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Vegas Retold

The history of Aladdin Hotel and Casino

Opened April 1966 Closed November 25, 1997

A large silver Aladdin lamp surrounded and partly obscured by other salvaged neon sign pieces at the Neon Museum in 2013.
An Aladdin lamp among other salvaged signs at the Neon Museum, April 30, 2013. This is museum artifact context, not the former Strip casino site.

Peter Burka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

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Original source photograph retained without editorial alteration. Responsive displays may resize and crop the presentation.

The original Aladdin Hotel and Casino opened in April 1966, after Milton Prell transformed the earlier Kings Crown Tally Ho hotel. The site had begun as a non-gaming resort in the early 1960s. Aladdin’s new name, Arabian Nights styling and lamp-shaped signs gave it a very different identity on the Strip.

Prell’s new Aladdin

Prell bought the hotel in January 1966 and undertook renovations before the Aladdin opening. Contemporary retrospectives describe Jackie Mason appearing in the Baghdad Theatre. The resort soon acquired a lasting place in popular memory: Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu married at the Aladdin on May 1, 1967, as Graceland’s own history records. That wedding belongs to the original resort, not the hotel tower built decades later.

The theater and tower expansion

Expansion changed the scale of the property. A new hotel tower and the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts opened in 1976, with Neil Diamond introducing the theater. The venue developed a life of its own as a place for concerts. Its survival would eventually connect two generations of the Aladdin site.

Changing owners and signs

The resort passed through ownership changes and financial and regulatory difficulties. Its signs changed as well. The Neon Museum distinguishes the 1966 sculptural lamp from a second, silver lamp introduced with replacement signage in 1976. Both later entered the museum’s collection. An artifact can preserve a piece of a casino’s identity after its original setting is gone.

The last concert and demolition

The hotel-casino closed in November 1997. Contemporary reporting describes its last concert night on November 25, with the hotel already closed as the audience left. Plans at that point called for a February implosion, but the actual tower demolition took place on April 27, 1998. The planned date and the event that happened should not be confused.

A rebuilt successor

A much larger Aladdin opened on the grounds in August 2000, retaining and remodeling the performing-arts theater. That later resort became Planet Hollywood in 2007. The relationship is substantial rebuilding with a surviving theater, rather than a simple rename of the original hotel. The photograph shows a salvaged Aladdin lamp at the Neon Museum in April 2013. It does not show an intact casino or locate the former Strip site at the museum.

  1. The two generations of Aladdin

  2. Tally Ho, Kings Crown and the 1966 casino

  3. Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding

  4. The two surviving lamp signs

  5. The final concert night

  6. The tower’s actual implosion

  7. The surviving theater in the later resort

  8. The mapped site area

  9. The dated photograph

What remains uncertain

  • Tally Ho’s early hotel date differs between sources: the museum gives 1962, the newspaper retrospective 1963. This profile uses early 1960s for that non-gaming stage and April 1966 for the Aladdin casino opening; no precise opening day invented.
  • The final November 1997 closure and April 1998 demolition are separate events. The imported 1998 closure year is not adopted.
  • Most of the old resort was removed; the retained theater does not make the original hotel and the 2000 rebuilt Aladdin one unchanged building.
  • The selected photograph is a dated museum view of a salvaged Aladdin lamp. The former casino map point remains on the Strip, not at the museum.
  • The former-site point is a rounded representative vicinity within the redeveloped resort grounds, not the original tower, casino-floor walls, entrance or a surveyed parcel.

This site through time

Replaced by Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino

2000

The original Aladdin closed in November 1997 and most of its buildings were removed in 1998. A rebuilt Aladdin opened on the grounds in August 2000, retaining and remodeling the performing-arts theater. That later resort became Planet Hollywood in 2007 through renovation and a name change. This is a rebuilt successor with a surviving theater, not an unchanged 1966 hotel renamed Planet Hollywood.

Historical source — UNLV PH-00184 Historical Note distinguishes original resort, 1998 demolition with retained theater/sign, August 2000 successor and 2007 Planet Hollywood name. Contemporary April 28, 1998 demolition report and August 18, 2000 actual opening report corroborate rebuilding. Caesars December 19, 2013 theater account traces the surviving venue to July 1976. Primary BH/RE 2004 filing establishes completed purchase September 1, 2004, correcting the institutional summary’s loose 2003 sale wording.

  • 2000 is the rebuilt successor’s opening year, not the original closure or demolition date.
  • The theater was retained and remodeled; this does not mean the old hotel tower or entire original casino footprint survived.
  • A later Criss Angel Theater is distinct from the retained performing-arts venue now called PH Live.
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