The Rio

I've stayed here once, and I've visited repeatedly since then to see shows or eat. The Rio is away back from The Strip, but close enough that it's a quick drive/taxi ride, and it's red/blue/purple exterior is clearly visible from many Strip hotel rooms.

The rooms here are wonderful. They are huge, and kind of a unique shape for a hotel room, with a sectional sofa, a big cushy bed, and one of the biggest TV's I've seen in a hotel room. The windows are floor-to-ceiling, and the views are to die for if you get a strip view room. I've always wanted to snag a room here during the New Year's fireworks show, but if I could afford that I'd just have the fireworks show in my backyard...

The bathrooms are really big for the size of the room, and for some odd reason there is a small window between the bedroom and the shower. I don't really want to know what they were planning when they installed that.

The service has always left something to be desired. When I first stayed here the service was not great because they were so full of themselves and so exclusive that they could afford to be a bit snobby. Now, the service is not great because of bad management and apathetic employees. They recently declared the end of the horrible "bevertainer" program, where the cocktail waitresses would take a break from screwing up your drink orders to do really terrible short dance routines and irritate the slot jockeys, so hopefully things might improve slightly, but there's still the other customer service types, which have all experienced their own slide downhill of late.

And service isn't the only thing to have suffered recently. The guests used to be the young, the rich, and the beautiful. You could sit in the casino and feel like you were at an MTV Spring Break party. On my last couple of visits the crowd matched pretty much every off-Strip casino, with the less young, less rich, and less beautiful taking up most of the real estate. Oddly enough, the gambling still wasn't good, so I can't imagine why these people come here.

Other items of note include the Voodoo Lounge and the Seafood Buffet.

All in all, this is still a really nice hotel if you plan to just kick back in your room and enjoy the view and eat room service, but if you plan on doing a lot of gambling or sight seeing there are other hotels that treat you better, are closer to the Strip, and/or cost less.