We started the evening at Commander’s Palace, a gourmet restaurant inside the Desert Passage (circular mall that surrounds the Aladdin Theater). Great New Orleans style cuisine, outstanding service, and accompanying gold card prices. All in all, though, a great experience.

For those unfamiliar with the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, it has a most interesting architecture. The casino is on two levels, for the most part everything is circular, and after two shots of good cognac you have zero chance of finding your way back to your room. And the rooms at the Aladdin are very nice, including “End Cap” suites at the end of each wing.

The Aladdin Theater itself holds about 7,500, so it’s not on the scale of an MGM Grand Garden, however it is significantly larger than the Hard Rock or House of Blues. The moral of this story is “for those in the colonnade and balcony, bring binoculars.” Fortunately, the Godfather was in the second row of the Gold Circle, which equates to about three feet from the stage. Security was extremely tight, so rushing the stage like we did in high school was out of the question.

REO Speedwagon opened the show with several of their number one hits, mostly power ballads like “I Can’t Fight this Feeling” and “Keep on Loving You”. One major difference from the 80’s shows is the addition of some pretty amazing multimedia effects. A twenty-foot high video screen served as the backdrop for an outstanding light and sound show. For the most part REO has maintained the same group members since 1971, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. And there are two other attributes that remained the same over the years. First, half naked girls sweet talking their way into the good seats down fronts, and the guy who shows up late to the concert after nearly drinking himself into a coma, then spills beer all over his neighbors for the duration of the show. This begs the question, “will security kick him out or should the Godfather give him a ruthless gangster slap?”

Each band was supposed to play for 70 minutes. Plenty of time to blast through all of their top ten hits. With twenty-minute breaks between bands to reset the stage, my math tells me that we are looking at four and a half hours for the show. This brings us to several slight disappointments. First, the show started thirty minutes late. I know you guys see yourselves as big time rock and rollers, however five hours in a concert hall is a stretch for all us old (fortyish) guys. Second, the valet situation at Aladdin is pretty challenging. Forget the front valet. When is there NOT a 30-minute wait out front? The Desert Passage valet was much better, but still pretty overwhelmed due to the concert crowd. Finally, figure 30 minutes for using the restroom or getting a drink at the Aladdin Theater.

Styx was up second, and did an admirable job of reeling off their big hits. I remember seeing them at the Mandalay Event Center and not being impressed with the sound. Looks like it was a venue issue, because Styx sounded great at the Aladdin. Scheduled to come on at 10:00 pm, Journey finally made it to the stage at 10:35 pm. The result was a steady stream of people leaving the venue after Faithfully, but before Journey finished the last four songs of their set. For those that have not seen Steve Augeri (he replaced lead singer Steve Perry many years ago), he is a great talent, and does a wonderful job of keeping Journey’s music alive. In the grand scheme of musical entertainment, Journey is still an “A” band.