator to the ground floor. Once on the ground floor go out to the street that is in between Venetian and Harrah’s.

2. Walk the street to the Harrah’s parking garage where the valet is near the back casino entrance. To the left, there should be a parking garage elevator bay near the skybridge between the parking garage and the casino. Take that elevator up to the skybridge floor, and head onto the skybridge. Just to the left of the skybridge should be the door to the monorail and LINQ access path just as you go into the Harrah’s building. Take that to the Linq.

3. At the Linq go through the doors down the escalators and down the main path into the casino until you get just past the 3535 bar near the check in. You should see a walkway through the casino to the TAG Bar to the left. At the Tag Bar near the Video Blackjack, there should be an exit to the shopping promenade there and across from it will be the Flamingo side entrance with the giant flamingos there to pose for pictures.

4. Go into the Flamingo and walk pretty much straight to the lobby (some steps along the way). Go left at the registration desk area to some escalators that go down to the valet area. Go out the door and to the left…on the far side on your right, you should see some steps in the wall that lead up to the Cromwell valet area. Go there and up those steps.

5. At the Cromwell’s valet area, go to Flamingo Avenue. There is a ramp to a stop-lighted crosswalk that will go to Bally’s. Now, this is old school, and there is no pedestrian bridge there so you will need to check traffic as I’ve seen (twice) someone pull out of the Cromwell and miss seeing the red light there. So be especially careful there. Go across the street but go up and then jog to the left there and enter Bally’s on the side entrance where the buses are, not the main Valet entrance. Once inside go straight ahead to the open area that leads to the shops in Paris.

6. Go all the way through the Paris shops and once in the Paris casino, walk to the Hexx Store up in the front of the casino. You should be able to go out the front door and be on the strip, one light away from Planet Hollywood.

7. Head over to Planet Hollywood…there are of course some buskers there, but if you keep back away from the curb, you can avoid them as the sidewalk is fairly large there.

At this point, you have maximized air conditioning and minimized busker and people contact. We’ve used all or part of this path to get between properties when monorail passes have run out, or we just are sick of the drunk in the mouse costume or my favorite peeve the calling cards for the “personal services” that are forced into your hands. Yup, they’ve even done it to my wife as well with hilarious results when she sees what it is.

If you are still site seeing, the shops between Palazzo and Venetian are great. The shops at the Linq have great food and desserts (Sprinkles and Ghiradelli’s) as well as High Roller for the view. The Paris shops are nice to walk through but at PH’s Miracle Mile shops are pretty tough to beat for regular folks…but they have kiosk buskers that are fairly persistent. “Please just back away from the wife, sir or ma’am, please. No, she doesn’t want your beauty miracle product sir or ma’am.” Although my cousin had a field day with one of those kiosks as seen below:

And…good hiking, folks!!!!

[Images: BigAZMarty, Craft + Brand Design]

BigAzMarty

A computer professional who has worked at several types of positions with several different businesses and still learning and changing.
Introduced properly to Las Vegas and Laughlin by the spouse and have been going ever since 1990.
A frequent visitor from not to far away where it’s almost always 10 degrees warmer than Vegas.