CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) is one of the world's largest conferences with around 140,000 - 150,000 attendees. It is the largest conference hosted by Las Vegas each year. It is covered, in depth, by every major technology news outlet along with thousands of content creators. In fact, if you are reading this article, you've probably already watched or read dozens of articles or videos covering all the new, cool and bizarre tech coming down the pike. There is likely nothing that I could show or describe that hasn't already been covered by a dozen others.
So, instead, I'm going to provide you a first-time attendee's experience... the good, bad and ugly... from the registration and arrival process through check-out and departure. I'll talk about what we did wrong (a lot), what we did right (very little) and how much you might expect to spend ($$$$) should you decide you want to attend yourself at some point.
Disclaimer: What I cover here is based on our personal experience. Everyone (almost) that we spoke to from CTA (Consumer Technology Association), volunteers, shuttle drivers... even hotel staff... were always extremely helpful and friendly. Some of the not-so-good experiences were of our own doing and due to lack of prior experience.
If you just want to get a feel for the overall experience, I have a video of our experiences over on YouTube: First Time at CES: Is the Tech World's Biggest Show Worth It?
TL;DR
- Everything in Vegas cost 2x to 3x what you'd pay at home (or more)
- You will walk a LOT... despite the shuttles, trams and monorail
- Every place is crowded and plan on standing in line for nearly everything
- While called the "Consumer" Electronic Show, it isn't really meant for consumers or small-time content creators like myself.
Registration Process
CES is not open to the general public. You must have some sort of role in the technology industry to receive credentials to attend. Fortunately, there is a category for media, that include content creators like YouTubers. Now, there are minimum requirements in terms of views, subscribers, etc. but the application process was pretty easy and handled completely online. You include a passport-style photo that will be shown on your badge as part of the application. Within a couple of days, I received confirmation that my application had been accepted. Luckily, there is also a category for support staff, so Mrs. Resinchem applied as my "videographer" and was accepted as well!
Having yellow, or "media" badges, would come with some distinct advantages, but I'll cover that a bit later.
Oh.. and one other important point. As media, there is no cost to attend the conference itself.
Lodging and Flights
This is where we made our first couple of mistake... and they turned out to be a big ones! I was so excited about getting accepted, that as soon as I received confirmation, I was immediately online and booking flights and our hotel. There were numerous 'official conference hotels' with discounts, so I opted to book through the CES web site. Later, I would download and install the official app with all the sessions and locations, but at this point, all I had was the official acceptance letter:
This showed multiple sessions occurring in Mandalay Bay. Mandalay Bay was also one of the official hotels, and since we had stayed there in the past and loved the hotel, I booked our rooms. What I failed to notice (and would discover later) is that Mandalay Bay was the host for only the pre-conference sessions. After these pre-conference sessions, the majority of primary conference would occur in the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Venetian (although there were displays/sessions in other hotels as well, but most were on the northern end of the strip.
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| Click to enlarge - I'll refer back to this map multiple times |
This meant we'd end up staying in the hotel the furthest possible distance away from the convention center! And if you've never been to Vegas, there is no such thing as a "straight line" between two points. Everything is designed to 'funnel' you through the casinos. Even the signage is confusing and often leads you in circles within the casino. Just for a sense of scale, walking from the Mandalay Bay lobby to the monorail at the rear of MGM Grand was two miles... one way! I'll come back to the monorail (and the Mandalay Bay tram) in a moment, but once I discovered that most events would be on the far northern end of the strip, we added 5-day monorail passes to our registration. The nice part is that this was printed directly on your badge, so the badge served as your ticket for riding the monorail.
Our second big mistake was our arrival and departure dates. The 'official' date of the conference was from Tuesday - Friday. So I opted to book flights to arrive on Monday and depart on Saturday. But what I overlooked in my rush to book were the two days (Sunday, Monday) BEFORE the official conference that were exclusively for media. If you look above, you see that these sessions allowed media to view, meet and interview many of the vendors before the main show started. As it was, we arrived just as these sessions were concluding. Turns out, this would severely limit my ability to speak directly with many of these vendors... and many of the videos you may have seen from others were likely shot during these media days.
Food and Drink Costs
I have to break this out into its own section. The days of cheap buffets on the Strip are long gone! Everything is extremely costly... even for 'resorts'. Average cost of a cup of coffee is around $8.00. In fact, here is a receipt for just a burger and fries (no drink) from a Johnny Rockets - tip 'automatically' added:
And these sorts of elevated prices were across the board.... even the food trucks outside of the convention center averaged around $15-$20 for a sandwich. There wasn't even a "free" coffee maker in the hotel room... coffee was part of the "mini-bar"... I didn't bother to look up the price!
Pretty much any sort of sit-down meal in a 'midrange' restaurant costs between $50-$100 each. If you want something like a steak, plan on $80-$100 per person. We would discover some "free" options via the CES media lounges... but that wasn't until day 3! To be honest, I was surprised you didn't have to insert a dollar to use a drinking fountain! Many restaurants didn't even offer free water... water came in a bottle for $3-$4!
Day 1 - Arrival
The flight from Indianapolis to Las Vegas went off without an issue, arriving only about 20 minutes late. But this 20 minutes would actually end up costing us nearly a whole day of the conference. You'll see why in a bit.
A really nice touch was that there were numerous CES booths in the baggage claim area were you could pick up your badge right at the airport. Turns out this would be the shortest line we'd stand in all week and we had our badges before our luggage even arrived. So we were off the plane and out of the airport pretty quickly.
There are shuttles that run from the airport to various strip hotels that cost $10/person. But one advantage of staying at Mandalay Bay is that it is the closest major strip hotel to the airport. A cab ride was a fixed $21 vs. $20 for the two of us to take the shuttle, so we opted for a cab. However, there was about a 30 minute wait in the taxi line. This, in combination with the 20 minute flight delay was the killer in obtaining tickets to the Lenovo keynote on Tuesday night. This was the "hot" ticket of the conference, as it would take place inside the famous Las Vegas Sphere (a bucket list item for me). Tickets were being offered to media on Monday inside Mandalay Bay... but only until 2:30 pm. Despite making a beeline for the tickets the moment we arrived at Mandalay Bay, we arrived 30 minutes late and would have to try to score tickets the next morning when they would be available at multiple locations at 10:30 am. But according to the individual who was still closing up at Mandalay Bay, the line had been extremely long and had started queuing up nearly 2 hours before tickets were made available. So getting a ticket was going to be a priority for Tuesday morning.
Since all the pre-conference sessions had concluded and the official conference (and exhibit halls) had yet to open, we decided to head off for an evening keynote by AMD, which was taking place in the Venetian. It would (we thought) also give us a chance to verify our monorail tickets and get our bearings a little bit.
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| Photo from outside Mandalay Bay |
To board the monorail, we had to walk from Mandalay Bay to MGM Grand. Then try to navigate through MGM Grand to the monorail station at the rear. The walk to MGM Grand was only about a mile, but due to the lack of adequate signage inside MGM, trying to find and navigate our way to the monorail added another mile to the journey. So the walk from the lobby of Mandalay Bay to the monorail entrance was right at two miles. But we'd find some shortcuts later.
Once on the monorail (our badges worked out fine for boarding), we had to exit at Harrah's as it was the closest station to the Venetian.
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| Click to enlarge |
But this meant that we had to navigate our way through the Link/Harrah's from the backside back out to the strip... again, based on skimpy signage. Then up the strip to the Venetian and then navigate back through that hotel/casino to the convention center. We arrived approximately 30 minutes prior to the keynote start time only to be told that it was completely full and we could watch a livestream! I could have done that from my hotel room!
Being that there were no other sessions and no exhibit halls were open yet, we really had nothing else to do but start the long reverse journey back to Mandalay Bay. Fortunately, someone did tell us about a free tram that runs between Excalibur and Mandalay Bay that saved us about a mile of walking.
But even with the tram, our first day in Vegas resulting in a total walking distance of 8.6 miles! Even with tennis shoes, our legs and feet felt the pain!
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| Mrs. Resinchem's foot after Day 1 |
Day 2 - Lenovo Keynote
The priority for day 2 was to get our hands on tickets to the Lenovo keynote. Based on what happened with the AMD keynote and the fact that the Sphere only seats around 18,500 yet there were around 148,000 attendees, the likelihood of a sell-out was extremely high. And it was unknown how many tickets had already been distributed during the preceding media days or reserved by Lenovo and sponsors.
Tickets were scheduled to be available starting at 10:30 am at numerous locations, including multiple distribution points in the convention center (but no longer in Mandalay Bay) so we were up early and headed out towards the convention center. Unfortunately, the tram that runs from Mandalay Bay to Excalibur doesn't start running until 10 am, so we once again hiked the two miles through MGM Grand to the monorail. Fortunately, the monorail does make a stop at the convention center.
We arrived by 8:30 am and immediately made our way to one of the distribution points only to find that a very long line had already formed.
Video shot 90 minutes prior to ticket distribution
Knowing that there were multiple distribution points with lines likely similar to the above, I was really concerned that tickets would be gone before we reached the front of the line. But fortunately, after a full two hours of waiting in line:
We scored our two tickets! Whew! Now, info on the show listed that the show started at 5 pm, doors would open at 3:30 pm and queuing up would not be allowed before 2:30 pm. So we figured we'd try making an initial pass through an exhibit hall and grab some lunch before heading off to the Sphere.
Now, you have to understand that this convention is so large, with so many exhibitors, one exhibit hall isn't nearly enough! The convention center alone had three massive exhibit halls. Then there were additional exhibit spaces in other locations like the Venetian. I'll cover my experience in the exhibit halls soon, but the hour or so we had wasn't nearly enough to cover half of one of these halls, so we'd have to return later.
We grabbed some lunch from one of the multiple food trucks outside the convention center ($21.95 for a simple pulled pork sandwich - yeah, from a food truck!) and figured we better start working our way towards the Sphere as we didn't know how long it would take to get there... since it seemed that to get from any point A to any other point B in Vegas always took at least an hour!
To get to the Sphere, we had knew that there was a bridge from the Venetian (we had seen signs the previous night when trying to attend the AMD keynote), so we'd have to make our way back over there. We could either get back on the monorail (and make the long walk back through Harrah's) or we could try one of the free CES shuttles that ran between the convention center and other show locations, including the Venetian. Figuring the shuttle would get us closer to our destination, we chose that option only to arrive and find a line nearly as long as the line for the Sphere tickets! Fortunately, they had dozens of full size buses lined up so the line moved pretty quickly.
The shuttle dumped us right outside the Venetian Expo convention center. From there, we'd just need to follow the signs (ha!) to find the bridge to the Sphere. But as soon as we reached the entrance, numerous digital signs had been updated to say that all access to the Sphere would be through the entrance on Sands Avenue. I guess they wanted all attendees to use a single entrance. So we once again started a hike. Even though we were still an hour prior to 'queue up' time, we wanted to get close and then we could find something else to do.
Luckily, we were able to follow the crowd at this point. Despite arriving a by 2 pm (and queuing wasn't supposed to start until 2:30 pm), a long line had already begun to form outside the Sphere. So, once again, we jumped in line. Another 1 1/2 hours of standing in line and we were finally admitted to the Sphere.
Now, the lobby alone was impressive with a lot of displays and hands-on exhibits. So there was plenty to do in the hour and a half before the show began. What's more, all concessions were open... and free! This included drinks!
Once we took our seats, we begin hearing rumors that Gwen Stefani was going to perform after the keynote. This was news to us and as far as we know, this wasn't published anywhere. Not really my type of music, but what the heck!
Now, if you are reading this article, odds are you've already heard everything there is to hear about the Lenovo keynote and the announcements made. And of course, nothing I could show in photos (or even in video) would do the Sphere justice and provide any indication of what it was like to be there in person. But here are a few photos anyway just to provide a sense of scale (click to enlarge any photo).
All I can say is that the visuals and audio were absolutely amazing. An interesting presentation by the Sphere showing off some of the capabilities and talking about the special camera that was developed (18K resolution... apparently higher than the eye can detect) really showed off what could be done. Add to it the haptic seats that could be vibrated in sync with the show and it was quite the immersive experience and I highly recommend it!
The keynote itself lasted about 2 hours. Then after a short break, Gwen Stefani took the stage. I was expected a few songs, but she performed for well over an hour. All told, the Sphere "experience" lasted almost four hours! Add in the amount of time we stood in lines or getting to the venue and we spent over 10 hours of the first day just related to this single keynote. Was it worth it? For me, absolutely! Although I did hate losing an entire day that could have been spent in sessions or the exhibit halls.
After this, we started the long trek back to Mandalay Bay... through the Venetian, out to Las Vegas Boulevard, into and through Harrah's and the Linq to the monorail, through MGM Grand over to Excalibur... but luckily the tram to Mandalay Bay was still running, which saved us the final mile.
All in, day two walking distance: 9.1 miles!
Day 3 - Exhibition Halls
We decided to make day 3 primarily about the exhibit halls. I wanted to speak to some vendors and maybe get some video, specifically around products that my YouTube channel viewers might like. So, I'd be on the lookout for smart home products and particular vendors, like Espressif, Aqara, etc. along with anything else interesting. I had no idea what I was in store for.
But luckily, after digging in to the CES conference app, we discovered that there was a CES shuttle that departed in the mornings from Mandalay Bay straight to the convention center! It only ran for a few hours in the morning and then in the reverse direction for a few hours in the late afternoon. But it saved us multiple miles of walking and got us to the convention center much quicker!
However, once we arrived at the convention center and entered our first exhibit hall, we found this:
And if you've read or watched any other content covering CES, you well know that everything was about artificial intelligence! AI was everywhere and in everything!
Heck, even blow dryers and curling irons had AI built-in! We were hard-pressed to find a booth or product that didn't have AI slapped on it somewhere. And there were a lot of 'wearables', along with the obligatory TVs and other consumer electronics.
I'll cover more about what I would have done differently towards the end, but we simply couldn't find many of the things I had already seen posted online (like 3D printers). Maybe they were in a different venue. Who knows? The exhibit halls were so massive (and there were so many spread out in different locations), it's not surprising we didn't run into a lot of cool things to see.
Oh... and I did eventually find Espressif (makers of the ESP8266 and ESP32) but they weren't on the main exhibit floor. Instead, I found them listed in the CES app and found that they had a separate meeting room in the convention center. Cool! I thought I'd find a large display. Instead, the meeting room was tiny... not much bigger than a closet where you might store cleaning supplies!
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| Click to enlarge |
But they did have their latest and upcoming chips on display, with the ESP32-E22 and H4 potentially being the most interesting. They also had AI (of course) and a number of other new potential products on display.
After about a 30 minute wait, I was able to finally speak to an Espressif representative. I thought the AI speaker might be adaptable as a Home Assistant local AI speaker. To be honest, language barriers interfered with our conversation (something I found often at many booths), so I think it might be possible, but I can't be sure.
We did attend a few speaker sessions. While there were interesting tidbits, I found that many talks were targeted towards large industry or even those targeted towards media were all about marketing, monetization, branding and growing your business... which really isn't what my channel or content are all about. But there were still a few take-aways. There was one session, late in the day at 6 pm, that I did want to attend. This was labeled as "Smart Home Meetup". I had been keeping an eye out and hoped to maybe bump into one of the creators that I (and likely many of you) also follow... Shane Whatley, Reed from Smart Home Solvers, or even Paul Hibbert or one of a half dozen or so others that I knew were attending. If anywhere, I thought I might bump into one or more of them at this session.
But seeing as this "meetup" provided free food, beer, wine and other drinks, it quickly filled to capacity within minutes. And based on "badge type", that's what most people were there for. Not only did I not see anyone I knew, but my attempts to bring up Home Assistant to a half dozen or so people were met with blank stares like I was speaking a foreign language. We left after about 30 minutes (and after snagging our meal for the evening!). Turns out that I wouldn't see another YouTuber that I knew the entire time.
So, we once again began the long trek back to Mandalay Bay via monorail and tram.
Total distance walked for day three: 8.8 miles (at this point, we had walked more than 26.2 miles... the distance of a marathon!).
Day 4 - Aria Sessions
Day 4 featured numerous panels and speaker sessions focused on creators. These were all scheduled in the Aria, which was only about a 2.5-3 mile walk from Mandalay Bay. Unfortunately, there were no direct shuttles to the Aria and the tram didn't start until 10 am, but we knew that even if we walked one way and used the tram for the return trip, we'd still only log around 4-5 miles, which would be our shortest distance so far... and our legs and feet could use the break!
So we walked out of Mandalay Bay only to be met by 40-50 mph winds! It literally pushed you up the sidewalk. Now, I've experienced high winds here in Indiana, but these are normally during a storm of some sort. After less than a half block, we knew that trying to walk 2+ miles in this high wind wasn't going to work. So we turned around and ended up paying for a $20 cab ride for the 3 miles to the Aria.
We attended a few sessions, and while they were interesting and maybe there was a useful tidbit or two, I had been hoping for sessions about topics like creating better or more engaging content... maybe tools that could help in the creation process, etc. But nope... these sessions were all about one thing: Money!
The sessions focused on branding, monetization, advertising, merchandizing and using ad agencies (which conveniently were the presenters) to make more money. Personally, my YouTube channel and this blog are a hobby and about helping out others. I have no desire at all to become the next Mr. Beast... and that's more or less what these sessions were about. By noon, we were done. Eventually we decided to get tickets and see Brad Garrett (formerly Robert on Everybody Loves Raymond) at MGM Grand that evening. He was hilarious by the way... improvising nearly his entire act by interacting with the audience. But that's not part of the official conference, so I'll move on.
Total distance walked for day 4: 4.7 miles
Day 5 - Exhibition Halls
On the final day, there weren't any sessions (well, one on governmental regulations) and it was obvious from the hotel lobby that a lot of folks were heading home. We figured this might be a good opportunity to revisit the exhibition halls at the convention center, with the hope that they might be less crowded.
Having learned from past experiences, we took the free CES shuttle directly from Mandalay Bay to the convention center. And as hoped, the exhibition halls were much less crowded and much more manageable. On the flip side, many exhibitors had already closed up or were in the process of tearing down. But many were still open and it turned out to be the best day that I had for talking to vendors and capturing video. You can see snippets of a few of these this in the linked video. But by noon or so, most everything was shutting down, so we slowly worked our way back to the hotel, stopping at various shops along the way.
(Plus we wanted to be back to the hotel in time to see the IU Hoosiers play the Oregon Ducks!)
Day 5 Walking Distance: 6.3 miles
Total Distance Walked for 5-day Conference: 37.5 miles!
Day 6 - Departure and Return Home
We had an early flight, so we needed to be up and out of the hotel by 5 am. Flights were on time, so nothing really to report here... other than I woke up a bit under the weather (which made for a miserable 4 hour flight home) and, not surprisingly, picked up the flu bug after spending 5 days around 148,000 people crammed into tight spaces!
Total Costs
Now, this could vary greatly depending upon lodging, airfare and food options, but here is what we spent for the two of us to attend CES:
|
Conference
Attendance |
Free* |
|
Airfare (Southwest
IND -> LAS) |
$525 |
|
Lodging (5 nights
/ Mandalay Bay) |
$1,270 |
|
Food |
$537 |
|
5-day
Monorail Pass |
$76 |
|
Transportation
(cabs) |
$62 |
|
Parking (IND
airport) |
$60 |
|
ESTIMATED TOTAL SPENT |
$2,530 |
*There were paid tracks available for attending certain sessions, along with options for things like guided tours, etc. but we did not purchase any of these so our cost to attend the conference itself was $0.
Again, if you choose different lodging or take more advantage of free food opportunities (we discovered during day 3 that there were various sponsored 'media lounges' where you could get free snacks, coffee and even vouchers for lunch), your costs may vary widely from ours. But it should give you a sense of what you might spend to attend. This doesn't include additional entertainment (like the comedy club) or other expenses that we had outside of the actual conference itself. All in, we probably spent close to $3,000.
Would I Do It Again?
The short answer is maybe... some day. But not again anytime soon. As I mentioned, it may be called the "Consumer" Electronics Show, and even though most of the products exhibited are targeted toward consumers, the conference and content really isn't meant or designed for consumers. Think of it more as an industry trade show. And if you are just a tiny little content creator like I am and not a major media outlet like CNET or Engadget, your one-on-one access to the vendors is a battle of fighting the herd. To be completely honest, I learned more from watching/reading the coverage from other media outlets than I learned from being their in person! And I could have saved $3,000 and our feet by just watching from home.
Don't get me wrong... seeing all the technology in person was amazing! And when I did get the rare opportunity to try some hands-on demos, it was pretty cool.
But these opportunities were limited and pretty much occurred on the final day of the conference. While exciting, amazing at times, and definitely something I can cross off my bucket list (I had wanted to attend for years), I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon. And if I do, I'll do things a lot differently next time.
What I'd Do Different
If I were to attend again, or if you are considering going for your first time, then this section is for you! These are the things I'd do different if attending as media again.
- Select a better lodging location
While Mandalay Bay is a very nice hotel (and we have no complaints... other than no free coffee in the room), it is located at the far south end of the strip while most of the convention activities, after the pre-conference sessions at Mandalay Bay, take place at the convention center and hotels located on the north end of the strip. Staying on the north end of the strip would have saved substantial time and wear and tear on our feet and legs.
- Arrive one (or even two) days earlier
We missed the two days prior to the start of the conference that was limited to media only. This included the opportunity to see a lot of the new technology and to meet with vendors prior to the main show.
We should have arrived on Sunday and departed on Friday and would have had many more opportunities to go hands-on with some of the new tech.
- Arrange Meetings with Key Vendors ahead of the conference
As a channel that generally doesn't do sponsored videos or product reviews, I didn't have established relationships with vendors, as opposed to someone like Paul Hibbert who almost exclusively does product reviews. If you watch his videos, you'll see that he has arranged meeting with the vendors and was able to interview and shoot his video at times when the exhibit halls generally weren't open to everyone else (you can tell by the lack of crowds in most of his inteviews/demos).
I did receive a number of emails from vendors prior to the conference offering meetups or individual interviews, but these were mostly from vendors that have products that make no sensor for my channel or viewers.
I also should have reached out ahead of time to other creators I hoped to bump into to see if they had any planned meet-ups. I was a bit surprised to not see Home Assistant/Nabu Casa represented, but found out after-the-fact that there apparently was some sort of Home Assistant meetup?
- Better Overall Planning
In previous conferences or tradeshows I've attended in the past for my job, I would find key sessions I wanted to attend and allow some time to attend the exhibition hall. That was pretty much the same "plan" I took going into CES. And that was a big mistake as I had never attended a conference that comes anywhere close to the scale of CES. This conference is so large and so spread out, we spent way too much of our "conference time" just getting from one location to another. I should have had a much better plan laid out for each day (and utilized the CES app more) to assure we spent less time 'traveling' and more time actually attending sessions or the multiple exhibit halls.
Final Thoughts
While it might seem like I am doing a lot of 'complaining' in this article, many of the issues we experiences could be solved with better planning and some previous experience on our part! But as I've mentioned a couple of times before, this conference really isn't targeted towards a tiny content channel like mine. I'm still glad we went... and might go again sometime in the future... but this certainly isn't a conference I'll be putting on my "must attend" list every year. Hopefully this will provide a little light for anyone out there that might be considering attending themselves.
As always, thanks for reading and let me know if you have any thoughts or have attended CES in the past and how your experience went.
Links and Additional Information
Video Highlights (YouTube)
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