New vice for Vegas: Sloth

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LAS VEGAS -- There's lazy, and then there's Las Vegas lazy.

In increasing numbers, Las Vegas tourists exhausted by the four miles of gluttony laid out before them are getting around on electric "mobility scooters."

Don't think trendy Vespa motorbikes. Think updated wheelchair.

Forking over about $40 a day and their pride, perfectly healthy tourists are cruising around Las Vegas casinos in transportation intended for the infirm.

You don't have to take a step. You don't even have to put your drink down.

"It was all the walking," 27-year-old Simon Lezama said on his red Merits Pioneer 3. Mr. Lezama, a trim and fit-looking restaurant manager from Odessa, Texas, rented it on the third day of his five-day vacation, "and now I can drink and drive, be responsible and save my feet."

The Las Vegas Strip is long past its easily walkable days. Casinos alone are nearly the size of two football fields. That doesn't count the hotel rooms, shopping malls, spas, convention centers, bars and restaurants.

And that's just inside. For tourists who plan to stroll from one big casino to another, there are crowds, construction sites and long stretches of sun-baked sidewalks between.

A tourist could accidentally get some exercise.

"We're seeing more and more young people just for the fact that the Strip has gotten so big, the hotels are so large," said Marcel Maritz, owner of Active Mobility, a scooter rental company whose inventory also includes wheelchairs, crutches and walkers.