“Exit Through The Gift Shop – A look at Las Vegas Cirque Boutiques”

My wife and I suffer from two weaknesses that, unfortunately for our pocketbooks, coincide – Las Vegas and Cirque du Soleil souvenirs. Every time we’re in Vegas we inevitably devote several hours to visiting the Boutiques of the seven resident Vegas shows to check out their latest offerings. And we always end up buying something at each one, which means our luggage quickly reaches its 50-pound weight limit.

Yet more than once we have fought our way through Las Vegas traffic only to find that the Boutique we were trying to visit wasn’t open yet or, worse, was closed that day. But this need not be your fate! On our last trip in May we thought we’d perform a public service – we’d survey and review the offerings of the Las Vegas Cirque Boutiques for our readers. (If only we were getting paid to write for Fascination!, we could have written the whole trip off our taxes!) Our timing meant that we visited the now-gone Viva Elvis boutique, and haven’t seen how the shop and merchandise will be redressed for Zarkana.

There are several things common to all the Boutiques. They are all managed and staffed by the individual hotels, not Cirque. They are all open fewer hours on their shows dark days. They all have DVD and CD sections which include relatively complete selections from the entire Cirque canon (some better than others). Surprisingly, it isn’t uncommon to find one shows clothing in another shop; you’ll find “O” and LOVE stuff in KA’s shop, “O” stuff is also in Mystere’s shop.

As we have found during all our visits to the Vegas Boutiques, there are items in these shops that aren’t available in Cirque’s online Boutique. So it is gratifying to know that they all can ship purchases! Policies vary, but are generally based on the weight of the package. Expect to pay $12.00 or more for a shipment. They will also take orders over the phone. So if you’ve been jonesing for a Las Vegas Cirque t-shirt but won’t be visiting for awhile, give them a call.

We’ve summarized our findings in an easy-to-read spreadsheet, which can be found HERE (http://goo.gl/8XyYa). It includes shop phone numbers and open hours. We include representative items in our survey. For example, you can see that Zumanity and Mystere have the cheapest programs at $15.00, with “O” the most expensive (and the most recently updated) at $20.00. The BeLIEve program is between editions, the version 2.0 program still hasn’t been printed as of press time. CD’s run $20.00 except for LOVE which is a bit less. DVD pricing varies widely, from $25.00 for Mystere to $43.00(!) for Zumanity. Mug pricing is pretty consistent, at between $12-14.00.

T-shirts are widely variable in designs, colors, sizes, and pricing. There really was no way to do a comprehensive survey or comparison of the style and types of shirts in the various shops. A common trait was to have a standard “logo” shirt available in unisex style for $24.00, with bejeweled womens shirts selling for $40.00. Of late Cirque has taken to charging more for their shirts (two visits back we saw “25th Anniversary” limited edition t-shirts going for $50.00! For t-shirts!). Each shop had a small selection of the designer-fashion Desidual line at their highly inflated pricing, though they do look attractive.

Most of the shops also had small “sale” racks with reduced pricing on older items. The amount in the racks varied, with KA having quite a rack and LOVE not having any we could see.

Below are quick looks at all seven of the Boutiques.

MYSTERE @ Treasure Island
Shop Phone: 702-894-7758
Hours: Noon to midnight, except till 6pm Thu & Fri

The first Cirque Vegas Boutique is also the smallest. But it turns out to have the most interesting show-specific items of all the shops. A small maquette of Alice the snail cost $15.00. They had four different postcards available for $1.00 each. And they had six(!) different character mini-snowglobes for $15.00 each.

“O” @ Bellagio
Shop Phone: 702-693-7909
Hours: 10am-12:30am, except till 6pm Mon & Tue

This tended to have the highest pricing of all the shops, which isn’t surprising considering this is Cirques most popular Vegas production. They had a larger than average CD selection. From time to time they have unique interesting items such as prints or maquettes, though they are priced quite high.

ART OF RICHARD MCDONALD @ Bellagio “O” Lobby
Shop Phone: 702-730-3990
Hours: 10am-11pm, except till 1am Fri & Sat

Situated inside the entryway to the “O” theater, this shop dedicated to sculpture really isn’t a Cirque Boutique per se. Prices here are generally in the “if you have to ask…” range, though they have some smaller pieces that cost less.

ZUMANITY @ New York-New York
Shop Phone: 702-740-3125
Hours: 5:15pm-midnight, CLOSED Wed & Thu

Keeping the most restricted hours with one of the most interesting shop designs is Zumanity. Not only does it wait to open until late afternoon, but it closes completely on the shows dark days of Wednesday and Thursday. Interestingly, they have more various types of clothing than usual. An orange corset would set you back $28.00. The shop has other non-branded items for sale fitting the sensual theme of the show, such as oils, powders, masks, blindfolds, and other sexy stuff.

KA @ MGM Grand
Shop Phone: 702-891-7917
Hours: Noon-11:30pm

With what looks to us to be one of the larger shops, KA has a very wide selection of show shirts. Like “O” they had a good CD & DVD selection. They also had one of the larger “sale” racks in the back of the store. And in an interesting twist, members of MGM Grand’s MLIFE card program at the gold, platinum, or noir levels (the three highest tiers, naturally) enjoy a 10-15% discount!

THE BEATLES LOVE @ Mirage
Shop Phone: 702-792-7729
Hours: 10am-midnight, except till 6pm Tue & Wed

This brightly lit shop features a moderate amount of show-related merchandise, and lots of non-show related Beatles paraphernalia. The wildest items were the $400 throw rugs on the wall. They also have all of the Beatles CD’s for sale at $19.00, though you can get them cheaper through other sources. And, for a show is second in popularity only to “O”, you’d think they would have a more current program (the available program was printed in November of 2010). The shop has the most interesting soundtrack as well, of older and lesser known Beatles tracks.

CRISS ANGEL BELIEVE @ Luxor
Shop Phone: 702-730-5944
Hours: 5pm-midnight Tue, Fri & Sat, till 9:30pm Wed & Thu, CLOSED Sun & Mon

If looks like this shop is in a state of transition. With the most varied hours of all the shops you also get the least “BeLIEve” related material. There was no program available when we visited as we were told it was being revamped and would be available soon. It also opens much later in the day as Zumanity does, and closes on BeLIEve’s dark days.

VIVA ELVIS @ Aria
Shop Phone: 702-590-8723
Hours: 10am-midnight, except till 6pm Sun & Mon

Now closed, we could tell this shop was preparing for the end when we visited in May. The program was the oldest of all the shows, never having been reissued since it was first printed in November of 2009. There was no show merchandise available except for the CD and program. In fact, we got a 30% off coupon inside our ticket envelope which applied to everything in the store except the Disidual clothing. That included the voluminous selection of Elvis CDs and DVDs, which brought the price down to nearly wholesale! The staff commented that after a redesign they would be reopening along with Zarkana, so the only thing that might stay current about this review is the phone number and perhaps the hours.

If we could make one recommendation to Cirque/MGM Mirage based on our observations, it would be to have all the shops open seven days a week. It sure is a bummer to get to a shop with your wallet at the ready only to find it closed for the day!