This Secret Spot Has the Best View of the Sphere in Las Vegas

People are willingly paying to park for an unobstructed photo of the Sphere.

There is little doubt about how much of a visual impact the Sphere has had on Las Vegas. In a city of bright neon, the Sphere opened with a bang of its own on the Fourth of July when it turned on the lights and claimed ownership of the skyline over the Las Vegas Strip.

The massive glowing LED orb, which is 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide, has projected smiley-faced emojis and swirling abstract graphics and transformed itself into a giant basketball, a Halloween jack-o-lantern, and so much more. It’s also become the world’s largest billboard. And we can’t say we blame them for taking in some advertising dollars. It costs a pretty penny to keep the colossal globe glowing overnight.

The Sphere is visible nearly anywhere in the city — from an airplane seat approaching Harry Reid International Airport to a hilltop in Red Rock Canyon, 20 miles away. But what’s most surprising (or perhaps not in this social media age) is the extremes people are going to capture the perfect Instagram moment of its glowing glory.

All you need is a good vantage point to check it out — and for some, that’s worth paying a few dollars for. And several parking garages in the neighboring Hughes Center just happen to have some of the best up-close, elevated views of the Sphere’s nightly projections.

“We just started getting crowds and crowds of people every single night. They were just showing up on campus here, wanting to tailgate,” Brandon Myers, general manager of LAZ Parking, the company that manages the seven-garage lot, told Travel + Leisure. “You can kind of see it from all over town, so we didn’t think people would actually be willing to pay to sit and watch it. It definitely took us by surprise but became very normal to us very quickly.”

The complex has 4,300 parking spaces and during the day most are reserved for employees and tenants. When interest grew, LAZ Parking opened the lot to the public charging between $25 and $40 depending on the event. Visitors taking in the 50-minute Postcard from Earth show pay less than those parking for a U2 concert, for example.

But it has become a spectacle that now attracts tour buses and visitors nightly. Myers' advice on the best time to see the Sphere? “Right after sunset when the sky’s all those pretty colors,” he said. “I think those are the coolest photos I’ve seen so far.”

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