Excalibur Hotel and Casino opened on June 19, 1990, bringing a brightly colored castle to the southwest corner of Tropicana Avenue and the Strip. Circus Circus Enterprises built the resort around an imagined Camelot: towers, turrets, courtly characters and jousting made the theme visible before guests reached the casino.
Opening the castle
The opening was a public spectacle in its own right. Contemporary UPI reporting describes Governor Bob Miller and Circus Circus chairman William Bennett cutting the symbolic ribbon with a replica sword, followed by crowds entering amid balloons, musicians and costumed performers. With more than 4,000 rooms, Excalibur was then presented as the world’s largest hotel. That was an opening-era distinction, not a claim about today’s rankings.
A resort for a broad audience
The business behind the fantasy was deliberately broad in appeal. The opening resort combined gaming with arcade games, themed restaurants, motion theaters and a dinner arena. Company executives told the reporter that middle-income travelers were their main market. The castle therefore offered both a memorable image and a way to bring several kinds of entertainment into one large resort.
The unbuilt Xanadu
There had been a different idea for this corner. In the 1970s, developers proposed Xanadu, with designs by Martin Stern Jr. UNLV’s architectural history identifies the proposed location as the later Excalibur site and explains that financing never materialized. Xanadu remained on the drawing board; it was not an earlier operating casino that Excalibur demolished or renamed.
Changes in the company
Circus Circus Enterprises became Mandalay Resort Group in 1999. MGM Mirage acquired that company in 2005, bringing Excalibur into its resort portfolio. Those corporate changes did not turn the castle into the neighboring Luxor or Mandalay Bay. The hotels remained distinct properties even as their owner promoted their connections.
The continuing castle
Excalibur’s rooms and amenities have continued to change behind the familiar frontage. MGM’s 2007 report records room remodeling, while its 2026 fact sheet records a further room refresh in 2016 and continues to identify the resort at 3850 South Las Vegas Boulevard. Tournament of Kings carries the medieval dinner-show idea into the current resort. The April 2018 photograph shows the castle and hotel towers; the gold Mandalay Bay tower visible at left belongs to a separate resort.