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| - Decent Hotel, Very Nice Funky Old Vegas Style Building and Decor; Authentic Old Town Vegas Flavor!
My review is only for the hotel part of the business, since I have no interest in gambling/gaming, nor do I drink, and so I cannot rate the casino or the bars in the casino. And, my hotel review is only for the Pavilion rooms, for my entire 8-day stay was in a non-smoking Pavilion room. The Pavilion rooms are located on the far eastern end of the old main building, and are located on the 5th floor of the parking garage.
If you have never stayed in this hotel before, I will tell you that the hotel offers hotel rooms in at least four, or possibly five, entirely distinct sections of the hotel, and the Pavilion room section is only one of those sections.
First, I've gotta tell you that I love staying in the Old Town section of Vegas, even though I do not gamble, nor drink, nor smoke, and I chose the El Cortez for my stay during this visit because my previously-favorite Old Town hotel, the Gold Spike, closed in early 2013 and is currently being remodeled and re-purposed. I love the El Cortez because it is a very old hotel, and because it stays true to much of the old-time value, style, flavor and atmosphere that is totally lacking in venues to be found on The Strip.
I found my non-smoking Pavilion room to be totally satisfactory. I never smelled the slightest whiff of cigarette smoke while in the room or the hallways, and the room was spacious, clean and very comfortable. If you do not like cigarette smoke, please be forewarned that the ONLY way to access the elevator to the 5th floor Pavilion rooms, unless you are coming from the parking garage (which would only occur if you had just parked your car in the garage below), is via the smoke-filled casino on the ground floor, and the casino area (and also the cafe and bar sections) is quite smoky.
The food at the cafe located on the ground floor is quite good, but the cafe gets overly crowded at dinnertime, and so I learned to avoid it after 5 PM. There is also a Subway franchise located inside the casino area on the ground floor, in the NW corner, and this outlet serves very good breakfast sandwiches, even at odd times such as 4 AM or 5 AM (I get to bed early and I wake up early each morning. ....).
Incidentally, I found all the staff at this hotel, from front desk clerks, to security guards, to parking lot attendants, to be uniformly friendly and helpful, and very courteous!
BTW, this hotel does NOT allow pets in the rooms, and they make this fact clear on their website. I mention this only because a young hippie-type guy had snuck what seemed to be a small dog into his room across the hall from me, and he was then promptly and gently evicted by hotel security when they learned that he had a pet in his room. I learned of this only because I happened to walk down the hall to empty my garbage pail while the eviction was going on. I have no idea why the young man in question had bothered to reserve a room at this hotel in the first place, in light of the fact that they have a clear no-pets-allowed policy, and particularly in light of the fact that there are a number of hotels in the same price range in the Old Town area that do offer some hotel rooms where pets are allowed (albeit perhaps for a small pet fee each night). In fact, a quick search on Google shows that there are at least 83 hotels in Las Vegas that allow pets, and a good number of these hotels are in the same price range as the Pavilion rooms at the El Cortez. Of course, I am preaching only to the choir here, for I would need the fingers on both hands to count the number of times that I have stayed in other hotels (particularly Holiday Inns) across the US that had strict no-pets-allowed policies, only to hear the meowing of "ghost cats" from other rooms at all hours of the day and night!
In closing, yes, I would definitely. and strongly, consider staying in this hotel again if and when I need to stay in the Old Town area of Las Vegas.
One final word of warning for non-smokers like myself: if you are planning to reserve rooms at this hotel, DO NOT reserve a non-smoking room in the Vintage Room section (which is the least expensive tier of rooms), because these rooms are located just above the casino floor, connected by an open stairwell, and thus a certain amount of cigarette smoke will end up in the hallways of the Vintage Room area, and likely also likely even in the non-smoking rooms. Rather, choose a non-smoking room in the Pavilion section, or one of the (fancy) Tower sections, or in the Cabana section.
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