Minus5 Ice Bar & Experience - LINQ

Minus5 Ice Bar sits on the LINQ Promenade, the open-air run of shops and bars alongside The LINQ Hotel & Casino, wedged between Brooklyn Bowl and In-N-Out Burger. Inside, around 100 tons of carved ice form the walls, the bar top, the seats, the sculptures, and the cup your cocktail arrives in, all held at a steady 23°F. A parka and gloves come with every ticket; the faux-fur coat, the souvenir photos, and the drink bundles are upsells pitched at the door, and drinks cost extra on the basic ticket. The carvings change every few months, so the room might be themed around casino games one visit and something entirely different the next.

Know what you're buying: this is a novelty bar with a cover charge, not a half-day attraction. Most visitors are photographed, chilled, and back out in the desert heat within 45 minutes, and there's no food to stretch the stay. Still, walking off a baking Strip sidewalk into a freezer full of ice sculptures is a genuinely good gimmick, and drinking from a cup made of ice lands better than it sounds. Families are welcome until 9 PM — there are mocktails and frozen hot chocolate for kids — after which the room flips to 21-and-over. Of the three Minus5 rooms in Las Vegas (the others sit in the Grand Canal Shoppes and Mandalay Bay), this is the largest, which mostly means more to look at while your drink slowly melts.