Oh, my, oh, my! I just got a picture of someone over one of the water cannons when they shoot up 30 stories high. That would be some kind of thrill ride.

Camille

Give it a go...

Hopefully they give you some internet time in the pokey to report back!

No, you can't

In fact that is the only place in vegas, where you are not permitted to swim.

The place that you can swim, and is highly recommended, is:

Bellagio's Shark reef

This is a true story: While in a lakeview room at the Bellagio a few years back we glanced out our window and spotted a small watercraft in the fountain lake, and 2 SCUBA DIVERS! swimming! around in and around the fountain jet thingys. We were wondering if it was part of a new adventure pass they offered priveledged guests ;-)..it turned out, after asking the staff, that they were just fixing some of the fountain jets. Well, looked like it could be a fun job....until I remembered that the water in there is recycled bathroom water from the hotel! :-0 YUCK!

The fountains do no use reclaimed or "sewer" water....

The water comes from an on-site fresh water well which was drilled decades ago (it would never be allowed today) to water the Dunes Golf Course that covered the property from where the Bellagio is today to the Monte Carlo.

It is clean, potable water from the large aquifer which underlies the Vegas valley.

I could have sworn I had heard that they did recycle their water for the fountains.

I just found this article which helped me understand how I confused the process:

http://www.aldrichpears.com/news/newsdlc.html which states:

"the Bellagio's fountain, as ostentatious as it seems, is actually a model of sustainability. The hotel taps runoff water that is trapped beneath the desert but blocked from getting back into the city's aquifers.

The fountain water is then used to flush toilets and water its lawns, and when it goes down the drain, is recycled in the city's state-of-the-art treatment system as fresh water for the city."

So, it is the other way around from how I had it, I guess, first the water goes into the fountain and THEN it goes into the toilets...and then it is treated as "fresh water" for the city. Ok, so either way: YUCK. hahah!

I'm actually glad the are recycling and was only saying YUCK the first time because people were scuba diving in it. ;-)

Even if the water is recycled, that process is so much improved in last years, that is 100% clean, and you can actually drink that water, and is much safer than the filtered water that people buy for 25 cents a gallon

Shark Reef is at Mandalay Bay. I prefer to use the water in the front of the Mirage. You can stand in the water near the volcano (for the sauna sensation) and then do some laps in the rest of the water. Very refreshing!

Sorry VP, I meant MB

If you want to know the scoop, go to the horse's mouth (or some other similarly mixed-metaphor)....

From one of my prior posts.

The Bellagio Fountains are fresh water, serviced for the most part by existing on-site wells that were originally constructed to irrigate the Dunes Golf Course which used to be on the property.

According to J. Cruz, the head of such things for MGM Mirage:

"The Bellagio fountains are mostly using well water that exists beneath the Bellagio landscape. That well water was used previously to maintain a golf course that previously existed there. The beauty of that is the current water use, because of the lake, represents only two-thirds of the water that was used before when the golf course existed, so in reality, the Bellagio uses less water than the golf course that use to be there before.

Some of our properties have their own private wells, for example the Bellagio when it was built in 1997. The company purchased the private well that use to exist there for the golf course and currently that well is used again to supply the needs of the lake in front of the Bellagio."

It is the pond at Treasure Island that is filled with recycled hotel water (but not sewer water from toilets).

The interview is quite interesting, and can be found at:

kued.org/productions/…cruz_jamie.php