From Aria to Las Vegas Strip – How Far is the Distance and How Do You Get There?
By Steve Beauregard
It’s about .15 miles from the entrance/exit of the Aria Resort and Casino to the sidewalk of the Las Vegas Strip. Yet for being a hotel/casino supposedly on the Strip, it’s not always clear, exactly, how one gets there from the Aria.
The behemoth known as City Center (of which Aria is a main component), is a steel and glass labyrinth partially designed to keep guests on the property, so that restaurant, shopping, entertainment, and most important, gambling monies will not leave the premise.
This urban-themed city within a city has a carefully orchestrated floor plan that makes it difficult to find your way out to the Las Vegas Strip, and to Aria’s competitors nearby.
Pathways out to the Strip from the Aria aren’t always clearly marked, so here are the four main ways to reach Strip pavement from the interior of the Aria Resort and Casino:
1) Tram to Bellagio
2) Walk through The Shops at Crystals
3) Tram or promenade to Park MGM
4) The long sidewalk in front of the resort, along City Center Place.
First, (1) the tram to the Bellagio
This is the option for those of you wanting to go to Caesars Palace, the Mirage, Bally’s or the Flamingo. Also use this option if you’re wanting to check out see the Bellagio water fountain show.
You’ll simply hop on the tram. As you may know, there is a tram stop at the south end of the resort, towards Park MGM, and one at Crystals next door, closer to the hotel’s registration desk. At either one, take the northbound tram to the Bellagio.
From there, you’ll have quite a long walk through the Bellagio convention hallways and spacious casino to get to the pedestrian bridge section at the north end of the Bellagio’s property.
There’s a bridge that will take you over the Strip to Bally’s, and from there to the Cromwell or the Flamingo.
The other pedestrian bridge crosses over Flamingo Road, and will lead you to Caesars Palace, and eventually the Mirage.
(2) Walking through the Shops at Crystals
A walking route to the Strip that forces you past all of the resort’s high end stores? What a coincidence! Or maybe it was done on purpose, as a last ditch way to capture your dollars before leaving MGM owned space?
Either way, a walk through Crystals will put you outside on the Las Vegas Strip. It’s exactly .13 miles from the Aria’s doors to the north exit of the Crystals.
Go through Crystals if you’re wanting to get to the Cosmopolitan, Planet Hollywood (there’s a pedestrian bridge over the Strip to help), or the Paris Hotel and Casino.
3) Tram or promenade to Park MGM
The extreme south end of the Aria has a walkway (they call it a promenade) to the Park MGM Hotel and Casino.
Alternatively, you can hop on the southbound tram from the Aria/Crystals stop to get to the Park MGM. From there, you can meander through the casino to get to Strip sidewalk.
Either way, this Park MGM route is for those of you looking to go to places like the New York – New York Hotel and Casino, the MGM Grand, Excalibur, Luxor, Tropicana, or Mandalay Bay.
(4) The long sidewalk in front of the resort, along City Center Place.
The simplest, most direct, but least appealing route to get from the Aria to the Las Vegas Strip is by leaving the front entrance (by the valet), and walking along either the north or south sidewalk that runs parallel to City Center Place. (City Center Place is the main road leading up to the Aria).
My measurements show this to be a straightforward .14 mile walk, about the same as it would be walking through the Crystals. However this walk leads to the Strip, but nothing else. In other words, once you get to the intersection of the Strip and City Center Place, you have to go either north or south to find other resorts, or to cross over to the other side of the Strip.
In other words, this walking path is useless, unless you are going to the Waldorf Astoria.
My recommendation is to avoid this route, as it’s much more fun to walk around an air conditioned casino or shopping mall, or to ride in a climate controlled tram, rather than walk along the noise and smog (and Las Vegas heat) of City Center Place.
So there are your four main options on how to get to the Las Vegas Strip from the Aria Resort and Casino. It may seem odd we need directions and guidance to figure out how to get out of a casino, but I guess if I owned the Aria, and needed billions of revenue to recoup the massive investment spent to build it, I’d want to make it hard for guests to leave too.