Chris Mohney is an editor and writer for the "Unofficial Guide" travel series.

I spend the early part of my day checking out the rest of the Palms casino-hotel. The pool is modest by Las Vegas standards, but then it's only half-finished. I need to see the second of the Palms' two nightclubs, a performance venue called Rain in the Desert, but the place will be closed for a private function tonight. And I still have to check out the bar at the Rio casino, among others. Night work is consuming the remainder of my schedule here.

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But since I can't do that now, I use my afternoon to walk the casinos on the upper part of the Strip, looking for unannounced alterations or additions. This week is coincidentally free of big conventions, so the crowds are light (though they'll surely swell when the sun goes down). Not much has changed since last year, though there's a new Colosseum-replica building going up at Caesar's Palace. All of Las Vegas was fearful that 9/11 would kill business here just like it did for travel destinations all over the place, but everyone was surprised that conventions kept Vegas in the black. Business travelers make up more of the biz here than anybody really thought.

John and Paul share the stage again, thanks to the magic of Beatles haircutsLater, I meet up with my boss at the New Frontier casino, the middlebrow place where an Aryan duo called Siegfried and Roy got their start decades ago. No white tigers today, though. Instead, we're here to see Rock 'n' Roll Legends and Daytripper, two of the economy-priced afternoon shows that are getting more and more popular around here. The marquee shows in the evening have gotten so pricey and so hard to get into that more visitors are opting for the less polished but much less expensive early shows.

Rock 'n' Roll Legends is a musical impersonator group grope. The cast shuffles a bit depending on who's available; today, "Jackie Wilson" fills in for "Roy Orbison." The other headliners are Paul McCartney and John Lennon (together and solo), Neil Diamond, and Elvis Presley. Daytripper is a full-court-press Beatles impersonation show, with the twist that all four impersonators are actually playing their instruments. Unfortunately, the Ringo looks a bit too long in the tooth to portray his 1960s doppelgänger (the Paul and John are recycled from Rock 'n' Roll Legends, and it's best not to even mention the George).

The King is only too happy to give you a squeeze, honeybunchNeither show is too bad or too good; they know their place as low-ticket options and play to their strengths. The crowd is a bit listless and nonresponsive—perhaps conserving heat since the air conditioning is blasting even louder than the music. Jackie Wilson runs about and relentlessly mugs, to a few titters from the audience. Paul and John are decent but forgettable; though their vocals are OK, they seem to put most of their dramatic skills into duplicating the Beatle haircuts. The Neil Diamond impersonator seems to be unintentionally going for the slightly drunken, spaced-out Diamond, and he avoids doing the really schmaltzy (and therefore more entertaining) numbers like "Love on the Rocks" and "Heartlight." The Elvis may actually be the worst impression—he sounds not at all like the King, and he looks vaguely like Eric Roberts—but he's also the only one who has a sense of humor about his act, only mock-strumming his guitar and slightly altering lyrics to mock his own non-Elvisness.

This brings us to dinner, and we're just too weary to clomp around another buffet. Instead we hit a steakhouse before heading to our late show of the evening, Cirque du Soleil's O at the behemoth Bellagio casino-hotel. We do take a moment to inspect the Bellagio buffet, as it's supposed to be even pricier and possibly better than the spread at the Aladdin. It does look good—it should, since prices start at $25 for dinner—and it's also the only Vegas buffet I've seen that features buffalo meat. Crab legs are in abundance, of course.

As for O, it's an amazing spectacle involving pretty much every bizarre water-based stunt possible. Before I saw Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba in Orlando, Fla., I was skeptical of whether any Cirque show was worth the high price of admission, usually around $100 and up. I'm a convert now. The sheer athletic rigor displayed by the performers is a real mind-blower when seen live, as is the almost scary clockwork precision with which they execute their extremely complex productions. Cirque shows are also weird enough to leave a portion of the audience scratching their heads, which I'm still just elitist enough to call a good thing. The other Cirque show in Vegas is Mystere, and I'll see that later this week ... can't wait! But tomorrow, I've got several more shows, more hotel inspections, an Elvis museum, and a lunch meeting with a local publisher, so it's time to catch some value-added shut-eye.

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