The Luxor Spent $375 Million to Build a Pyramid. It Spent $300 Million Trying to Erase It

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Published Jun 25, 2026

A river ran inside a casino. Then they drained it. A king's tomb was rebuilt from scratch, down to a $360,000 authorized replica exhibit. Then they gave it away. Elevators moved sideways through pyramid walls at a thirty-nine-degree angle. They kept breaking down. And in 2007, a company spent $300 million — nearly eighty percent of what the entire building cost to construct — trying to erase everything that made it worth building in the first place.

The Luxor opened on October 15, 1993, as the most ambitious themed resort Las Vegas had ever attempted: a thirty-story black glass pyramid, an indoor Nile River, a forty-two-billion-candela skybeam visible from two hundred and seventy-five miles away, and an atrium large enough to swallow the Empire State Building. It outdrew the actual city of Luxor, Egypt in its first year. Then the casino floor stayed empty, the Nile backed up ninety minutes on a Friday night, and by 1996 the river was drained for good.

This is the story of how a building with one of the most genuine engineering achievements on the Las Vegas Strip ended up spending more to dismantle its own identity than most casinos spend to build one — and why the skybeam that was supposed to be the brightest thing on Earth now fires every night at half power.

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This video covers:
► William Bennett's secret 1991 "Project X" — how Circus Circus decided to compete with the Mirage on scale instead of luxury
► The $375 million pyramid — 39,000 windows, 13 acres of black glass, and elevators that travel diagonally at a 39-degree angle
► The indoor Nile River, the $360,000 King Tutankhamun tomb replica, and the Douglas Trumbull-designed Secrets of the Luxor Pyramid attraction
► Why the skybeam's 42.3 billion candela light show drew moths, bats, owls — and UFO complaints to the front desk
► The 1996 FAA shutdown of the laser shows and the same-year decision to drain the Nile for good
► The string of on-property deaths and incidents that fed the "Curse of the Pyramid" rumors among longtime staff
► MGM's 2007 announcement of a $300 million renovation with one stated goal: remove the Egyptian theme entirely
► The 2008 closure of the King Tut museum and the donation of authorized Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities replica artifacts
► Why the Luxor holds the "Vegas Disadvantage Award" for worst roulette odds on the Strip
► The skybeam today — still firing nightly, now at half power as a cost-cutting measure

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