Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Monorail Hotels
If you're not planning on renting a car, staying in a hotel with a monorail stop
does give you more transportation options. For info on monorail pricing and poli-
cies, go to p. 11.
Hotels/sites with monorail stops are: The MGM Grand, Bally's, The Flamingo,
Harrah's, the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton, The Sahara.
desks. Beds are made ultracushy by the addition of extra pillowbeds between the
mattress and sheet. There's even a handy oversized mirror in the all-marble bath-
room, perfect for a last-minute hem check.
Families take note:
Rooms here are
among the biggest on the Strip; if you're willing to pay extra to have junior in the
room with you (a terrible policy that holds at most Strip properties; see box
p. 52), at least here, you won't be on top of each other.
I'm less enamored of the rest of the place, which is, to put it bluntly, a bit
bland. Let's give kudos to Bally's for having the courage to go themeless (which in
Vegas is a little like forgetting to wear your pants to a cocktail party), but I kinda
wish they had embellished it in some way. That's not to say the large casino isn't
perfectly pleasant; or that the outdoor space, with its moving walkways going into
and out of the hotel out front; and the eight tennis courts; and the lushly planted
pool complex out back aren't up to snuff. They are. But I somehow always find
myself stifling a yawn at Bally's.
Along with all the usual gaming tables and slot machines, Bally's is home to
the famed
Jubilee!
show (p. 190) and the live version of
The Price Is Right
(p. 196).
It attaches to Paris Las Vegas, shares a parking lot with that property (if you self-
park, you'll park in Paris, so follow the correct signs), and features eight undistin-
guished restaurants, one of which hosts the most expensive brunch in town and a
fab 15,000-square-foot full-service health club. In the basement are a slew of
shops and the entrance to the monorail.
$$-$$$$
How Vegas is this? When it came time to name what was in 1946 the
most glamorous and expensive Vegas casino ever built, gangster Bugsy Siegel
chose the nickname he had for his long-legged, starlet girlfriend.
The Flamingo
Las Vegas
(3555 Las Vegas Blvd. S., between Sands Ave. and Flamingo Rd.;
%
800/
732-2111 or 702/733-3111; www.flamingolasvegas.com; AE, DC, MC, V),
the orig-
inal, was razed in 1993—what you see today are a series of towers built from the
'70s through the '90s—but it still commemorates that leggy lady with actual
Chilean, pink flamingoes strutting through the back gardens. They're joined by
swans, quail, crane, pheasants, guinea fowl, ducks, macaws, and all sorts of fish in
the 15-acre Wildlife Habitat at the back of the resort, to my mind one of the
loveliest outdoor spaces in Vegas. Alas, the penguins who once waddled here (they
were my personal faves) were moved to cooler climes in the summer of 2006.
Alongside this mini-zoo are two Olympic-size pools, waterslides, and one dedi-
cated kiddie pool; and though you didn't hear this from me, this is one of the few
pool areas on the Strip where they don't make a fuss about room keys (so dive
right in, it's one of the top five pool areas on the Strip and just delightful).
