Photo by Mike Prevatt

Who among us didn’t grow up watching Bugs Bunny and his fellow Looney Tunes every Saturday morning, getting the weekend off to a great start and delighting in the sort of subversive hijinks and mischief Disney never had the nerve to express itself? We owe a debt to animator/director Chuck Jones, who drew Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and company and made countless short and feature-length cartoons for eight doggone decades. And we can now pay tribute at the Chuck Jones Experience, an imaginative, interactive and top-to-bottom-thorough animation exhibit that opens today at Circus Circus.

Included in the 10,000 sq. ft. facility just north of the Adventuredome is a recreation of Jones’ studio (complete with the desk on which he actually worked); hundreds of his original sketches, drawings and paintings; tons of memorabilia, including one of his Academy Awards; lifelike replicas of Looney Tunes characters ripe for photo ops; a theater continuously screening clips of those same cartoons we watched while eating our morning cereal; an interactive animation room where one can draw and create sound effects much like they did back in the 1940s and 1950s; and the obligatory gift shop and gallery.

It’s the sort of well-funded presentation you’d expect to see in a metropolitan museum, not in a casino or even Las Vegas. But Jones’ family insisted on a location with a reliable, global tourism pool. As such, the Chuck Jones Experience makes its debut, and hopefully its permanent home, on the Strip, which has seen mixed results with attractions dedicated to the visual arts.

It’s not quite a sprawling exhibition, but its reps say it will not only be updated with circulating pieces, but possibly expanded in the future. Nearly as promising: Teachers and animators affiliated with the exhibit are slated to visit Clark County schools as part of an educational outreach program. And for those people who vowed never to return to Circus Circus after it scandalously converted the legendary Horse-A-Round Bar into an ice cream parlor, well, this ought to make you reconsider your boycott.

Lissa Townsend Rodgers will officially review the exhibit in the Jan. 26 CityLife.

The Chuck Jones Experience 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Sunday; Circus Circus, 2880 Las Vegas Blvd. South, www.chuckjonesexperience.com, $9.95-$14.95 for Nevada residents.