'Awakening' Closes at Wynn Las Vegas in October

Wynn spent roughly $150 million building Awakening, a figure that included a full renovation of the theater itself. The show opened with serious creative pedigree behind it: Bernie Yuman, the longtime manager of Siegfried & Roy, alongside show director Baz Halpin and puppet designer Michael Curry, with narration voiced by Anthony Hopkins. The Southern Nevada Hotel Concierge Association later named it Best Production Show, so the acclaim was real.

None of that translated into ticket sales. Awakening was pitched at launch as a show meant to revolutionize live theater on the Strip, a high concept built around technology and spectacle rather than a single headliner or a familiar Cirque du Soleil format. Wynn reportedly lost $150,000 to $200,000 a week on it, and the resort rewrote parts of the script and choreography in early 2023 trying to turn it around.

By this past April, tickets had dropped to around $60, a steep discount for a resident production show built on this scale, and even that price cut wasn't enough to keep it running. A show with this kind of production value usually needs to sell close to full houses at full price to clear its overhead, and discounting that hard for that long is not something a resort does unless the alternative numbers are worse.

Wynn hasn't named the new production yet. In its statement, the resort said only that "Awakening will conclude its run on October 10 as we prepare a new production for the theater," thanking the producers, cast, crew and creative team who worked on the show. No opening date or concept for the replacement has been announced.

If you want to see Awakening, the window is now. The show runs through October 10, and tickets have been going for around $60, cheap by Strip production-show standards. After that date, the theater goes dark until whatever Wynn is building next is ready.

Nothing else about a Wynn or Encore stay changes here. The rest of the resort, the pools, the restaurants, the rest of the casino floor, keeps running as normal. This is one theater swapping out one show for a yet unnamed production, not a broader shake-up at the property.

If a Wynn trip you're planning was not built around Awakening specifically, this closure doesn't change anything about the case for staying there. If it was the reason you picked Wynn over another Strip resort, book the show before October 10 or wait to see what the 2027 replacement turns out to be before locking in a date around it.