This is not the handy travel guide to pick up if you're traveling to Vegas. After purchasing several Lonely Planet guides for other previous vacations (India, the west coast), I was disappointed that this book did not live up to the Lonely Planet's usual terrific standards.

Having never been to Las Vegas and knowing little about it, I wanted a travel guide to help plan our stay. Our week's vacation included only a day in Vegas after spending most of the week camping at Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks (highly recommended), so I didn't want to buy a huge book just for one day's use. The guide was compact and had lots of nice photos and maps, so I picked it up. It was copyrighted 2000, so I expected it had up-to-date information as it was early spring 2001 when I bought it.

We flew in to Vegas and wanted to stop for lunch before driving out to the parks, somewhere not on the strip where parking is a hassle (I assumed - this advice was not in the book). Two restaurants that we picked out of the guide were no longer in existence! After driving around aimlessly for twenty minutes more we ended up eating at a generic chain restaurant that's we could just as easily patronize at home.

After a glorious six days of camping, we drove back into town and checked into our hotel. The first thing we wanted to do was eat a huge dinner. Although the guide listed about 40 places to eat on the strip, this number of reviews is extremely few compared to the hundreds of dining choices out there. The guide didn't have any information at all on the restaurants at the Luxor (where we were staying), so we ended up wandering into a Japanese restaurant that turned out to be very good. Our breakfast and lunch choices the next day were also randomly chosen as a result of not finding anything useful in the book, but we did just fine.

One thing we wanted to catch as part of the day's entertainment was the free pirate show "Battle of Bucanneer Bay" outside the mirage. The guidebook had a full page devoted to this show, complete with pictures. However, they failed to mention what times it was showing or how long it lasts, and it turned out that it's only a ten-minute show every 90 minutes. We went by the mirage three times in the course of our strolling along the strip and never saw it.

I do recommend some kind of guidebook for Vegas - the Strip is a huge bewildering place. I would recommend one that has more detailed maps than this one and more listings of restaurants, shops, shows, and whatever you'd like to do. Also, don't forget to search online for information - it's the best way to get up to date info. We shopped for hotel tickets online and got a good deal this way.

Recommended: No