It is surprising how many people living in the UAE are eager to visit Las Vegas.

No need to make that 20-hour trip.

All the locals need do is check in to Atlantis The Palm in Dubai, and they can enjoy the whole of the mainstream Las Vegas experience — aside from the gambling, that is. And chorus girls.

Atlantis is everything the most garish and over-the-top Las Vegas hotels are. Too big, too expensive, already sliding towards “tatty”, too hot for most of the year, charging too much for meals and for any additional activity, from massages to tours.

Yet people still come here, including me, for the first time.

Atlantis is the biggest hotel (1,539 rooms in the UAE, twice as big as any other hotel here) at the “top” of The Palm — a landfill in the Gulf shaped like a palm tree. Regular upscale folks live on the “fronds”.

Since the hotel opened, in 2008, it has held pride of place among the dozen or so Dubai landmarks your basic tourist will want to see.

Not so much, anymore, though.

Dubai continues to build hotels at a frantic pace, and many of their rooms are newer than those in Atlantis — which, again, look like your basic Las Vegas room, right down to the “no clocks in the place” bit.

Atlantis is beginning to look a bit worn: A chair I was sitting on in the lobby had so many miles on it that the fabric on the arms had turned shiny and thin.

It has 23 restaurants and bars, two major pools, a huge aquarium (65,000 marine animals), 3,000 employees and it serves 15,000 meals a day.

Nobu is the prime eatery, but you would be hard pressed to get out of there for $100 a person.

One difference from a Vegas hotel (besides the fact that Las Vegas hotels tend to be bigger yet) is that alcohol here is expensive. A smallish mojito costs $16 in the Barazurra. In Las Vegas, the idea seems to be that alcohol should be cheap, so that liquored-up visitors can then lose a batch of money at the gaming tables.

The Atlantis  has rooms overlooking the Gulf, and we were in one. The view was nice during the day, when we could see the water.

The other side of the hotel looks back toward Dubai, and there is a bit of beach there, but at the moment it faces on unsightly construction, across a narrow waterway, and part of the beach is boarded up.

The clientele here is middle-brow or lower, from our encounters. Odd to see so many people who do not seem particularly refined staying at a hotel where the booking.com rate for a basic offseason room is about $500 and does not include breakfast. (The hotel is listed as “five-star” and is listed as one of the “one of the most expensive in the world”.

Maybe the global economy is better off than I thought.

I don’t have a “bucket” list and if I did the Atlantis would not be on it. But now I have been here, and I can with assurance say that if you do not like the “mob scene” hotel experience (think MGM Grand on fight night), stay away.

But if you like bumping into people from around the world, and perhaps two or three of their kids, and can afford maybe $700 a day — just on a room and meals for one … then you might just love the place.

Don’t miss the water park next door. It has what they claim is “the world’s biggest water slide”.

And here is the hotel’s home page, if you want to see everything with a positive spin.