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| - What a sad, tired, shit hole this place is. It's one of the cheaper properties on the strip, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. But it's a sad, tired, shit hole nevertheless. Unless you're hellbent on staying on the strip, you'd do better to stay some place downtown (even if you want to gamble).
Our room was a cinderblock tomb covered in wall paper, and furnished with two queen sized beds and a flat screen TV housed in a cheap armoire. It was kind of gross. The walls were bare--not even bad art, or framed mirror, or anything--giving the room a prison cell feel. The toilet flushes noisily for 5 minutes per flush. This 22 year old property still has no Wi-Fi. You have to plug your laptop into this movement-hindering tether from the 20th century called an "ethernet cable" in order to get "high speed internet". Miraculously, my laptop had a port for this anachronistic plug, so we did have an internet connection. That doesn't stop Excalibur from tacking on a 'resort fee' ($15 per day) to cover this 'amenity' (along with the outdoor pool no one uses in December) like the more modern and upscale properties on the strip.
The casino floor itself is run down and sad, and anyone staying there primarily to gamble must surely and sadly migrate up the strip to more interesting venues. The low ceiling and poor lighting are kind of depressing. This doesn't stop Excalibur from charging regular strip prices for drinks ($10 a pop) and food ($35 for the "all you can eat" buffet). After one night my girlfriend and I treated it simply as a a place "to crash", entering and exiting our hotel via the elevators near the exit, and visiting only to sleep.
It's a joke that this place continues to try to hang with the more upscale strip properties, especially without a willingness to upgrade or renovate. My advice for an old, rundown property like this? If you're going to be a cheap shit hole, behave like a cheap shit hole. Drop the premium strip pricing on food and drink. Drop the 'resort fee'.
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