Picture a castle complete with turrets, moats, and battlements — a very enthusiastic imitation. Excalibur opened in 1990 and was briefly the largest hotel in the world, with over 4,000 rooms spread across its turrets, moats, and battlements. It was built by Circus Circus Enterprises, the company that had spent two decades arguing that Las Vegas could be a family destination, and Excalibur was their most ambitious experiment.
The theory was sound in principle: parents would come to gamble if their children had entertainment options. Excalibur offered a tournament of knights dinner show, arcade games, and a medieval village of shops on the lower level. What the developers discovered was that families with children spend less money at casinos than the industry needed them to, and that parents find it difficult to concentrate on blackjack while worrying about their kids.
The family-friendly era of the Strip lasted roughly a decade before the pendulum swung back toward adult luxury. Excalibur survives as a value-oriented property catering to budget travelers, and its deliberately cartoonish design — white towers with red and blue turrets — has become a beloved piece of kitsch. The castle that was supposed to represent Las Vegas's future now reads as a museum exhibit of an idea that almost worked.