Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas…You pay royal prices without the royal treatment!
Written: Mar 16 '07 (Updated Mar 18 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: beautiful room, great location on the strip
Cons: large and strange hotel layout, BAD service, extremely overpriced
The Bottom Line: The location on the strip and the room were great, but everything else was terrible. If you want to pay a lot, but get a little, then stay here.
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| HJS33's Full Review: Caesars Palace |
Caesars Palace
3570 Las Vegas Boulevard S.
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Phone: (800) 634-6661
www.caesarspalace.com
Background
Last time we went to Vegas, which was maybe 1 ½ years ago, we stayed at Bally's. We had such an enjoyable time that we were more than ready to go back again. Being the travel junkie that I am, I'm always keeping an eye out for good flights to certain locations, Vegas being one of them.
When I found out that Jet Blue had a great flight deal, we decided we were going to Vegas again. The next step was finding a hotel.
One of the great things about joining a casino's rewards program is that they will often offer you comp nights in their various hotels to entice you to come back. I had received a few comp nights from that first trip, but since Harrahs (who owns Bally's and a fairly hefty laundry list of the other hotels in the area) had changed over to a new rewards program (Total Rewards), I was afraid that I had lost them. Luckily, after a talk with customer service, they transferred me over to the new program and I still had those comp nights.
When you log onto the Harrahs website, you can choose where to stay with those comp nights. I had a few options where I could stay for free and a couple where I could pay the difference, but wanted something free and I wanted to try a new hotel, so we decided to stay at Caesars Palace.
Check-In/Check-Out
Our flight came into Vegas late on a Saturday night, so we arrived at Caesars Palace at close to midnight. After cabbing it over to the hotel, we walked into the impressive lobby area. I loved the beautiful high ceilings and the marble floor, but this will only entertain me for a short while. We got on line to check in and had to wait a surprisingly long time for such a late hour, and with only one person in front of us. It seems that you have to wait regardless of when you arrive or depart, but the wait is much worse if you arrive or depart at peak times.
In my experience, non-smoking rooms are difficult to obtain on the strip, even with a request for one (which in many hotels non-smoking is almost always a request, not a guarantee, Marriott being an exception to that rule). Coming into town as late as we did, I was afraid we might not get a non-smoking room. I had called ahead and explained my situation to someone, who ensured me that we would receive a non-smoking room, but you never really know if that will hold true until you arrive. I was lucky and very thankful that they were true to their word. In my experience, hotels do seem to try to accommodate your requests as best as they can. I’m just waiting for the day that a non-smoking room is no longer considered a request but is guaranteed, as I feel it should be.
Apparently, they also offer airport check in, where you can go through the hotel registration process right at the airport. I didn’t do this, but it sound enticing, and may even be a way to save some time, especially since it seems less people know about this option.
Once we checked in, they gave us a map of the property (thankfully) and a "welcome to Caesars Palace" booklet which was not entirely accurate, but helpful. It was easy to carry and packed with information for such a little booklet (offering many of the extensions you are likely to call while you stay at Caesars Palace, the names of some of the restaurants and amenities with brief descriptions of them, etc.).
Check out (at 11 am) would have been easy if I did not use my Total Rewards points to pay for some things I charged to my room. If I was just paying by the credit card on file, I could check out from my TV, but alas, I was not, so I had to go stand in line once again. Also, unlike some other rewards programs, you cannot use Total Rewards points to pay for everything. For example, it seems that you cannot use the points to pay for a Federal Express package sent from the business center. You also cannot eat at the Planet Hollywood in the Forum Shops area and use your points to pay.
Walk to the Room, Etc.
It took quite some time and lots of walking to find our room. It turns out that we were pretty far away from the front desk. I do not mind walking, that is what generally happens in Vegas anyway, but lugging tons of luggage through a smoky casino at the wee hours of the morning with the crummy directions we were given was not too fun.
In retrospect, it seemed to take a long time to walk to most places in Caesars Palace; the property is just that big. To make matters worse, there is conflicting information on the different guides they offer (for example, the booklet information was different than the hotel Guest Services Directory in the room). It was very frustrating when you did not know if a place was open or not because these two guides listed different hours. Another annoying moment for us was when we walked all the way to the other end of the Forum Shops to go eat at a restaurant listed on the mall guide, only to find out once we were down there that it was closed. I do not mean just closed for the night, I mean closed as in GONE. That was a little frustrating.
We found it very easy to get lost on such a big property, and I am generally good with directions. There were so many little areas that branched off in an odd way, that we got turned around often, and there were not a lot of signs to point you in the right direction.
Our Room
The best part of our stay was by far our room. We had a deluxe tower room in the Palace Tower. The view was just ok (we were on the 22nd floor of the Palace Tower with a view of the Bellagio), but the room was both large and beautiful.
When you enter the room, you are immediately in a fairly long hallway that has a LOT of closet space to your left. I LOVED having so much space. Also, this is where you found a lot of the things you might need (like an extra pillow for the bed, safe, ironing board, robes, etc.)
We had two bathrooms! The first bathroom, which was the first area on your right when you entered your room, had a beautiful marble countertop (complete with the shower amenities) and a small toilet closet. This room was connected to the second bathroom by a HUGE stand up shower (with two shower heads...yay!). The second bathroom was pretty large, and had a Jacuzzi tub in it. The sink area was nice and big, and you could very easily share the space with a second person when getting ready for bed. There was another little room in here, but in addition to a toilet, this one also had a bedai (not sure of the spelling of that). There were toiletries in this bathroom too, and they were great. I especially liked the lotion. They even offered shower caps (love that...they come in handy if you are bringing home something that could potentially leak).
In the main part of the room at the end of the hallway was the bedroom/living area. We had a fantastically comfortable king bed and, even with lots of furniture (couch, chairs, desk, entertainment center/bar/dresser, etc.) there was still a lot of floor space. Although the flat screen TV looked nice, it was a bit disappointing, as the quality was pretty bad. We had plenty of channel choices though, and even late night TV did not seem so bad. All of the decor was warm and inviting, and I loved the marble!
A little advice about the mini bar...watch out what you pick up and for how long you pick it up for. Little sensors detect how long an item is out of its spot for, and I cannot remember how many seconds you have (I think it might have been 15), but once the time is up, they charge you, even if you put it back. They do not advertise this in large letters, so you may be tempted to pick up the goodies to get a better look, and then notice the warning a little too late.
Oh, and if you do not want to be disturbed, putting the little tag on your door is not enough. If you plan on being in your room after 2pm, you need to call housekeeping and let them know or they will enter your room.
And a little warning about the phone, you will get charged a phone access charge for all calls, including local ones, even if you use a credit card, phone card or toll free number.
Casino
Slots, slots and more slots! I thought they had a good selection of slot choices ranging from pennies to dollars. I found a new game that I really enjoyed and then I stuck with that one most of the time, mostly because the rest of the slots felt really tight compared to this game, and I could play for hours only losing a small amount of money.
The table games were a different story. I was surprised at how high the minimums were...all the time. I do not remember the minimums ever being lower than $25, which is just too rich for my blood. So, unfortunately, I had to play 3 card and Caribbean stud at another casino.
The poker room was actually very nice, and I was surprised since a lot of Vegas poker rooms seek to be partitioned sections of the casino rather than an actual room. They had quite a good selection of games to play from, and their tournament structure (good amount of starting chips, adequate time between levels, etc.) and the buy in were fantastic. The only thing I did not like is that there was no cap for the buy in on the no limit games. So, if you show up with $500 at a 2-5 no-limit game, someone else could buy in for $3,000, and that leaves you at a great disadvantage.
Shops
The Forum Shops are fun to walk through, and like most of the Vegas hotels, they had there little show to entice visitors. I enjoyed browsing through the stores, but did not really have any interest in buying anything. The prices were a bit high end, but that is to be expected. If you enroll in their Total Rewards program, you can get 10% off at certain stores. They have all sorts of choices, like Boss, Gap, Express, Cache, Guess, Polo, etc. and the hours are 6 am - 8 pm.
I enjoyed a little shopping area called Appian Way. This is where Godiva was. They also have Cartier and Paradiso here.
Restaurants
Because I dive right into the restaurants, I want to warn you that it seems that many hotels in Vegas have made a change that, in my opinion, is not for the better. Apparently the city that never sleeps is no longer eating late at night or in the wee morning hours. At least that was my experience. Most hotels only seemed to have 1 late night restaurant, which was really a bummer for me.
The Augusta Cafe:
The night we arrived, we were starved but tired, so we looked for a late night restaurant in the hotel. It turns out that in a hotel this size, there is only 1 24-hour restaurant. So, without any choices, we scampered off to the Augusta Cafe. It was not too late by Vegas standards, maybe 1 am or so, but we still had to wait a LONG time in the line. So long in fact, that we were contemplating making the trek off the hotel property, but we didn’t, and boy do I wish we did. Although the restaurant was nice to look at (a cool modern decor), it was too small for the amount of people consistently waiting to eat there, the wait staff were slow to help and most of them obviously did not want to be working, there was a very limited menu after midnight, and the food was overpriced and not that good. In my book, a $11 quesadilla should not only be a decent size, but it should actually taste good. So, we shelled out $36 for one appetizer and a sandwich, both of which were unfulfilling. What amazes me is that they have a hugely popular club here (Pure), and many of the clubbers were coming to the restaurant for a bite after their night out, so why not have a larger place that is open late?!
Cafe Lago Buffet:
It appears we still did not learn our lesson, as we tried another restaurant on the property call the Cafe Lago Buffet. The price for 2 breakfast buffets were pretty much the same as what we paid at Augusta Cafe ($14.95 per person), so already, it is a better deal in my book. It was the service that ruined it for me. Once again, we waited on line for quite some time, which surprised me once we were inside, because there appeared to be a lot of available tables. We waited a while for someone to come to the table and then got up to help ourselves to the buffet.
We waited a long time on the omelet line, and then, when it was our turn, we ordered. My husband, who has a mushroom allergy, spoke up and told the person making the omelets this. The person literally touched someone else's mushroom omelet with a spatula, and then turned my husband's omelet over with the same spatula. I tried to tell the person that my husband (who had left to find something else to eat) could not eat the omelet because of his allergy, and the person starting yelling at me that there were no mushrooms in the omelet and that I should take it. I explained to him that touching my husband's omelet with the same spatula that he used on the mushroom omelet is a problem for someone with any allergy, and his response was that this was the only spatula he had. I have to tell you, I had visions of this man picking up a dirty spatula off the floor and reusing it without washing it after a comment like that. Come on! How hard is it to wash a spatula? On second thought, how hard is it to buy the man a second one?! So, needless to say, it seems that the people working at the restaurants at Caesars Palace do not take allergies very seriously. I just hope that they do not send someone to the hospital.
Needless to say, after this second terrible restaurant experience, we were not too keen at eating at any more restaurants on this property. We had a reservation at 808, but decided that if we spent an enormous amount of money at a fine dining restaurant like this and had yet another bad experience, we would be beyond upset, so we went offsite (and had some wonderful meals at harrahs and bally's).
Cypress Street Marketplace:
I almost forgot about this place. This is a food court type place that overlooks the casino. We came up here one evening to get a quick snack. My husband had a burrito that was incredibly good, and the price was not out of control. I had a slice of pizza that was just alright. The coffee place, that also serves ice cream, was reasonably priced (by Vegas standards), and the coffee was pretty good, as was the ice cream.
Hotel Amenities
There are TONS of amenities here. Unfortunately, the one I really wanted to use, but never got to use, was the pool. It was just too cold when we visited. They have a beautiful pool area. It is unfortunate that I was never able to try it out. There are four pools and 2 whirlpool spas, and gardens with private cabanas you can get. There was also a little snack bar (which was not open of course) and should you desire, European sunbathing is allowed at the Venus pool.
The spa also looked enticing. I was toying with the idea of getting a massage, but the prices have become so outrageous, that it was just not worth the cost to me.
They have a beauty salon in the Venus Salon (near the pool), where you can get facials, your hair and nails done, waxing, etc. and it is open daily. I believe it was open until 8pm at night, which is pretty decent. They even had services like wraps and Vichy showers.
I never visited the fitness center, but I did read that they had a rock-climbing wall. How cool is that?!
They also have a box office where you can get Celine Dion tickets (and other events they have) from 10 am – 10 pm. Celine Dion is WELL worth the price. Her show was just incredible and the acoustics in the theatre are perfect.
They have a business center that is open during the week from 6 am - 9 pm and open 8 am - 8 pm on the weekends. There are computer workstations there should you need to work off of them, or you can hook up your own laptop. The workstation rental fees are pretty standard ($5 for up to 5 minutes, $10 for up to 15 minutes, etc.). You can also printout whatever you need there. Should you happen to need to check in and print out plane boarding passes, you could do it here, but you can also pay $5 and do it at a concierge station.
It is costly to use the business center, but what is new. An incoming fax is $1 a page, outgoing faxes are $6 for the first page, then $2 a page after that. Something they offer that I thought was pretty good is they rent cell phones. For a $5 activation fee and $5 a day, you can have a cell phone. The cost of calls are $1.45 a minute.
They also have a convention space - at lest 240,000 square feet of space. I never checked out this area, as there were escalators to take you to this area. I never saw the need to.
Location
You are right in the middle of what I consider to be the main part of the strip. It does not get much better than this. I would say the only thing that makes the location of the hotel not perfect is the fact that the monorail is too far away.
Miscellaneous
My husband was playing poker in the poker room, and a gentleman sitting at a poker table had a seizure. It took 45 minutes to get an EMT to come (from offsite) to help him out. What is scarier is, not a single employee in the area knew or were trained in first aid/cpr. With a hotel this size, you would think they would be a little concerned about the health/safety of their patrons, and at the very least, they would require some of the staff on the property to learn basic cpr/first aid skills.
Overall
Overall, the hotel was too pricey for what we got out of it. I would rather stay elsewhere.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
HJS33
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Location: West Bloomfield, MI
Reviews written: 162
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