Treasure Island Hotel and Casino

Treasure Island (also known as “ti”) is a 2,885–room hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, USA and is connected by tram to The Mirage.

TI has received the AAA Four Diamond rating each year since 1998.

History

Treasure Island was opened by Mirage Resorts, in 1993, at a cost of $450 million. The resort originally intended to attract families with features such as a large video arcade and staged pirate battles nightly in “Buccaneer Bay” in front of the casino entrance on the Strip.

Film history

* In the 2004 movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, while Steve the Pirate is walking down Fremont Street, someone drives by yelling “Go back to the Treasure Island”. An alternate ending to the movie was that the Average Joes lost the dodgeball tournament, but got their money back when Steve won it at Treasure Island.
* In the movie Miss Congeniality 2, a climactic fight scene took place in the lagoon, with a main character trapped inside a sinking ship.
* In the movie Beavis and Butthead Do America, the original Treasure Island sign, along with the pirate ship outside of the hotel, are briefly seen as Beavis and Butthead are driving down the Las Vegas strip in a limo.
* Treasure Island appears in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In the game it is called “Pirates in Mens Pants” (a pun referencing Pirates of Penzance).
* In the movie Knocked Up, Ben (Seth Rogen) and Pete (Paul Rudd) stay at Treasure Island during their road trip to Las Vegas.

Entertainment

In 2003, the hotel largely abandoned its pirate theme for a more contemporary resort in efforts to focus more on adults. The arcade was closed. The famous skull-and-crossbones sign at the Strip entrance was replaced by one reading simply “ti” that is also a large LCD video screen. In lieu of the pirate battle, the newly renamed “Sirens’ Cove” is now the site of “The Sirens of TI”. This live, free show is designed to appeal more to adults by including singing, dancing, audio-visual effects, bare chested pirates and attractive women in the large outdoor production produced by Kenny Ortega.

TI is home to Cirque du Soleil’s Mystère, which revolutionized production shows on the Las Vegas Strip and introduced the entertainment style of Franco Dragone. The original Cirque du Soleil production in Las Vegas, Mystère has been voted nine times as the best production show in the city by the Las Vegas Review Journal reader’s poll.