Hotel Review Thread
Since there are so many questions about hotels, I was thinking it would be useful for people to post the hotels they have stayed along with reviews of the rooms, service, restaurants, poker rooms, etc. There are of course tons of sites on the internet with this info, but this will hopefully be poker and food-centric in keeping with the 2+2 demographic.
My experiences as follows:
Cosmopolitan: Rooms are, IMO, the best in Vegas. If at all possible get a fountain view room, they all have balconies and the views are tremendous. Wraparound suites are super sick but pretty expensive. Everything is very modern so if you're into the traditional look this place is not for you.
Restaurants are terrific. Wide range of options. Pricey but not totally outrageous. STK, the steak place, has a club-type vibe and is loud. The buffet is small plates, very unique. Holsteins has amazing burgers. The fish place has a lunch deal that is the best in Vegas, a 3 course meal for 20 bucks. I have not eaten at the other places but have heard from several people that Jaleo (tapas) is excellent. Would like to hear others' opinion of Blue Ribbon, the sushi place.
No poker, table gaming is pretty meh. This is a party spot more than a gambling mecca.
Bellagio: Solid all around. Rooms were getting dated and have been / are being redone - I haven't been in the new ones. The amount of tourists has always annoyed me here for some reason. Always dumb people blocking the walkways and taking pictures and ****. Tons of Eurotrash.
Restaurants seem fine but are overpriced (Yellowtail, Fix). Haven't done Picasso yet, everyone loves it. The snack bar is right next to the poker room and the food is pretty good and fairly quick as long as you don't go at lunch.
Poker room is very nice but floor and staff are terrible. They are condescending and blatantly favor regular players for lists and rulings. If you grease them you can skip lists. Action generally good and has good mid-limit NL holdem.
Wynn/Encore: Very nice hotel. Incredibly clean and well-managed. Have always received exceptional service here - once had them coordinate an in-room birthday meal / dessert / cocktail for my wife and it was perfect.
Much like Bellagio, restaurants are good but significantly overpriced. Their deli next to the poker room has an incredible $15 reuben sandwich that I get at least once a trip.
For some reason their poker room seems to be dying. It caters to nits I think, which drives away action players. Also they don't seem to be as player-friendly as Venetian and Aria.
Venetian: Rooms are enormous and very nice, but too expensive IMO. I have found the service here to be weak. Have had to wait like 30 minutes for bags to show up, was placed in a double beds room after confirming a king, etc.
Restaurant selection is second to none with reasonable prices. I have always loved Delmonico, Emeril's steakhouse. Get the mushrooms. Wow.
Poker room is huge and excellent. Good tournaments and exceptional customer service. Smoking hot drink girls and fast service. Competent dealers.
Only negative is that this whole casino smells like Vanilla ****. I hate it.
Aria: Have not stayed here but I'm sure the rooms are nice. Only ate at the buffet and it was awful.
Poker room is great. Best drink service in Vegas, good service, competent floor, good tournaments, really hot cocktail girls.
Mandalay Bay: I don't usually like pools but this place has the best pool I've been to in Vegas. Really fun spot. Anyway, rooms are surprisingly nice and there are lots of fun food/party options.
Poker room is small and poorly run. Only 1-2 nl I think.
MGM: Rooms are getting old, think they are being redone. Craftsteak is nice for steak. OK service generally.
Poker room is big but in a horrible spot with annoying noises all the time. They might be moving it?
Mirage: Rooms are meh. Pool is meh. Restaurants are meh, though BLT Burger is awesome. This whole place is meh. Including their meh poker room.
I think those are the only places I've stayed. Would love for others to share their opinions and experiences.
I was playing with the idea of a week in Vegas in Sept or Oct and OMG prices are high - $250 + resort for Vdara and then $300+ for the premium mgm properties and even $160ish + resort at PH or Harrahs. And they were the lowest prices I saw
I don’t have any profile so no offers but that feels $100 ish per night more than usual
Have you created MGM rewards account and app? I did a couple years ago and only play poker - sapphire with 638 points. I was able to get wed thru Friday night this week at park mgm (booked 2 months ago) for $300 total incl tax and fees.
Going to charge anything i do to my room and use card at all mgm properties (food mostly, massage as well) and see if that helps the algorithm.
Not gonna play table games to try and save $100 per night on a room. Losing proposition to chase that….unless someone plays the table games anyway.
This is how cheap we are, going to Bellagio this Sunday so signed up for the MGM Rewards credit card, it came in the mail yesterday. Immediate upgrade to Pearl, free parking and a discount on the rooms I think, should have waited to reserve the rooms until after I got the card. I'll try the $20 trick and see what happens.
There's always the Orleans, etc. I had only like 150 credits on my card, because I threw a hundred or two into their Megabucks machine and got 4 nights comped between last week and this week. The extra good thing about comped nights is they don't charge you resort fees.
Nope, they have something called Caesars Eats, which sounds like Uber Eats. NOT brought to you on a cart, with real plates and silverware.
FWIW, we stayed at Caesars in AC on the drive back from OBX last year and got Caesars Eats. I thought it was pretty cool.
For a comparison from Cosmo, I'd much rather have The Henry delivered to the room than pay $54 for a terrible omelet, breakfast potatoes, and blueberries.
Have you created MGM rewards account and app? I did a couple years ago and only play poker - sapphire with 638 points. I was able to get wed thru Friday night this week at park mgm (booked 2 months ago) for $300 total incl tax and fees.
Going to charge anything i do to my room and use card at all mgm properties (food mostly, massage as well) and see if that helps the algorithm.
Not gonna play table games to try and save $100 per night on a room. Losing proposition to chase that….unless som
Yes I have mgm rewards and I stayed 10 days at Vdara last year plus ate and played my cash at Aria and B exclusively. Albeit I did play 5 mtts elsewhere so cash was only about 40 hours and it was low stakes VP.
Didn’t seem to give me any status
I was playing with the idea of a week in Vegas in Sept or Oct and OMG prices are high - $250 + resort for Vdara and then $300+ for the premium mgm properties and even $160ish + resort at PH or Harrahs. And they were the lowest prices I saw
I don’t have any profile so no offers but that feels $100 ish per night more than usual
Are you looking only at weekend stays? Those seem to always be much, much pricier in Vegas due to demand. I just checked rates through MGM Rewards. Rates are definitely high on weekends, but at Vdara I'm seeking COMP for the first Mon- Wed in September and rates as low as $69 or $79 for some weekday stretches in Sept/Oct.
Are you looking only at weekend stays? Those seem to always be much, much pricier in Vegas due to demand. I just checked rates through MGM Rewards. Rates are definitely high on weekends, but at Vdara I'm seeking COMP for the first Mon- Wed in September and rates as low as $69 or $79 for some weekday stretches in Sept/Oct.
I’m in Australia so am looking at 8 days with a Thurs to Fri stay. I’ll go on again today but the lowest I saw was $229 + resort as the ave price for 8 days
FountainBleu:
I had some business meetings in town and decided to check out this new hotel in the process for a couple of nights
In a word, DON'T, in two words, DON't BOTHER, in three words, NO F*CKING WAY" I'd go back.
The room was fine, and the staff were nice. However, NOTHING else about the property or the Customer Experience was remotely acceptable. Possibly the worst designed customer experience I have ever seen in Las Vegas in 50 years. The place had the charm and appeal of a typical airport, not a place to stay. Stay at any of the following, (Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Paris, Cromwells, or even the Golden Nugget (downtown), and don't book the" FBLV".
FountainBleu:
I had some business meetings in town and decided to check out this new hotel in the process for a couple of nights
In a word, DON'T, in two words, DON't BOTHER, in three words, NO F*CKING WAY" I'd go back.
The room was fine, and the staff were nice. However, NOTHING else about the property or the Customer Experience was remotely acceptable. Possibly the worst designed customer experience I have ever seen in Las Vegas in 50 years. The place had the charm and appeal of a typical airpor
Can you be more specific about what went wrong with the customer experience? It seems like it has a good pool complex for the summer, and I've been hearing good things about the restaurants, but have only been turned off from staying because of the distance from everything else on the strip. However, I may be going to a conference at the Venetian later this year and was thinking of giving it a shot.
That's the night club, not after hours club, correct? The latter was open Thursday to Sunday in the past. FWIW, "after hour" in Vegas means til 6AM because everything else already closes at 4AM.
Not positive, and not positive the exact hours, it was just quite loud in the early AM hours, and strongly recommend earplugs or sleep aids. I'm not a light sleeper and it was a lot.
I usually brought a toaster for pre-race toast with jelly but that one easily fits in the luggage.
I would expect that you're not allowed to bring anything that you wouldn't be allowed to use in an office setting without approval (in before sex toy joke)
We had dorm fridges all over the place in my office. I had one for ov r twenty years. Never asked for permission and numerous bosses knew about it. Several had their own.
Better to ask for forgiveness than to beg for permission.
Yeah, in my recent stay at Vdara, I came back to my room late at night (~3am) and could clearly hear the Cosmo pool club. The downside of a fountain view, I guess. On the plus side, for whatever reason, it was only one night that I noticed it. I think it was Sunday, too.
One good thing about Orleans, can't hear Da Club anywhere nearby. 😀
This trip I stayed at Aria and Bellagio. I have a few notes (I have stayed at both properties a few times through the years)
Aria - I like their new food court. It's good for grabbing something and you can order on take out and go pick up on your phone. A great idea.
Poker room is nice and they expanded the numbers of tables for their poker tournaments during the summer. The poker room also gives fiji water. My big complaint about their poker room is having no diary free milk options. If someone gets a coffee, there should be oat milk, almond, or soy. It's not hard to have one option for people who are vegan/dairy free. When getting lattes in the poker room (with regular milk), I felt like I was given a bit of attitude at times by servers). Dealers are very good (especially in PLO with counting the pot).
Bellagio - Wow, the place has gone downhill. Room service is now brought up in to-go containers unless you order over a certain amount. A lot of restaurants in Bellagio now have reduced hours. There are minimal choices for breakfast/lunch at the hotel. It feels like a train station at times with how insanely busy the hotel is. Very long lines for a lot of places. I use to have 4 hotels in top tier (Aria, Wynn, Venetian, Bellagio) and now Bellagio has definitely dropped out of that top tier list. I did have a great meal at Michael Mina and a good lunch at Como (by the pool).
It never occurred to me it wouldn't be allowed, lol. They actually SEARCHED your room? It wasn't really a wellness check then, they should've left as soon as they saw you were alive.
My micro-fridge is really small. As I mentioned, it holds a 6 pack of cans, no more. I doubt it uses a refrigerant, probably some type of Peltier mechanism.
I've seen people wheeling one of those huge coolers to the ice machine at Orleans. There are signs saying no filling ice chests, but rednecks gonna redneck.
Please I’ve wheeled those coolers in at least half the nice hotels in Vegas. If you don’t have a couple cases of beer iced down for a party in the suite you are doing it wrong.
It never occurred to me it wouldn't be allowed, lol. They actually SEARCHED your room? It wasn't really a wellness check then, they should've left as soon as they saw you were alive.
My micro-fridge is really small. As I mentioned, it holds a 6 pack of cans, no more. I doubt it uses a refrigerant, probably some type of Peltier mechanism.
I've seen people wheeling one of those huge coolers to the ice machine at Orleans. There are signs saying no filling ice chests, but rednecks gonna redneck.
**** asses from here would take some tubing/hose and extension cord and drag the whole ice maker to there room.
Bellagio - Wow, the place has gone downhill. Room service is now brought up in to-go containers unless you order over a certain amount. A lot of restaurants in Bellagio now have reduced hours. There are minimal choices for breakfast/lunch at the hotel. It feels like a train station at times with how insanely busy the hotel is. Very long lines for a lot of places. I use to have 4 hotels in top tier (Aria, Wynn, Venetian, Bellagio) and now Bellagio has definitely dropped out of that top tie
Yeah, it's bizarre how limited the food options are at Bellagio earlier in the day. That might change with the remodel / expansion though.
On the flip side, at least their Starbucks allows you to order on the Starbucks app which isn't accepted at Vdara/Aria. If you have Starbucks points to cash, it's massively +EV to cash it in there. My regular mocha ran 16 bucks if I didn't redeem points.
Apparently they're remodeling rooms in the main tower? I know the Spa tower they were or are in the process of remodeling.
What did you order from room service where it only came in a to-go bag?
Yeah, it's bizarre how limited the food options are at Bellagio earlier in the day. That might change with the remodel / expansion though.
On the flip side, at least their Starbucks allows you to order on the Starbucks app which isn't accepted at Vdara/Aria. If you have Starbucks points to cash, it's massively +EV to cash it in there. My regular mocha ran 16 bucks if I didn't redeem points.
Apparently they're remodeling rooms in the main tower? I know the Spa tower they were or are in the process
$16 for a mocha? surely not
I talked to Cosmo yesterday. Identity benefits are still good as long as you book before the end of the month. I'm booking my airport transportation today.
