LVH (owned by Park Place Entertainment, aka Caesar's as of Jan 6 2004)
Stayed 12/15 Mon and 12/16 Tues, standard rooms, comped RFB
Monopoly color group rating: ORANGE
Our play: light to moderate, mostly VP.
We chose to start off our trip with "Old Reliable" -- a safe, not-too-many
surprises slightly off-strip location that's always treated us fairly in the
past. (BUT This might be about to change -- see below.)
There was one surprise we weren't expecting, though -- the monorail right in
front of the casino, scheduled to open next month (January 04). This winds
from Sahara to the north, down past the convention center, cuts in towards the
Strip and (I believe) has a loop at the MGM Grand. I'm sure there's a few
other stops on the way -- someone will post the skinny to the group when
they're ready for the official opening and there's a newspaper article, I
imagine.
The room: North Tower, clean, a little drab, average TV. One deficiency I've
noted in the past is that all LVH showerheads in the baths are cheap
plastic -- the kind with multiple settings, of which 4 or 5 out of 7 are
clogged up by mineral deposits so they don't work. There's water pressure,
and it's hot enough -- but this is a curious deficiency that has existed for a
number of years. Maybe some PPE junior executive thinks that if they upgrade
the showerheads, clients will steal all the good ones. Or maybe they've been
waiting for a Plumber's Convention to show up next door, so they can get a
good deal.
The VP gaming isn't out to kill anyone -- that's the best way to describe it.
You can play in the dark back area by the sports book for hours on nickel and
quarter machines, racking up comp points that you can use at the casino (or
any other PPE property). Some TITO, some coin drop. Ventilation is better in
the front, but then you won't find the better machines there. There's a set
of ancient Triple Play machines halfway between the cage and the back --
directly across from the player's club, which is now relocated behind a
laughably bad "High Limit" slot machine area. These quarter Triple Plays are
strictly coin, and if you're playing JoB or DW and ever need to put in a $20
bill more than every half hour, it's time to brush up on your Winpoker
techniques.
The machines in the Star Trek "Space Quest" area are almost all a bit tighter.
You won't see any costumed characters wandering out of the novelty area trying
to coax more paying customers in -- which is probably what they'd be doing if
this casino was on the Strip.
Breakfast buffet was very good -- a big selection of excellent fresh foods
served until 11am or so -- that more than makes up for any perceived
deficiencies in the rest of the casino. One buffet here to charge the
batteries, then one other meal later in the day, and you're fine. (Skip
lunch, IOW).
The Benihana was average for Benihanas -- an anachronism kind of like a
Playboy Club. Before the chef arrived, joked with the other people at our
table that we'd like to visit one time without hearing "Happy Birthday To You"
being sung. 30 seconds later, yup -- 3 tables over. Real salt-of-the-earth
people.
The real LVH surprise started out as a mystery, solved coincidentally by the
vpFree Group before we left Vegas. The first night, my wife went down to play
late -- 10pm-2am in the back. The cocktail waitress shift changed at 11:30 or
so. The new girl on the shift tried to grab Rose's full glass of wine, and my
wife stopped her. The waitress snarled at her "I don't like the way you're
looking at me!"
And then, Rose waited over an hour to get her drink refreshed. This waitress
would walk the other aisles -- but not come near my wife. Eventually, my wife
spoke to a floorwalker -- security or cleanup -- and a manager was brought
over. The story from the employee was predictably different from the paying
customer's, and I believe the manager asked security for a tape review. This
waitress was not there the next night (when I joined my wife) nor later in the
trip when we came back to play a bit more on our Connection Cards.
Could it possibly have been a racist reaction by a white employee to serving
an ethnic Chinese customer? My wife's seen this before -- on very rare
occasions. She thinks it's more likely than not. And to me, the absurd thing
is that my wife's been an American citizen in this country longer than that
waitress has been alive, and has probably paid a whole heck of a lot more in
taxes than the waitress, besides. There are some people who just aren't cut
out for contact with the public. We have to question why management couldn't
see this coming.
Then, another night a week later, we'd moved to the Mirage but had been out
around town earlier in the evening. We put in a few hours playing VP at the
back of the LVH, and on our way out decided to play a video slot in the
"Spacequest" area. This time, a tall black cocktail waitress took our drink
order (coffee for me, wine for Rose) around 12:15am. At 1am we asked a change
person to find our waitress. He informed us that she had left at 12:30am.
The MYSTERY -- two unrelated incidents of spectacularly bad floor service in
such a short time -- was solved when the announcement came down last week that
Park Place had sold the property to a "private investment company" -- those
fine people who've turned the Atlantic City Resorts casino into a ghost town
in less than a year. No word of what will happen to so-many-thousand PPE
employees, and the LV economy is doubly depressed (first by the Bush
recession, then by pressure from all the CA Indian casinos opening). And the
newspaper articles mention the LVH site as a possible future timeshare.
So... if you're going to stay at the Hilton, do so soon. Ask when you book
about the transition, whether you'll still get Connection Card points (and
who's in charge, basically). Remember that this great Vegas insititution
might not have been too good in recent years for PPE stockholders, because
they never gave one person the authority to manage the property "right", and
PPE took on a lot more debt than was prudent... but to us, the LVH should have
remained the flagship of the Hilton chain. Now all that's going to be left of
the famous Hilton name is the blonde slut on Fox TV.
And remember, if you do stay at the LVH, many people working for you might
have "lame duck" status -- you might not get the service you expect. Do not
hesitate to escalate your concerns promptly through management, try to get
everything resolved immediately -- because the parties you have to deal with
might not be there in a week or a month's time.
If for any reason the sale to Concord doesn't go through -- $280 million
doesn't seem like all that much for a great big property with the potential
this has -- then hopefully PPE management, with a fresh look, will finally
figure out what they need to do. (Can you imagine a monorail stopping at a
timeshare property? This "deal" is bad from its inception, about on the order
of the AOL - Time Warner merger, if different in scale.)