By the way...the Riviera is a nice place. Very clean, and a cool iconic vibe. The history of that casino is fascinating to me.
The standard rooms there are very clean. The jr. suites are okay. And the Penthouse suites are very nice.
They have the world famous iconic show "Crazy Girls" (topless), they have the new "Pawn Stars" show there, they have a male strip show (for you ladies), they have a couple of magicians shows.
They also now have a Motown show playing on the stage behind the main casino bar.
And if you saw the mob movie "Casino"...it was based on the old Stardust. But it was all filmed in The Riviera.
It's not bad at all.
As for the LVH...it is most certainly NOT a "shithole" in any way at all.
It was the Hilton until a couple of years ago when the Hilton family moved their assets out. It's where Liberace performed for many decades (and they shot the scenes for that HBO movie with Michael Douglas on the stage there). It's where Elvis Presley did all his Vegas shows.
It also has some of the most expensive and decadent suites ANYWHERE.
You want to see nice and see rooms that the newer casinos don't even have...the old LVH has them:
http://www.thelvh.com/Hotel/rooms/villas
That's some CRAZY decadence there. These things are 2 and 3 times the size of my big ass house!
Again, I have fun everywhere up and down the city. But people who think that I'm promoting staying at "shitholes" are way off base.
The hotel/casinos on the strip and Fremont are all very, very clean and well maintained.
And of course I wasn't suggesting that anybody make their first trip to Vegas and go to the Boulder strip.
But there is nothing wrong with Boulder Station Casino or East Side Cannery Casino.
Boulder Station is HUGE and I have stayed there a few times partying and had a nice suite with a big master bedroom, seperate living room and dining room and two bathrooms for $170 a night.
At EastSide Cannery you can get their very nice little suite with the jacuzzi tub for a $109
I was just saying that as a LOCAL, that's a pretty good deal if you want to go out one night and get drunk and not have to drive home.
That's all I was saying about that. Some of y'all kinda misunderstood what I was saying.
I think the OP made a nice choice by staying at The Aria.
The first 5 times I came to Vegas, I stayed at The Venetian. And I never left the property the whole time. lol
I wish someone back then had told me about some of the other casinos that were close by. I thought it was "normal" to pay outrageous prices for a drink or a bite to eat. So I blew thousands of dollars needlessly.
So the ONLY advice I'm giving to the OP is to have a great time at The Aria. Go see "O" at Bellagio or the Beatles "Love" show at Mirage.
Maybe go down and check out the Riviera and have some cheap drinks and gamble a bit one evening.
Definitely go down for a few hours of fun on Fremont (trust me on that one).
And then next time you come to town...stay at The Golden Nugget on Fremont. Super nice (Steve Wynn himself owned and redesigned it a few years back), great restaurants, and you're in the middle of a giant street party when you step out of the door of the Casino.
And have a good time!
