When you’re at the tables in Las Vegas, next month’s mortgage payment riding on your hunch that the dealer will draw a 7 and bust, scantily clad cocktail waitresses will offer you a complimentary drink to enjoy while you double down. Forgetting for a moment why those drinks are “free,” did you ever wonder how they can pour drinks for hundreds of gamblers spread out over multiple-city-bock long casinos, without having fully stocked bars all over the place or making those waitresses walk hundreds of yards in those insanely high heels?

The answer at the Bellagio and Aria casinos is: Pump Rooms. And when I had the chance to go behind the scenes at both of these hotels recently and stand in their pump rooms, they quickly became my favorite feature. Imagine a room lined with hundreds of liquor bottles of every variety, all primed and ready to flow. Complete with boxes of mixers. It’s like a party room designed by a frat boy.

Mixers in boxes are pumped through tubes running throughout the casinos

Ginger ale, tonic and Sprite ready to meet up with spirits in the glasses of gamblers

This sophisticated, computerized system of pumps and tubes delivers precise amounts of alcohol and mixers, just by pushing buttons coded for each bottle, to beverage guns located in service bars peppered throughout the properties. This lets the bartenders pour drink after drink with minimal waste and no over pour. So not only are the drinks faster to mix and exact each time, but casino management can control costs. And we know how casino management is about costs.

Once the liquid travels 1,000 to 10,000 feet, the bartenders dispense it by pressing buttons on beverage guns

Detailed maps let the bartenders know what is going to come out when each button is pressed

Here are some interesting facts about the pump rooms:

• The systems cost around $250,000 each to install
• There are over 90 miles of liquor tubes running through the walls and ceiling of the Bellagio, and 26 miles of tubes in Aria
• Your drink traveled between 1,000 and 10,000 feet to reach your glass
• It’s all air driven. Pressure in the lines forces the liquid to the guns
• Just one person each shift is needed to keep an eye on the bottles and replace empty ones. And since there are several bottles of each brand attached to the system all the time, there’s no panic if one bottle runs dry
• Popular drinks like Long Island Ice Teas, Margaritas and Mojitos have their own buttons and don’t need to be mixed
• Thick liquors like Baileys Irish Cream can’t make it through the lines and have to be hand poured
• Last year, Aria went through 390,000 bottles of vodka and 100,000 bottles of Jack Daniels
• Distillers make special bottles just to fit the system

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