And with that one sentence, you unfortunately prove the critics right!

First of all, the fee actually was $5, and not $50; my brainfart and my mistake (oops..) I took a look at my reciepts when I stayed, and when you mentioned “What was the $50 charge?” I got kinda worried, and went back to look. $5 X 3 = $15 for a total room fee, but beleive me…… if your paying $30-40 a night to stay, and they hit you with a $5 fee/night, it FEELS like you’re paying $50. I learned later you could schmooze yor way out of this. (Just wondering if that was true..)

The resort fee was for the following:

- A funbook, totaling up to $150.00 value,
- Free Tower admissiion between 10AM to 2PM,
- Free use of the laundry room on the 6th floor,
- Free use of the Pool and Fitness area on the 8th floor,
- Available “Guest Available Parking,”
and 2 free tickets to see Viva Las Vegas, a show playing at the Strat.

My guess it was a hidden sales tactic they try to get you to buy thier services and events. (that’s my guess.)

If that is not one of the BEST reasons to play there, I don’t know what is.

Tully – The bus is fine safety-wise, but it is a human zoo. Homeless people using it as a shelter, people talking to themselves, etc. People leave you alone, but few English-speaking middle-class people ride the bus on local routes in Vegas. This is why it rarely runs on schedule. There is nobody to complain. Some of the tourist lines such as the Deuce are different, but riding neighborhood buses is a show in and of itself. Perfectly safe, just bizarre until you get used to it.

All the rooms have been “refreshed”. Looking at older and newer room photos, they’ve replaced the drapes, old print bedspreads, perhaps the carpet and probably the mattress (most hotels have to replace these fairly often). They’ve gone to the triple sheeted in earth tones bed you see in many hotels. Does not look like they replaced furniture, and they still have old TVs, so if you must have a flat screen and contemporary, dark finish furniture, you will be disappointed. If you don’t need those, or marble in the john, these rooms should work fine.

Noticed that CAT bus 108 will get you to the LV Premium Outlets in 10 minutes. The route does go through Naked City (north on Main, west on Charleston, north on Grand Central Pkwy from the Strat). You get on at Main and LVB. Is that bus safe enough as long as one isn’t loaded with bling or carrying an expensive purse? In other words, if I’m wearing jeans, Tshirt and carrying a tote bag from Walmart will I blend in with the natives?

My room at the Strat was a definite upgrade than the room whrere I stayed from the previous year; I stayed at one of the motel-style rooms at the Westward Ho, which were OK, but not the best in Las Vegas; there are some fond memories about my stay at the old “Ho” in 2005 (my first trip out to Mojave,) but my stay at the Strat was more interesting. I was going to book at the Ho again for 2006, but whn I found out that its final day of operation was November of 2005, I was bummed; it had a lot of traffic despite its age, thanks to a bunch of real estate douchebags who think they can pull a price figure out of thier ass. So the Strat, for its position and location on LVB.S, was the only real choice…especially for the price.

Speaking of its location, it is indeed a “go-between” the Strip to the south, and the Downtown section to the north. The cab lines are not long, yet the cab valet guys are very accomidating.

Also, the hotel’s tower is the REAL welcome sign to Las Vegas, As Rex had mentioned, it is located in the City of Las Vegas, and not either Winchester Township, nor Paradise Township.

Plus, for histoical purposes, it was the old site of what used to be the old Vegas World, which was founded in 1979 by the legendary Bob Stupak; some of the original 1979 hotel rooms that used to be Vegas World still exists today. The Tower portion of the Strat, which was built slowly between c.1993 and up to the Strat’s opening in 1996 was conceived by noneother than Stupak himself; it became part of the Strat when the project fell into the hands of the former Grand Casinos.

Interstingly enough, if you enjoy being on top of the tower, you’ll enjoy some tidbitts about the bas of the tower below. If you read up on the history on the building of the tower, you will notice that at the North side of the tower, the angualar butress-like columns look as if they are not porportional to each other; it has a slight sharp curve to it. This was a result of a flaw that was performed during the construction of the tower and was eventualy corrected.

The tower itself, as Rex had mentioned, the most visiable landmark in Vegas; its height goes up to 1,149 ft above ground level and is the tallest observation tower in the U.S. It beats the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France by a few feet.

The room had simple ammenites, nothing “over-the-top” like Bellagio or the Wynn Resort (athough I have nothing against thing being over-the-top) and for the most part, it was clean, comfy, modern, up-to-date and sort of a small version of a sutie than a motel room, with a loveseat- type couch and a coffee table with magazines and stuff about hotel and It didn’t have widescreen HDTV, but it had a working 1990’s CRT-type set that had almost all the local channels (3,5,8,10, 13, etc,; no Univison affiliate) some popular cable channels and a channel devoted to the history of Las Vegas (via Cox Cable.) the bathroom was also very clean and maintained. Plus, the room had an automatic air conditioning system that comes on when you come into the room. That was neat. The only drawback of the room was the privacy lock, which had a very diffrent design than what your used to (which usualy had a bolt and chain to it.) If you’re not careful, maid service will acceidently come in. A good recomendation is to put up the “DO NOT DISTURB” sign for privacy.

The one thing that the hotel suceeds in…is its elevators. They may not be plush, but one thing for sure is when they move floor-to-floor, they’re very comfortable to be in.

For games, if you’re into any type of slots, these machines (as of the last time I was there) were looser than the games that were on the Strip, and did pay out on one reel, say on a cherry. (I don’t know if they changed thier stratagy due to a change of ownership from Carl Ichan to Goldman Sachs, but back in 2006, the slots did pay out.)

They also have table games that were somewhat leftover from the Vegas World days, such as Double Eposure 21 and Crapless Craps. I can;t really comment on the games since I did’nt play them.

And they do have the chessy/fun Vegas-like shows, such as American Superstars and Bite. Although I received complementry tickets to see one of the shows, I didn’t really go. Some people like Rex may have seen the shows, but for some reason, I didn’t (dunno; next time when i come back, if I’m not too chicken-little, I’ll go.)

Although the hotel is very comfortable to be in, the place also has some its drawbacks:

If you arrive early, its more than likely that your room wiil not be ready, and a three-hour wait means handing your suitcases to the bellboy for safekeeping and a long time spent in the casino. If you have a zero-tollerance for a lack of a room due to either overbooking or other reasons, a good back up plan would be a room at an off-strip hotel in case that happens.

While the rooms, as Rex mentioned, advertise for $30-40 a night, there is a hiiden fee of $50 that is mentioned at the desk when checking in. If you choose to pay it, it’s up to you, otherwise you can have it waved by mentioning how much money you plan to spend. Me personally, I think they should mention the actual rate: $30 50 = $80 not including the tax. Truth in advertising pays.

While the staff is polite, they really do not go all the way to pamper. If you get locked out of your room, it may require a two calls for someone to get you back in, possibly for last resort, security opening up your door to let you back in, but may be very slow. While it is not a ritzy hotel, service should a little faster.

While its location between the Strip and Downtown is great, its central location isn’t. Being next to the Naked City doen’t help much, even though a developer wants to take it and redevelop it (though that may take years—Ivana Trump tried to build her condos on the old Holy How Brewery, but never came to fruition.) It’s neighborhood is also a hangout of both bums and hookers,some of which live in that location, On one night (3AM,) I was accosted by a guy who wanted a nickel (I contionued walking) and a young blond girl who followed me towards the old McDonald’s/Westward Ho location, possibly a hooker, who was trying to be “cordial”, and simply ignored her. (Though we love hookers, they’re not legal in that part of Nevada. I feared that I would be picked up be the Yellowshirts in black and white cars with red and blue lights, and taken to 2CDC downtown, instead of staying at my hotel room at the Strat.)

(….Come to think of it, I think it was the “Jamie” character that Rex had mentioned many times over.)

Other than that mentioned above, a stay at the Stratoshpere is great in terms of value and quality.

In my opinion, that honor goes to New York New York.

I thought the buffet was fine, but not great. The one thing that could be improved is the outdoor pool deck, which is quite plain. I believe this is the real reason people stay in the nicer hotels in Vegas: to use the pool during the daytime!

I do have to disagree on the buffet though. The best thing I found at it was the fruit, and even then I didn’t feel quite right after eating there.

I would recommend it to anyone who likes a nice, AFFORDABLE, place to stay.

I would also recommend checking out “Bite” on a 2-for-1 ticket while staying there. It’s cheesy and all, but they have statues with vagina-mouths, and you can get close-up pics with the girls (there are some super-hotties in the cast) after the show. If I remember right, there’s also a bit of impressive acrobatic prowess mixed in at times. And it’s all accompanied by rock which makes it even better.