Originally posted by: O2bnVegas
Thanks, Mark. I thought it was fairly common that resort fees are waved on "comped" rooms. Your deal must have been different.
Anyway, I agree about Mirage. We stayed there in it's first year...beautiful, the white tigers, the gargantuan greenery, lovely room and a Strip view directly across from Harrah's. Looking out the window we thought Harrah's looked intriguing, the steamboat theme, in fact was called "Holiday Casino" at the time, having just been changed from a Holiday Inn to Harrah's. So next stay we went to Harrah's and didn't stay at Mirage again.
Just a year or three ago we walked through Mirage. Instead of the sparkling clean feeling of the early years, it felt smoky, dingy. Too bad. At least you now know you can strike Mirage off your bucket list and never go back.
Candy
Actually, I remember something like 10 years ago, it was generally assumed that resort fees and taxes were part of a comp--and my first surprise was that my "comped" room at the Palms would cost me $40+ a night. Then, I kept finding that happening elsewhere, when it came to Strip properties, anyway. The lower-end locals' joints and the downtown places still gave complete as opposed to pseudo-comps. Just another Stripoff.
I was never all that impressed with the Mirage and its exploding tigers, etc. I did play a lot of poker there. My favorite visual memory was Bill Gates playing $3/6 limit hold 'em, his wife calling him on his phone and telling him to come to dinner, and him standing in line at the window to cash out his last $6. (Really.)
I think you could pretty much say that about a dozen Strip casinos these days--faded glory and looking kind of rough around the edges. It's kind of sad, really, that they keep up all the pretensions. At this point, most of the Strip pleasure palaces look like a 55-year-old woman wearing tight stretch pants and too much makeup.
