Adelson’s Marina Bay Sands Casino in Singapore will be Epic!

Building casinos has become somewhat of an arms race where mega corporations set out to top one another with the biggest and most lavish casinos.  And Las Vegas Sands and its CEO Sheldon Adelson are looking to build a casino that they’re hoping will trump the competition.  The casino in question is the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and it’s set to open on April 27th, 2010.  Here’s a look at some of the amazing features the Marina Bay Sands will offer its customers upon opening in late April.

The Everything Casino

As is to be expected, the Marina Bay Sands will house a huge casino floor where lots of slot machines and gambling tables will be offered along with a giant hotel.  And giant is an understatement in regards to the hotel since it will house over 2,500 rooms.  But Marina Bay Sands will be much more than just a hotel and casino.

To start with, the project includes numerous casino restaurants, a convention center that can host over 45,000 delegates, and a lotus-inspired museum (yes Stanley, they’ve got the Grand Lisboa covered!)…and this is only the beginning.  That’s because the Marina Bay Sands will also include a huge shopping mall that features hundreds of stores.

And while all of this would be enough to satisfy most casino projects, Adelson has also made sure that Marina Bay has an element of wow-factor that sets it apart from anything Vegas, Macau, or any other casino city offers – a 3 acre SkyPark that floats above the hotel’s three card-deck-inspired, 55 floor towers.  This SkyPark will offer visitors a breathtaking of Singapore through public observatories in addition to swimming pools, gardens, rooftop restaurants, and nightclubs.  But wow-factor comes at a cost, and Las Vegas Sands is betting that the cost of building Marina Bay Sands will be justified when the doors eventually open.

At what Cost

Building shopping malls and a 3-acre SkyPark inside of your casino is a sure way to attract millions of tourists.  But in the end, there’s a heavy price to be paid for building such an extravagant complex.  Recent estimates put the bill at around $5.5 billion.  This may be conservative and when the dust finally settles hundreds of millions may well be added to this figure.

Aside from the financial costs of building Marina Bay Sands, Las Vegas Sands has also put four years into this project that began back in 2006.  In fact, it took the construction crews working on the complex three months just to lift the pieces of the SkyPark from the ground to the top of Marina Bay’s three towers.

As if this isn’t enough, Singapore’s government has imposed plenty of restrictions on the building of the complex to ensure that it’s more than just a gambling hub – hence the shopping mall, meeting space, swimming pools, and convention center.  But the cost is worth it to Sheldon because his casino will be facing plenty of competition from another large casino resort.

Heavy Competition

The Marina Bay Sands won’t be the only game in town because Resorts World has already gone live.  Resorts World was a $4.7 billion project that includes a Universal Studios theme park to combat everything that Marina Bay has to offer.  Many people believe that the huge casinos can coexist together, and even benefit from each other.  But one thing is clear…both casinos will be hoping Singapore’s ambitious plans to double tourism numbers by 2015 aren’t a pipe dream.

Images below courtesy marinabaysands.com