From better seating to a meeting with Manilow, VIP tickets tempt showgoers

Rick Thomas emerges from the wings of the Sahara Theater. Harrison and Aparicio clap, along with about 75 others who purchased tickets to the VIP Tiger Encounter. Only they were allowed — by flashing their white wristbands — to remain after Thomas’ magic show ended.

“You’re going to get closer than you’ve ever gotten to a tiger before,” Thomas says before walking Sampson, Max and Kaos to their cages and instructing the VIPs to form a line onstage.

The VIP treatment in Las Vegas once depended on being, or at least knowing, an actual Very Important Person. Now it requires only sufficient Mastercard room. Premium seats, backstage booze and even celebrity handshakes are available to anyone willing to pay.

Going VIP at “Le Reve” gets you front-row lounge seating, monitors that flash underwater imagery, champagne bottle service and chocolate-covered strawberries. The cost is $202.40 per person, $55 more than the top regular ticket price. When Celine Dion returns to the Colosseum in March, Caesars Palace will charge $1,375 per person for the steepest of three VIP ticket packages. Called Diamond, it includes a seat somewhere in the first five rows, a preshow dinner at an unspecified Caesars restaurant and a $150 voucher to the Celine Dion gift store.

Even for this kind of scratch, Caesars couldn’t compel its headliner to meet you. But a few Vegas VIP packages do offer this component. “Peepshow” sells a postshow audience with star Holly Madison for $100 per person above the regular $65 to $125 ticket price. (This also includes a champagne toast and autographed photo.) Donny and Marie Osmond offer a similar package for $255 (inclusive of a premium ticket), Rita Rudner has one for $90 (also inclusive).

“The meet-and-greet factor is the element that makes it special for people,” says Martin Bergman, Rudner’s husband/producer. “Rita likes doing it before the shows, though, because then when she hits the stage, there are people she recognizes in the audience to whom she’s already spoken.”

Selling personal access to complete strangers is a recent bleedover from the concert touring industry, according to Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert trade magazine Pollstar. Originally frowned upon as “selling out to the man,” Bongiovanni says, minds began changing during the past decade after the Eagles, Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, and even Barbra Streisand experimented with it.

“It just happened kind of quietly over the years and became increasingly open,” Bongiovanni says.

The Strip’s most expensive meet-and-greet is Barry Manilow’s $1,250 Platinum Experience. (He donates its proceeds to school music programs.) It includes a front-row ticket, preshow champagne reception, photo with Manilow and a signed program.

“It was wonderful,” says Manilow “fanilow” Dianne Eyerman, a 59-year-old medical office manager from Palisades Park, N.J., who was granted 10 Mani-lone minutes backstage at Paris Las Vegas in May.

“There’s staff there that takes you one at a time to a private room called the Platinum Room, which is decorated lovely,” Eyerman recalls. “You go in there and he’s there and says, ‘How are you?’ ” (Eyerman reports using her time to “thank him for all the music.”)

Specially priced meet-and-greets are not the Las Vegas norm, however. Even nosebleed ticketholders can meet Penn & Teller, Terry Fator, George Wallace, Matt Goss, Anthony Cools, Human Nature and (at least a tigerless) Rick Thomas for free. These performers — as well as many lesser-known others — always hang around their lobbies after performing.

According to their spokesman, Penn & Teller considered jumping on the paid meet-and-greet bandwagon at one point. “But it just didn’t seem to be in line with the rest our philosophy and Penn & Teller’s enjoyment of meeting fans after each show,” Glenn Alai says, adding: “I think for other shows it’s just a matter of economics. There is no doubt it helps the gross.”

The most basic Vegas VIP package — such as that sold by “Legends in Concert” at Harrah’s Las Vegas for $72.53, $10 more than a regular ticket — offers only a better seat. This package is VIP in name only, since better seats can be had for more money almost everywhere on the Strip.

For all 11 shows he stages in the general-admission V Theater at the Miracle Mile Shops, for example, veteran producer David Saxe calls the front and center section VIP and charges ticketholders $10 to $20 more each.

“They sell before the others,” Saxe says, explaining that female dates drive the sales. “The guys want to impress the women and they say, ‘Fine, we’ll get the most expensive package.’ “

Before 1990, such packages were offered only by maitre d’s and captains, who collected the proceeds from your cupped hand.

“You walked in and a guy sat you in a lousy seat,” Saxe says. “Then you complained and he walked you up closer, depending on your tip.”

Steve Wynn put an end to this gravy train by opening The Mirage with Siegfried & Roy and $60 assigned seating, a price called “unprecedented” by the R-J at the time. (Before that, only one Strip venue assigned seats: the Aladdin’s 7,000-capacity Theatre for the Performing Arts, which opened in 1972.)

A dancer named Lisa escorts Harrison and Aparicio to a taped marker 2 feet from Thomas’ tiger cages. The tourists from Orange County hand a digital camera to a dancer named Mario. (Bill the photographer stands by for any VIPs without cameras. For $15 extra, he’ll take a photo and Thomas will sign it later. Thomas announces that all Tiger Encounter proceeds go toward caring for his six tigers.)

Harrison and Aparicio view the resulting snapshot and say they’re pleased with their VIP treatment. They’re happy they paid $58.95 per ticket, instead of the standard $47.95.

“The only thing I wish is that they had a baby (tiger) so that we could actually touch it,” Harrison says. “But to me, it’s still worth it.”

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.