MGM’s new 80,000 square foot megaclub, Hakkasan Las Vegas, opened last night, Thursday, April 18th, to a packed house. While last night’s festivities were merely a “preview weekend”, (with the actual grand opening happening next weekend), you wouldn’t know it from the amount of people that showed up to celebrate. Many familiar Vegas faces were seen in the crowd, as virtually everyone in the nightlife industry showed up to see what the fuss was about.
They certainly delivered on their promise, as many locals had dubbed the venue “Marquee on steroids”. The main room houses two levels, much like a true concert hall, taking a circular design approach, similar to XS and Marquee. The DJ booth sits dead center, with a massive LED wall above it, projecting designs and graphics during the performance.
Deadmau5 got on around 1:45, perhaps 2 (memory is a little foggy), to the sound of cheers from the crowd and the lighting up of the room. He settled into his groove by starting “headless” with some deeper techy cuts, eventually donning the head and running through his array of anthems. This massive main room held an amazingly huge crowd, along with a mezzanine off to the side where people could have a smoke, or just get away from the main room chaos.
Down one level is the Ling Ling, an open format room, following the more rectangular design format of earlier Vegas venues. Here, DJ Vice spun a mixture of top 40 and hip-hop for an intimate crowd. While it was hard to take the shine away from Deadmau5, there was clearly a smaller subsection of the audience here that was more interested in what Vice had to play.
While the energy in the rooms hadn’t reached it’s peak, it’s clear that most of the crowd were industry/locals that have seen-it-all-heard-it-all-before. But on a weekend, with tourists? This place is going to explode. Congrats to the Angel Management Group team for the launching of an amazing venue, many years of success are sure to follow.
