My husband and I made a recent trip to Las Vegas, for those who know us this is not an unusual occurrence as we frequently travel there for quick get-away’s and annually around the time of our Anniversary. This year we are celebrating 20 years! We made our trip decisions a little late this year as things were very busy at work, and we needed to coordinate our trip around various other commitments. That being said we decided to stay at an older hotel with a little more Vegas history to it, this would save us a few bucks and allow us to stay a little bit longer than our usual 4-ish days. We chose the Flamingo Hotel and Casino.
The Flamingo is an iconic Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. In 1946 mobster Bugsy Seigel opened the Flamingo in Las Vegas, his investment was said to be around $6 million dollars for the new luxury hotel. This was the third Casino floor to be opened in Las Vegas, and today now owned by Caesar’s Entertainment is the last remaining original Hotel and Casino. The pink South Beach meets art deco glamour theme is complete with a Large Casino Floor, Shopping areas, Wildlife Habitat with actual Flamingos, a beautiful pool area, and over 3000 guest rooms.
Now, for my personal experience at this iconic Hotel. We arrived late on a Thursday night, getting to the hotel at around 10:30pm. This is usually a very slow time at area check in desks, but not the case at the Flamingo… it was clamoring with people when we arrived. The desk was understaffed for the volume of check in’s, and we waited in line for almost an hour to get our room information. I’m going to rewind for just a moment. When we booked our trip we booked a standard “Fab” room. This was a mistake! The reviews on these rooms are terrible, and we called a few days before leaving to see if we could upgrade to a newly renovated room. At the time of the call we were told that we would be able to upgrade easily upon check in… ok now back to check in… We requested the newly renovated room only to find out that they were sold out for the night and there were no other rooms available at all of any kind! We were instructed by the staff to return to the mail/key line between 12pm and 2pm the next day to upgrade our room as people were checking out. We agreed and accepted the “Fab” room for one night.
First impression the halls and elevator areas were void of art, had sterile florescent lighting, no accessory furniture, and it felt like a creepy old hospital hallway.
The room was small, the furniture was heavily worn, the floor was dirty, two of the electrical receptacles were broken, and the air conditioner was not really working well. Upon entering we also realized that not only could we not upgrade but we had been placed in a room with two double beds instead of the king room that we booked! The room had newer wood look tile on the floor in the main room, but the bathroom had very old white tile everywhere. The fan in the bath area was so loud that we couldn’t talk to each other from one area to the other. We had a view of the High Roller, a large Ferris wheel, and the mountains.
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At 8:30a my husband went down to get coffee and stopped to request the upgrade, thankfully he did as they were already running out of upgrade options again! If we had waited until 12pm there wouldn’t have been any way to change rooms. We upgraded to a newly renovated room, and had to wait till between 12pm and 2pm to get the keys to give housekeeping time to clean. At 12:30pm we went to the desk area and it was overwhelmed with people again. We abandoned ship and returned around 2pm and were assigned our new room in the Habitat tower.
This was a night and day difference! The hallways were warmly colored and decorated with beautiful mural wall paper, and decorative touches. It was clean, the lighting was better.
Our room was so cute! Nice new furniture, everything was clean, and well stocked. The view was about the same but oh what a difference this nice fresh room made! Long story short, I’m glad to have stayed for the sake of saying I stayed there…but never again.
