Las Vegas — There's lazy, and then there's Vegas lazy.

Tourists exhausted by the four miles of gluttony laid out before them are getting around on electric "mobility scooters."

JAE C. HONG/Associated Press (ENLARGE)

'Four-inch heels' is Michelle Bailey's rationale for using a scooter while at a tournament at the Riviera hotel recently.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press (ENLARGE)

Morne Maritz, with Active Mobility, a scooter rental company, loads an electronic mobility scooter into a van outside the Riviera hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

These aren't trendy Vespa motorbikes, but updated wheelchairs.

Forking over about $40 a day and their pride, healthy tourists are cruising around casinos on 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," Simon Lezama, 27, said from his red Merits Pioneer 3. Lezama, a fit-looking restaurant manager from Odessa, Texas, rented it on the third day of his five-day vacation.

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

"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 includes wheelchairs and walkers.

Most of those using the scooters are obese, elderly or disabled. But many are young and seemingly fit.

The number of able-bodied renters has grown in the past few years to represent as much as 5 percent of Maritz's business, he said. The company, which contracts with some casinos, has a fleet of about 300 scooters.

"It makes it a lot easier for people to see everything," he said.

At full throttle, the scooters run about 5 mph, though crowded sidewalks allow little opportunity for such speeds. They can go anywhere wheelchairs can — elevators, bars, craps tables — but are banned from streets. They come with an operating lesson, instruction booklet, a horn and a basket.

"At first, I figured it was for handicapped people, but then I saw everybody was getting them. I figured I might as well," Lezama said.

Las Vegas has other transportation options, although each has its problems. The Strip is regularly clogged with cabs and drive-in tourists. A double-decker bus system, dubbed the Deuce, often gets stuck in the mess. A $650 million monorail with stops at eight casinos has been plagued by poor ridership, perhaps because it runs behind the resorts, well off the Strip and out of sight. Police and casino workers often use bicycles.

Some find the notion of using a device intended for disabled people unethical.

Several hotel desk workers said they try to discourage healthy people from renting.

"You can't really discriminate against anybody," said Tom Flynn, owner of Universal Mobility. "We don't require a prescription or an explanation."

Michelle Bailey, 22, used a scooter during a recent pool tournament at the Riviera hotel. "Four-inch heels," she explained with a laugh, pointing to her lipstick-red pumps.