Monte Carlo Hotel
Great building. A shame their management sucks so bad. Rooms without minibar and TV without HBO and other premium channels. Nice work desk for business travelers but no phone or dataport within a cable's length of that desk. Hey! You guests! Get the hell out of your rooms and get into our casino! Stat!
The pool deck and tennis court are entered through a doorway in the lobby. Nice. Except that this door is locked until 9AM. So if you want to stay at Monte Carlo and dare to want to be outside before 9AM, you have to stand in the parking lot or out on the Strip. Hey! You guests! What the hell are you doing up before 9AM? Why weren't you up late in our casino last night?
When we checked in we were told our reservation had been cancelled for lack of a deposit payment. We showed them the Sabre receipt showing the room was confirmed, guaranteed for late arrival, and that a 48 hour cancellation requirement was posted by the hotel. The manager on duty read this and without batting an eyelash said, "Your travel agent made a mistake."
Well, not knowing that the Curmudgeon was the travel agent who made the booking, the Curmudgeon made an emphatic and immediate correction (by the way, this hotel's security staff is very fast!). The Sabre confirmation did not show exactly what went wrong. The only thing it established beyond doubt was that the travel agent was not the one at fault because Sabre still showed the room was confirmed. Tsk, tsk. So easy to blame someone when you think they are not around!
Supposedly the only room they could give us was the wheelchair accessible room. Once in the room we found that they placed the bath soap on the floor next to the shower, on top of the bath mat. Not being in a wheelchair, the Curmudgeon can only speculate that having to pick up the soap from the floor is not the best logistical plan for accommodating wheelchair pilots. Isn't that sort of a cruel thing, like when they invented the English word for lisp and they put an "s" in it? (I have a lithp. You have a what? A lithp! A what?). Or like they made the word "dyslexia" such a long word.
Some good stuff about the Monte Carlo. The food was definitely good. The rules of their table games were above average (for Vegas) in terms of fairness and favorability. That does not mean the Curmudgeon did well gambling there. But that is the Curmudgeon's karma issue. No favorable rules will ever help that.
Having said all that, there are worse places to stay in Las Vegas. However, there are better places too including Paris and Mandalay Bay (even though we are about to knock them too). Skip the Monte Carlo.
Paris Hotel
Yes, we are nitpicking here. To enter the parking garage of the Paris
Hotel we were stopped by a security guard at the entrance and asked to show a
photo I.D. He looked at the drivers license, returned it, and waved us in.
Did not check it against a list or a computer. We won't let you in without
a photo I.D. but if you have one we won't check to see if it means anything.
What the hell was that all about? Is there some reason to believe that
terrorists do not possess photo I.D.? Perhaps that only American-born
people know where to get a phony I.D.? Yeah, now I understand!
Muslims don't drink alcohol. Therefore as teenagers they never learned how
to get phony I.D. So if I have a photo I.D., legit or fake, the Paris
Hotel knows I am not Muslim and therefore safe to allow into their
garage. C'est la vie!
Mandalay Bay
Beautiful hotel and decor. Understated tackiness, and that is really good when considering the alternatives in Las Vegas. Our only knock on them was Mandalay Bay's casual restaurant, Raffles. The service was sooooo slooowwww. We must be reasonable in our expectations; this is not Wendy's. The Curmudgeon was hesitant to sit down at first, noticing the neighboring table was occupied by two skeletons covered in cob webs. But being Las Vegas, the Curmudgeon thought it was a theme restaurant.
We don't know how long it took the Curmudgeon to be served, or if ever served while there. Every few hours the Curmudgeon would call on the cell phone and update us. And after a few days the calls stopped coming. Perhaps his phone battery died. Or perhaps...well, all we know is that the Curmudgeon has not been heard from since..