16 Outrageous Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos That Were Never Completed

16 Outrageous Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos That Were Never Completed

Shannon Quinn - August 27, 2018

16 Outrageous Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos That Were Never Completed
Construction workers were very happy to work on the Playboy Hotel in Atlantic City when it was being built in the 1980s. Credit: The Press of Atlantic City

2. The Playboy Hotel and Casino which provided many memories for Donald Trump.

Las Vegas is “sin city”, so adding a Playboy Hotel would only make sense, right? Beautiful girls in bunny outfits serving drinks and dealing cards would be very appealing to some people. After much planning, they eventually opened a hotel in Atlantic City instead of Las Vegas, and it opened in 1981. It cost $130 million to complete, which was actually much cheaper than the cost of opening a similar attraction in Las Vegas.

It would turn out that having an entire hotel and casino dedicated to the Playboy just wasn’t working out in New Jersey. In 1988, The Playboy Club opened in Las Vegas, and Hugh Hefner designed the layout himself, so it was much more on-brand. This time, it wasn’t taking up an entire building. Just an entire floor of a high-rise. They had floor-to-ceiling windows, fireplaces, and pinball machines. This club had a much more intimate feeling, so the men felt more like they got to live in Hugh Hefner’s shoes for a day. Customers felt that they were part of an actual club that had the exclusive privilege of hanging out with Playboy bunnies, instead of just one of thousands of people hanging out at a casino.

Not surprisingly, the Playboy Casino and Hotel tanked. In 1989, the hotel was sold to Donald Trump, because he had a lot of great memories in that building. His casino and hotel also failed, and that location had to be torn down.

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