The ladies are heating up Las Vegas. The countdown is on until Dinah Vegas weekend – THE ultimate lesbian party. Produced by Girl Bar in association with Total Rewards by Caesars Entertainment, in just four years the event has quickly become a highlight of lesbian life in the city.

Gay Vegas had the pleasure of chatting with Sandy Sachs, producer of Dinah Vegas.

So how did Girl Bar start? How did this come to be?

We [she and business partner Robin Gans] were managing a gay men’s video bar called Revolver and we kind of noticed that there just really wasn’t anything to do for lesbians. So we started a night in the back bar – it was a small area. And women just started coming out of the woodwork, and we started to call it Girl Bar.

And then in 1990 the then owner of Studio One, which eventually became my club – The Factory –, Scott Forbes, came over and said, “Hey, why don’t you come and do a lesbian night at my club, Studio One, in the back part of the club called The Backlot?” So in November of 1990 we took a chance and we did Girl Bar at The Backlot and the rest is history. We were there for 20 years.

And now Girl Bar is encompassing so many different things and different markets. You’ve brought Girl Bar to Las Vegas.

Right, we started at Krave. We were there right when Krave first opened. We did the smaller lounge there. We were at Krave for almost three years doing Girl Bar on Saturday nights for lesbians in Las Vegas.

You also started Dinah Vegas. When did that begin?

Four years ago. We’d been in Palm Springs doing our event there. We’d been there for 21 years. We had a partner and we split from our partner. We then became competitors and we kind of realized that Palm Springs felt like a one horse town. I said, “We’re never going to get anywhere. Why don’t we move and go somewhere a little more exciting?”

Caesars actually approached us and said, “Why don’t you do the event with us in Las Vegas?” So this is going to be our fourth year there. We decided to roll the dice, as they say in Vegas, and take a chance and move an event that we had started back in 1991 in Palm Springs and got notoriety from in Palm Springs. It was a little risky, but we really thought it was the right time. Timing in life is everything and it was just time for something new and a little more exciting. And Vegas, to be honest with you, has way more to offer than Palm Springs.

So there are two events?

Our ex partner still runs an event there [Palm Springs]. We changed the weekends as well so that if girls wanted to do both weekends they could.

Do you pull a lot of out-of-towners, locals, or a pretty good mixture of both?

We pull a mixture of everybody. What’s great is that we actually have a very nice pull from the international community. We have a lot of Canadians, Australians, Germans, people from the UK. We actually have French, Russians. A little bit from South America.

And then we have a great national base. Our national base is even increasing. The local girls, they can still drive – it’s a little bit further. Local for us, California. Especially at the pool party on Saturday, we get a lot of the local girls.

What can one expect from the Dinah Vegas weekend extravaganza?

It’s going to be absolutely fun-packed. We’ve got some of the best venues in Vegas secured for the girls.

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That’s the part that’s really great, because normally these women would really have nowhere to go on the weekend and to have great venues like Elton John’s FIZZ at Caesars and the Chateau club under the Eiffel Tower – they would never go there on their own.

We work with these clubs and they’ve been terrific with us and working with some of the pricing so that we don’t break the girls’ pocketbooks.

It’s just going to be an amazing weekend. Fun and fun and hot women from all over the world.

Ticket sales are way ahead of last year so we’re very excited.

On that note, what does one need to do to purchase tickets?

You just go to www.dinahshoreweekend.com and basically it’s all laid out for you. You can buy weekend passes to the event. We don’t sell individual tickets. If you don’t want to do the whole package we’ve got a weekend pass for three events and then we’ve got a VIP pass that gets you the whole weekend – basically by doing that you save like 50 bucks from the door price if you were to attend every event. If you want to do the VIP package, new for this year we’re going to do our VIP cocktail party on The High Roller. So we’ve got two pods – they’ll roll the bars in. It’s open bar and they’ll get to see the sites of Vegas at night. It’ll be spectacular.

That sounds fabulous.

Yeah, and we’ve secured special room rates at Flamingo and Planet Hollywood.

And what do partygoers have to do for those special room rates?

They have to book our package.

That’s another really great thing about having moved to Vegas – is that because there’s so many hotel rooms and so many hotels, we’re able to secure really great rates.

You have so much more to work with in Las Vegas.

Exactly. You know we haven’t really had the same curriculum practically any year. We keep getting bigger.

There’s just always new stuff. It really just feels like it keeps it fresh every year.

What an awesome thing that Caesars Entertainment actually reached out to you and wanted to do this event to bring more LGBT people to Las Vegas. That really says something.

Right, and they were really smart. The LGBT market is a brand loyal market and they know that. I can assure you that a lot of our people who go back to Vegas on their own are more likely to stay at a Caesars’ property because they’re just brand loyal.

Those looking to take part in the fun better clear April 23-26 on their calendars. For more information on Dinah Vegas 2015 and to book your tickets and stay, visit dinahshoreweekend.com.