Grazing Rites

This was my second trip to Las Vegas and my second time staying at the Stratosphere, 2 years later almost to the day.

Unfortunately I found some things had declined in quality since my previous visit. The overall cleanliness of the place had gotten a bit worse; worn carpets and poorer ventilation on the casino floor for example. The staff was still helpful and friendly but not to the extent I experienced previously.

As for food options, Roxy’s Diner seemed to have lost some of their more capable singers and friendly personalities – one waitress in particularly seemed almost afraid of people talking to her or getting any attention, you could tell she really disliked every moment she had to sing. The buffet selection didn’t seem as good. Now granted these things were all still good in their own right, just not as good as before.

There were a couple improvements over last time, most notably there were no promoters accosting you as you walked around like 2 years ago.

I was very impressed with the lounge band, Stinger. Not only were they very capable musicians but they were also incredibly entertaining – not to mention very patient with some of the more intoxicated patrons.

We also had some service issues. We had booked a premium room with a view of the strip and had also requested a rollaway bed. We booked a month and a half in advance but it wasn’t until check-in that we were informed that a rollaway bed could not fit in the room we had booked so instead we had to accept a downgrade to a room with a very limited view out of one small window. We were not reimbursed for the difference of the downgrade. We were also not informed about the $20/day fee for the rollaway bed until check-in which is understandable but that seems like some simple information that could have been supplied on the website or in the reservation confirmation e-mail.

The toilet in our room kept clogging – 4 times in 5 days. The first time the plumber accused the maids of flushing soap down the toilet but we had already been in the room 2 days and had only used one bar of soap that was still there so this didn’t make any sense to us. The second time the plumber had to call his supervisor because he didn’t know what to do. The third time the plumber accused the previous 2 plumbers of being incompetent and blamed some new construction site for taking away most of their qualified plumbers – this plumber at least went to the trouble of replacing the entire tank on the toilet. The fourth time the plumber only spoke up long enough to make fun of us and then use the wrong name for one of his tools. We were all somewhat uncomfortable with the trend of plumbers blaming other employees for problems they themselves could not fix. The average plumber response time was about an hour and a half which multiplied by 4 occurrences was a lot of time to waste sitting around waiting instead of enjoying Las Vegas. It seemed odd to me that at no point did they offer to move us to another room even after it had happened 3 and 4 times.

We ordered Room Service one night and the quality of the food and service were both exceptional.

The rides at the top are not to be missed, they may seem simple from the pictures but they’re actually quite terrifying when you’re so high up.

$12 per day WiFi seemed a little high given there are so many free WiFi spots in Las Vegas.

Overall the Stratosphere is still a decent place to stay at a reasonable price but I doubt I will be returning.

This entry was posted on November 19, 2008 at 10:51 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.