Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas

Before I went on vacation, I mentioned how resorts rip you off by charging you for internet access.
Caesar’s Palace, where we stayed, is such a resort. Internet access was $11.99 a day. I could have lived with that if I absolutely had to, but they charge you for each laptop you hook up to their system. So if a client comes to your room and whips out his laptop to show you something, you’ve got to pay $11.99 for both their laptop and yours. That’s $24, half of what my high speed access costs at home.
For business use, I think I’m going to have to invest in one of those satellite internet cards from my cell phone company. The only problem is I think they only come in PCMCIA and my laptop doesn’t have any PCMCIA slots. I only have an ExpressCard slot. Hopefully they’re available for that. I won’t be getting it anytime soon, but in the future it will come in handy, especially for field use on job sites.
They hit you hard at the gym too. Caesar’s wanted $25 a day. Considering I’d only be using it for an hour and a half, that’s a bum deal. Now I can see charging non-guests a fee to use the facilities, but you should be able to use the gym with a room key for free. They do let you use it for free for a day if you buy a massage, but a massage starts at $140. I’m a member of Anytime Fitness but I couldn’t find one withing walking distance of Caesar’s, even though there are about thirty in Las Vegas. Had there been one, I would have done that.
A bottle of water taken from the counter in our room:

Quench your thirst for only $4!

Down the hall in the vending machine, the same size bottle was only $2. We walked down to CVS and bought a six pack as well as some other things for far less. I think the six pack was only a couple bucks. It was about a three mile round trip, but worth it to save that much money. I’m surprised that the ice machine was free.
I’m sure I can find more absurdities, but that’s all I found on this trip. I’m going to keep my eye out for more next year. As much as I hate it, resorts can get away with this robbery because people are stupid enough to comply.
The room we had wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t the best either. In fact, it was the largest of the three rooms we had. They were on par with your standard $29.99 a night hotel at best. In no way did they live up to the price we paid or the image that is supposedly Caesar’s Palace.
The pillows were the hardest pillows I’ve ever had to use at a hotel in my life.
The bathrooms were floored in regular old white tile.
The showers were just your standard fiberglass tub with your standard vinyl shower curtain. Just the liner mind you, no actual curtain.
The “closet” was actually just a cheap metal closet rod spanning a recess in the wall inside the bathroom, something which I haven’t even seen in cheap hotels.
The room safe was huge, which I liked. I could have taken the laptop if I had to. We called Caesar’s before we left and they weren’t sure about whether or not I could fit a laptop in them. their advice was to take it all they way to the Bell desk when you left the room and leave it with them in their locked room. The safes had to be opened using the room key, which I didn’t like. I prefer the ones at Bellagio where you enter your own code into the keypad.
The t.v. was on par with Bellagio next door as well, nothing to be desired unless you like watching nothing but the news and Law & Order reruns.
The worst part about our room was the view. We had a view of walls. Check it out. This was in room 357 of the Roman Tower, third floor.
Something I found rather peculiar was the fact that the room map showed a room 359 next to us. However, there was no door. The next door over was for room 361, which was the suite whose doors opened directly into the elevator lobby.
Other than that, Caesar’s Palace is a wondrous place to visit. There’s something to do around every corner, the restaurants are to die for, the shopping is outstanding, and the entertainment options are among the best in the world.
I don’t know if we’ll be staying there again, but it doesn’t look like it’s a possibility. For the amount of money we spend on vacations like this, we want more out of our rooms than your basic Red Roof Inn or Days Inn fare.