Devin Friedman test-drives Marquee, the "highest-grossing nightclub in Las Vegas and very likely the universe," where table service requires you spend between $1,000 and $10,000, depending on the night:
Part of the branding concept at Marquee is: Overwhelm the guest. And when we walked into that main room, we were indeed overwhelmed. Like it physically drew the air from our lungs and then replaced it with something that felt and tasted like vaporized Red Bull. The room had no visible ceiling. It was a clamshelly cavern of a place that glowed reddish and pulsed, with a dance floor at its focal point, layers of bottle-service tables perched around it, and a forty-foot LED screen above the DJ stage. The sound system cost $1.5 million and was built to rock a space as big as Madison Square Garden. Facing the speaker arrays was like walking into a strong headwind.
Seth Stevenson recently described the business model as "the Cheesecake Factory approach to clubbing":
Indeed, Marquee is not even close to the coolest club out there. It’s not exclusive enough (its spaces are huge, so it lets in lots of "muppets"—the club-world term for the unfabulous). It’s not raw enough (its professionalism dictates that it maintain a danger-free environment). It’s not organic enough (it uses hired entertainers and canned routines to spice up the dance floor). But some clubbers seek a more predictable, dependable, reined-in night. Marquee provides this, across multiple locations, and yet still maintains a veneer of hipness by ensuring that celebrities frequent its banquettes. As long as Kanye West is going to Marquee, the venue will be more than cool enough for the thrice-a-year club-goer.
The Dish 