VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: The Vinyl Room is on Mandalay Bay’s 63rd Floor

Every official source — from Mandalay Bay’s own website to rooftop bar directories — claims that the Vinyl Room, which opened Saturday (Aug. 8, 2026) in the former Foundation Room space, is located on the resort’s 63rd floor. But Mandalay Bay only has 43 floors.

What gives?

The Phantom 20

Originally, floors 40-59 did not exist at Mandalay Bay, that’s what gives. The numbering jumped from 39 (the top of the Four Seasons Hotel) to 60, skipping 20 floors entirely and hoping that you wouldn’t notice.

Mandalay Bay adopted this mythical numbering scheme from the day it opened (March 2, 1999). In the 1990s, Clark County and FAA regulations tied to nearby McCarran International Airport capped Strip heights on the southern Strip to approximately 500 feet for aviation safety. For Mandalay Bay, that translated into a 43-story tower, 480 feet tall, plus a small antenna spire.

This is Mandalay Bay’s real floor plan:

• Floors 1–30: These are the main guest room floors, housing the majority of the casino resort’s 3,209 rooms.
• Floors 31–34: Originally, these were additional guest room floors. However, after the October 1, 2017 mass shooting, these floors were renumbered to 56–59 to distance the property from the tragedy associated with its then-32nd floor.
• Floors 35–39: These floors house the Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas, a luxury “hotel within a hotel” with its own elevators, check-in, and branding. They are not mislabeled.
• Floors 40–43: These are the rooftop levels, intentionally mislabeled as 60-63. Physical floor 40 houses high-end suites, 41 and 42 house observation areas and lounges, and 43 houses the Foundation/Vinyl Room.

Sorry, fellow devotees of Modern Family, the following scene featuring Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill) counting Mandalay Bay floors was total BS. (Jump to 0:26.)

Size Matters

Misidentifying floor numbers is not uncommon in Las Vegas, where height equates to the illusion of status.

If your room at The Wynn is on the 60th floor, for example, you only have a 48th-floor view. That’s because there are no 40-49th floors at that casino resort or its twin, Encore. Also missing are their 4th and 13th floors.

The 4th and the 40s are banished there because, to many Asian visitors, the number 4 is just as unlucky as 13 is to Westerners. And that’s because it sounds similar to the word for “death.” (Both are transliterated as “si” in Mandarin, and as “shi” in Japanese.)

The following casino resorts are among those guilty of the same deception:

• Planet Hollywood: Labels its top floor as 52, despite being a 38-story building, skipping 13 and 40–49
• Aria: A 61-story hotel with 50 floors
• Resorts World: A 66-story hotel with 55 floors
• The Rio: A 51-story hotel with 41 floors
• The Palms: A 55-story hotel with 42 floors
• Circa: A 60-story hotel with 35 floors

This marketing ploy is effective because guests rarely question whether elevators are lying to them. And, even if they tried counting physical floors from the outside, like Jay Pritchett, this is often difficult due to the “window trick,” This clever illusion merges blocks of up to four room windows into one large pane, making the resort appear a shorter walk away than it really is.

Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. To read previously busted Vegas myths, visit VegasMythsBusted.com. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.