Well done.
The gold lion is a statue just outside the MGM Grand hotel, Las Vegas (sic).
The light is the Luxor Sky Beam atop the Luxor hotel, a couple of blocks away.
A fun thing to do go to google Maps (or Earth), and then enter "Street View." Place the initial position on one the street intersection on the southwest corner of the MGM grand. Turn around if you need to and find the gold lion. Look which way the lion is facing and go that way (his head is turned a little bit to the right, so if you get confused go by the direction his body is facing). Take that street down a couple of blocks and bingo! There's the Luxor on your right. The gold lion told you where the light is!
At 42.3 billion candela, the
Luxor Sky Beam is the strongest beam of light in the world. Using computer-designed, curved mirrors to collect the light from 39 xenon lamps and focus them into one intense, narrow beam, engineers claimed that a newspaper could be read from a distance as far as 10 miles. This however, was later revealed to be a false claim[
citation needed]. The light beam, however, was still unarguably bright. On a clear night, the Sky Beam is visible up to 275 miles (443 km) away by aircraft at cruising altitude, such as over Los Angeles.
[35][36]
Each of the 39 lamps is a 7,000 watt
[37] Xenotech fixture
[38] costing about $1,200. When at full power, the system costs $51 an hour to operate, with $20 per hour of that just for its 315,000 watts of electricity.
[37] The beam has operated reliably since first enabled on October 15, 1993, and is an FAA designated navigational landmark for aviators.
[35]
The lamp room is about 50 feet (15 m) below the top of the building and serviced by a staff of two workers during the day.
[39] The room's temperature is about 300 °F (149 °C) while the lights are operating.
[40] Since 2008, only half the lamps are lit as a cost and energy saving measure.
[41] The light might be the world's best bug attractor, establishing a new ecosystem of moths, bats, and owls.
The "hands" refer to hands of cards. Gambling is a big deal in Vegas.
It's Las Vegas (sic), and people are known to get out of control there from time to time. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
The gold lion is a reference to MGM's logo, which I'm sure you have seen before:
, you're up.