In all our years of monitoring and testing the Las Vegas buffets, we’ve never seen a deal like this, so Excalibur’s Roundtable Buffet offer gets points for creativity. After you pay, you’re given a wristband that allows you to re-enter as many times as you like up till closing of the buffet at the end of the day on which you purchased the deal (plus you get front-of-line access, so there’s no waiting). The buffets cost $11.99 for breakfast, $14.99 for lunch, and $17.99 for dinner—or $44.97 for all three. This means you have to eat at least two meals to get value from the discount. If you eat breakfast and lunch, you save $2. Breakfast and dinner saves $5. Lunch and dinner saves $8. Eating all three saves $20. And if you’re some kind of maniac who can eat more than three meals in the same buffet in the same day, your savings will be greater.
So from a pure monetary standpoint, it’s a deal. But as you suggest, you must also consider the wisdom of eating multiple meals in one place. Frankly, we’d find it difficult to eat at any buffet more than once per week (let alone per day), but this play certainly puts a cap on your spending. Anthony Curtis tells of eating at a $4 dinner buffet at the Stardust in the early ‘80s, where he and his rugby buddies would load up on chicken and rice as their only meal of the day. Similarly, this strategy would make sense for an undercapitalized visitor who wants to keep his dining outlay strictly in check. But it might not work so well for those with discriminating tastes. The Roundtable is a reasonable effort serving standard buffet fare, but our readers have given it a rating of only 1.5 out of 5 stars* and generally warn against it.
Bottom line: Unless you’re staying at Excalibur and want to keep your food spending strictly in check, this one sounds like a pass. Plus, there’s an ongoing 2-for-1 offer for dinner here, which sounds like a better play overall.
*Don't forget you can rate pretty much everything on our site these days, without having to be an LVA member -- your fellow readers are a great source of up-to-date information, as well as often being very amusing in their take on things, so check it out and take part if you haven't already.
