Mandalay Bay

This guide to Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas follows Circus Circus Enterprises' 1990s scheme, code-named Project Paradise, to bring an ocean to the Strip: 2,700 tons of trucked-in sand, an eleven-acre lagoon, and a wave machine engineered by a Scottish firm called Murphy's Waves. The lagoon and lazy river sit right where you are standing, an ocean built from scratch in the middle of the Mojave.