I am going to be in vegas for a week and so far i would like to say that the bellagio and ceasers are the most well designed casinos. Every other casinos design doesn't seem that well laid out. Ceasers makes you walk a certain way, you have to walk past the slot machines to get to the forums to get to the street. If you come in from the forums, you have to walk past the slot machines to get out.
The belagio is just nice in all the ways that it can be. The entrance is so far from walking distance that most people will take the moving walkways to get back to the street. So you have to walk through the forums, the garden, the crazy glass cieling and then to the moving walkway. YOu get tricked into forgetting that you are in a casino, and they have you.
Shops in a casino used to be a novelty, but now your casino isn't going to get as much traffic without having shops. But you have to have good shops to do this. The aladdin casino has some of the worst shops and there forum is designed to trick you. You can go into there "mall" without seeing a slot machine, but they have tricky signs everywhere trying to fool you.
The wynn casino has some of the best shops around, They only have high quality shops, like manohla blonick or whatever. I think this is because rght across the street is a real mall that has macy's, bloomingdales and neiman marcus. But the shops that they have at wynn are quite good. This casino goes the way of not trying to trick you in anyway and it is very appealing.
Another trick that i hate that only one casino used was the moving walkway into the casino, but not out the casino. The exaliber did this and there walkway out is really long. I remember that ceasers used to do this also, and i am glad that they don't do it anymore. I don't like the excaliber anyways, it reminds me to much of circus circus.