We spend a little more than a week in the Las Vegas area, the summer of 1998 and recommend it as  a great place for family vacations. We stayed at the MGM Grand, said to be the biggest hotel in the world. We can believe this based on how long it took to get from the front desk to our room! But it had a great view overlooking the New York New York with the mountains in the background. In back of the MGM is an amusement park where I rode the sky screamer and Elaine, Nick and Mark enjoyed the rides. We saw most of the fantastic hotels, many of the other sights, shopped at Caesar's Palace and rode the Big Shot on top of the The Stratosphere Tower (very scary). We then took a ride in a very small plane (very very scary) to an Indian Reservation on the western end of the Grand Canyon. The reservation has no crowds of tourist and great views of the canyon. It seemed like a private tour. Our last side trip was to Red Rock canyon just outside Las Vegas, another highly recommended spot. ( Don't miss even better photos from our trip in 2006 )