| rev:text
| - I'm torn as to how to rate the Vdara because some aspects were so good and some were so bad, but overall I was pretty satisfied, especially for the price paid.
The Good. The rooms are beautiful and spacious, very clean, and come with kitchenettes (microwave, fridge, small range). Our room (the cheapest category) was on the 37th floor and had a beautiful view of Bellagio fountains & Paris. The lobby area is beautiful and clean. The hotel is non-gaming and totally smoke free, which is the big reason we picked it. There is no smoke stench in the room at all and we all felt like it was a calm, quiet, nice-smelling oasis from the rest if the strip. The pool is not huge or fancy by Vegas standards but is good-size for a hotel pool and was WARM - we went swimming in late December! Nice daybeds and cabanas. The hotel is close to both Aria and Bellagio which have lots of food and entertainment options. There is free wifi (well, included in resort fee) which worked pretty well. The gym was really nice but quite crowded. The Vdara Market Cafe in lobby is convenient for a quick bite and has pretty decent albeit croissants and other breakfast/snack items. The rooms are the most soundproof hotel rooms I've ever stayed in; we never heard a soul.
The Bad. Our main problem was with the service, particularly with housekeeping. Although the rooms come with kitchenettes, they don't include any plates, glasses, cutlery etc and you have to call and request it. The first night my mom requested some and they did not bring it to her before she went to bed (several hours later). They did leave it outside her room as requested, so she could have dishes as soon as she woke up. Our first full day, although we were out of the rooms most of the day, neither of our two rooms got made up. This was not a big deal, except my husband and I needed new towels and water bottles and my parents needed water bottles and clean dishes. My mom called around 6 pm and requested what they needed and they told her they would be there by 8 at the latest (my parents go to bed early and were also coming from Central Time two hours ahead, so it was important that it be done on time). An hour or so later, my husband called with our request. He was on hold with housekeeping for 15-20 minutes but when he finally got through they brought up our towels and water bottles fairly promptly (within 30 mins). When the guy came to our room I told him my parents had called quite awhile ago and were still waiting, he basically said that someone else would come and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Super helpful.
Finally, just before 8, a housekeeper showed up and said she would come back soon. She finally came back closer to 8:30. That was bad enough, but the absolutely ridiculous thing was that she took close to an hour to clean my parents room (so it was finally clean 1.5 hrs after they were promised it would be) and another hour to clean ours. We thought it was taking so long because they were washing dishes, but when my parents finally got back in their room all the dishes were gone!! Fortunately she was still cleaning our room so my mom stopped her and at least got clean mugs - she had no other dishes though. They also took about an hour to clean our room and we didn't get in it until close to 10:30. I'm not sure how on earth it takes 1 hour to clean a hotel room, especially when there are no dishes to be washed or anything. The only thing they had to do was make up the bed and pick up towels off the floor - not sure how that can possibly take more than 20 minutes or so.
To be fair, all of the problems with housekeeping happened on Christmas Day and they may have been understaffed. But we all found it odd and very frustrating that there are no dishes in the rooms AND it takes hours to get them from housekeeping.
The other really annoying thing about the Vdara is that the parking is valet only, no self park. Although the valet is "complimentary" you have to tip every time they bring your car up, so its not really free. You also have to wait for them to bring your to you. We regularly waited 15-20 minutes and calling ahead for the car did not work. Although they don't really advertise this, you can also self-park in Aria's garage, but this means that in addition to walking 10+ minutes to the hotel, you also have no choice but to exit the garage onto the strip, with its absolutely horrific traffic. If you valet at the Vdara, you can exit onto a side street and get right onto the highway without going on the strip. So although both options are fairly inconvenient, the self-park is definitely worse.
Overall, I do recommend the hotel especially if you don't smoke and are looking for a quieter Vegas experience but if you have a car and/or want to cook any food or hot beverages in your room, ask for things well in advance and prepare to wait.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)