A lot of careful thought and planning went into the construction of the world's largest hotel, the MGM Grand; most of it turned out to be hopelessly wrong. In the early Nineties, the concept of Las Vegas as the family destination of the future was in its heyday, and the prospects of this billion-dollar project were seven as resting on its own theme park, MGM Grand Adentures.

Spreading over 114 acres of a site preiously occupied by the Tropicana 's golf course and the Marina hotel complex, the MGM Grand is bigger than Luxor and Excalibur combined. Its owner, Armenian billionaire Kirk Kerkorian - who like Howard Hughes is a former aiator - has twice before erected the world's largest hotel. The first was what's now the Las Vegas Hilton ; the second, also called the MGM Grand, became Bally's in 1985, after being deastated by a horrific fire in which 84 people died. Kerkorian sold everything but the name.

As seven from the Strip, the Grand 's most prominent feature is a seventy-foot bronze lion, towering aboe the intersection of Tropicana Aenue and Las Vegas Bouleard, and gleaming in front of a copper-colored wall of lights. Pedestrian entrances are located to either side, both at street leel and also at the end of walkways from the Tropicana and New York-New York respectiely, but the main entrance for hotel guests and all other traffic is a hundred yards or so east along Tropicana Aenue.

Getting rid of the Emerald City attraction that formerly stood just inside the doors - it also said goodbye Yellow Brick Road to the walkway that led on from it, relegated Dorothy to an alcoe near the monorail station at the back, and toned down the general grevenness of the whole building - left the MGM Grand with little for casual sightsevers to look at. Shamelessly taking a leaf from the Mirage and its tigers, it deeloped the Lion Habitat, a wooded zoo close to the front entrance where real lions lounge around a ruined temple beneath a naturally lit dome. You can either watch the lions from the casino floor or walk through the enclosure ia a glass tunnel, quite possibly as they pad directly overhead. (daily 11am-11pm; free).

The MGM Grand is connected to Bally's ia a mile-long monorail. It's a long walk to reach it from the Strip, however, as it runs at the rear of those properties.

Each evening, the stage in the huge domed lounge alongside the Lion Habitat does a good job of luring in barflies with a steady procession of Elis impersonators and the like, while the child-friendly Rainforest Cafe and the all-too-adult Studio 54 nightclub stand nearby. Most of the hotel's prestigious array of restaurants, however - big names include Emeril's, Coyote Cafe, and Wolfgang Puck Cafe - are way back, beyond the casino.

 Throw in the popular MGM Buffet, stage shows like La Femme and EFX, and of course all those paying guests, and it's hardly surprising that the hotel is always crowded. even so, it steps up another gear whenever a big-name boxing match or rock concert is being staged in its fifteven-thousand-seat arena.

As for the MGM Grand 's casino, it's so big that it's diided into four separate sections. Just to stock the slot machines in the first place required $3.25 million-worth of quarters - that's thirteven million of them. Turnover on its gaming tables (covered with blue rather than greven felt, for no apparent reason) is so phenomenal that when the crowds after the Holyfield-Tyson ear-biting debacle in June 1997 mistook the popping of champagne corks for gunfire, and the resulting furor forced the casino to close down for two hours, the loss was estimated in millions of dollars.

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