Via iStockphoto / @rae.thegreat TikTok
Try walking to your hotel in Las Vegas, and you'll end up going for hours without getting any closer. There's a reason.
Anyone who has ever tried to walk in Las Vegas will tell you that the experience is pretty unpleasant. While the city’s various attractions are fun, getting from one to the other basically requires a car or another form of transit. Otherwise, you could be stuck outside in 100+ degree heat as you try to navigate the long journey back to your hotel.
If you decide to tough out the heat and walk, you might be met with one of the city’s peculiar quirks. Specifically, you might wonder why, after hours of walking, you don’t seem to be any closer to your destination. It turns out, there’s a reason for this optical illusion.
The Las Vegas Paradox
In a video with over 14 million views, TikTok user Rae (@rae.thegreat) shows Las Vegas. There’s a hotel in the distance.
“When they say Vegas is the city of illusions, you cannot do nothing but believe them,” she starts.
She then points at the hotel.
“I’ve been walking to this same hotel for over an hour, and I’m not getting any closer. But it’s right there!” she continues.
Rae isn’t the first to point out this optical illusion. Earlier this month, another TikTok user went viral after sharing his similar attempt to walk to his hotel. But why is this experience so common?
Why Does Walking In Las Vegas Take Forever?
The reason why you can walk forever in Las Vegas and get no closer to your destination is simple. In short, your brain is just really, really bad at processing things like Las Vegas—and it’s not just because of the complimentary drinks.
When looking at a landscape, your brain uses apparent size to figure out how far away something is. For example, if you look in the distance and see a tree, your brain can estimate how far away it is by using its stored history of tree sizes and estimating accordingly.
The problem is that there’s nowhere in the world quite like Las Vegas. As a result, your brain hasn’t built up the necessary data to accurately estimate the distance of a building.
For example, your brain might process Caesar’s Palace as simply a big building and thus adjust the mental distance accordingly. In reality, Caesars Palace is a massive building, with ownership claiming that the property occupies 85 acres of land. This difference—the shift between the size in your brain and the size in reality—makes distance hard to estimate.
Consequently, many find themselves dramatically underestimating how far away things are in Las Vegas. This can result in situations like what Rae experienced, where you end up walking an hour and still feeling like you’re not any closer to your destination.
Is There Any Way Around This?
Unless you spend a lot of time in Las Vegas, your brain isn’t going to adapt to this skewed sizing. As a result, you should probably rely on other resources to get an accurate estimate of travel times.
To start, you can use map apps like Google Maps to get an idea of how far away something is and how long it might take to walk there. In Rae’s case, it appears she’s actually relatively close. Google Maps estimates that from her location, which seems to be outside of the Wynn, it should only take about 15 minutes to walk to her destination.
Apart from this, you can also just give up on walking and take advantage of other transportation offerings in the city. On the strip, guests can take advantage of the Las Vegas Monorail. Otherwise, they can use taxis, rideshare, and shuttles and buses where available.
Viewers Say They’ve Been There Before
In the comments section, many users shared the woes of Las Vegas walking.
“I live there and let me tell you you’re like about another hour away,” wrote a user.
“I don’t remember which hotel I was at, but apparently it was connected to the Cesar’s. Well I walked towards the food court of my hotel, and walked in circles for like an hour. I swear I couldn’t find an emergency exit, I couldn’t find a window, there was no signal. There was no workers I could ask. I cried so hard. Completely sober btw,” recalled another. “Somehow I found a random person opening up an emergency door, so I ran out.”
“Yup my uber driver that picked me up from the airport told me this the first time I went ‘something can be in your eyesight, but walking it can take you an hour or more to get there,’” offered a third.
@rae.thegreat I’m literally sooo confused like what is going on
BroBible reached out to Rae via TikTok direct message and comment.