No more Chewing!: Let’s Talk About Vegas…Hotels

My husband and I just returned from a trip to Vegas. We’ve had the pleasure of visiting Vegas three times now so I hope to mind vomit for a while about the things we’ve seen in case it helps us in the future or others who are planning their own trips someday.

Hotels:

There are a ton of places to stay – both on the strip and off. Someone at work always stays off the strip in old Vegas at the Golden Nugget and he wouldn’t have it any other way. A great place to start when looking for hotels is to visit the website www.vegas.com Here you can see a great map of the strip and lots of summary information about each hotel. I actually know someone who booked their last trip on this site.

What we do is to sign up for email newsletters for a number of travel agencies. From these we can find out about last minute deals and then take those prices and compare them to other booking alternatives such as Travelocity, Expedia, Sears etc. If you have a particular hotel in mind, you can go to their personal website and sign up for their email newsletter. It’s a great way to find out about sales. Finally you can befriend hotels on both Facebook and Twitter to find out about deals or special offers.

We’ve stayed in 3 different hotels on the strip. Although we’ve walked through most of the hotels on the strip, I don’t feel at all qualified to give you an opinion of their rooms without having seen them. I do feel qualified to comment on their décor, their food or other amenities – more on that in another post. As always – this is my opinion only and others may have far different experiences.

Treasure Island – This is the first hotel that we stayed at. I believe my husband favored it because it advertised ages 18 and over and of course, the free Sirens of TI show each evening. (if you aren’t familiar – there is a pirate ship outside the hotel that features a 15 min show each evening. The female participants are scantily clad and plentiful.) The room was clean. The bed was comfortable. We had no problems with our room or the service. We were able to upgrade the room to a view of the strip and it was a nice view. It was a nice hotel. It didn’t wow us in any way but there was also not much to complain about either. One issue we did have is that we could hear our neighbors very well and they were loud. They had kids in their room and a baby along with what sounded like numerous adults. I don’t think they ever slept. The location was nice. It has a pedway to the Fashion Show Mall across the street. It also has a free tram across another street to the Mirage hotel. TI is the host to the long running cirque show Mystere. We never did visit the pool but from our bird’s eye view in our room – it did look nice.

Here is the view of the strip that we had from our room at Treasure Island.

MGM – This was the second hotel that we stayed at. This hotel is at the opposite end of the strip. It houses one of the Monorail stops which is handy for a quick ride to the opposite end of the strip. The Monorail does cost money to ride but it’s not very much. We requested the West Wing of the hotel after reading reviews about it. The West Wing has a very modern look with some funky upgrades to the room. There is a TV in the bathroom mirror, a telephone in the bathroom and very modern decorating touches. Once again, the room was nice although seemed a bit small to me. My husband was very taken with this hotel and would definitely stay here again. I thought it was nice but would have preferred something more central to the strip rather than hopping a monorail. The view left something to be desired but we were on a lower floor - we stared at some mechanical equipment on the roof.

Our room in the West Wing of the MGM

The bathroom in our room - complete with phone

A Television in the mirror!

The Aria – This was where we stayed during our last trip to Vegas. This hotel just opened in Dec 2009 and is located across the street from Planet Hollywood hotel – near the MGM end of the strip. In a word – heaven. This is a 5 star hotel and I’m sure that if we hadn’t found the travel deal we did, we wouldn’t have stayed there. The hotel/room was simply amazing. As you walked into the room for the first time the room detected your presence. The lights turned on, the TV turned on and the curtains opened to show you the view. You could control all of these with a bedside panel as well. You could press a button to indicate that you were ready for maid service or another button to show that you wanted privacy. They did turn down service each night that found your room with dimmed lights, turned back covers and chocolate on your pillows. It was hard to leave that room and do anything in Vegas. There was a free tram there than ran between the Monte Carlo, The Aria, Crystals (high end shopping) and the Bellagio. There was also a pedway leading across the road to the Planet Hollywood Hotel area/M&M Store and Coke Store.

The bathroom at the Aria