Rio (owned by Harrah's)
Stayed 12/17 Wed and 12/18 Thurs, standard rooms, comped +
Monopoly color group rating: LIGHT BLUE (pretending to be RED)
Our play: as little as we could
The rooms at this "all-suite" off-Strip property were a measurable upgrade
from the LVH. But the other deficiencies at the property significantly
outweighed the positives, and it is extremely unlikely we will ever return.
They've had their three strikes.
The gaming machine inventory, after the LVH, was worse than a disappointment.
Everything short pay, and there weren't many of those [bad] machines, either.
I saw mocking mention of the "Bevertainers" here -- cocktail waitresses
climbing up on a platform inside a bar area, belting out some old Broadway
tune. But after you've heard the same bad song mangled THREE TIMES IN A ROW
by the same "waitress", you'd rather visit a Greyhound bus terminal and enjoy
the flickering fluorescent lights. (The entertainment value is higher.)
Rio prides itself (so they say) on providing entertainment. It's hard to say.
I've never seen it.
Previous visits might have been an aberration, but this time, we feel it
should have been their DUTY, at the time we booked, to tell us that everything
was "dark". They didn't -- and Rio added to the insult by constantly
bombarding us with advertising, during our entire stay, for the shows we
couldn't see.
What are we talking about here? Well, the floats hanging from the ceiling ...
but I'm mostly pissed we didn't get to see Penn & Teller. They come to AC
often enough, but LV's their home base, and on local TV programming their
show's advertised about every 30 minutes. Their first show (after the holiday
"hiatus") was the day after our return to NJ.
The comp offer included tickets for 2 to "Scintillas" at Rio -- which was
dark -- so we got to see a pick-up, Jeff Trachta's very uneven "Christmas
Holiday Spectacular". For a free show, it was worth every penny -- you
wouldn't walk out -- but despite some good performances, it lacked an overall
sense of coherence. And we really didn't go to Vegas to hear "Vegas versions"
of Christmas songs.
The other show comp was to see Clint Holmes at Harrah's, a sister casino.
Clint did one Billboard-rated song some 30 years ago, and joked a little about
it -- but at this point in his career he's just a perennial lounge act. Wonder
of wonders -- Jeff Trachta (the previous free show) was sitting 20 feet away
from us on his one night off a week, learning (from watching Clint) a little
more about working an audience. I guess. It was sort of sad... but not so
sad as a performer blowing his salary on the tables or booze or drugs, I
guess.
Again, a good-enough show not to walk out on, but most of the performances
could have been phoned in. When a show is going through a patch of mundane
filler, the better solution is to FIX it -- not to crank up the amplifiers.
Back at Rio, the "featured food" was a seafood buffet. Now, I don't know
about your eating habits, but I never try to hit a sushi bar at 2am -- nor a
seafood buffet during the slowest time of the year (when all the experienced
help is taking time off). It just doesn't seem a very safe practice.
So we ate NOTHING at Rio. We spent a half day exploring the Palms, and a
couple other places, and a half day over by Harrah's. For food, we drove one
long block north of Rio to Spring Mountain Rd. and ate at Sam Woo's in the
Chinatown Plaza.
Come to think of it... in 11 days in Vegas, we ate at Sam Woo's 7-8 times.
It's good authentic Chinese food, and if you have someone who knows how to
order the right dishes (usually in Mandarin), it's very reasonably priced. We
never saw a casino "Asian-themed" restaurant with food half as good at 3X the
price, in other words. And we'd rather pay to eat at Sam Woo's than accept a
lot of "free" comped food offers. (Is this blurb overdoing it? Not really!
The other thing that Rio is trying to sell is Sex. "Skintight", soft porn for
guys -- and some male stripper show for women. Both too overt for our tastes.
We came back to the casino late Thursday night when the "Bikini Beach Bar" was
open: a lame-ass video dance club with the attraction being female bartenders
wearing bikinis. The crowd of young boys was lined up at a velvet rope titled
"V.I.P. Entrance" where their fake IDs could be inspected, while the
employees, paid Eye Candy (and people who mattered) slipped in an unmarked
side door. Pretty pathetic overall.
The other thing -- when we were trying to honor our comp "obligation" -- was
at the far end of the casino. There was a raised bar, and some pretty decent
(trance) music on the speakers there, but then there were OTHER speakers in a
different direction with Neanderthal Rock playing louder ("Born, in the
U.S.A.! Yeah!") so you couldn't hear the first music, and THEN, every few
minutes, the Bevertainers would get up and their woofers beat out the
cacaphony from the first two.
Rio has just announced that an exciting Ferris Wheel is going to be built,
where you can spend 18 dollars to ride up and around in a big circle once with
20 strangers in a pod -- about a half hour trip to get back to where you
started from. I suggest you spend the money on CRACK COCAINE instead, if you
are looking for some semblance of entertainment for your dollar.