A good option for staying on the Vegas Strip - Monte Carlo Resort & Casino
Written: Jan 11 '06 (Updated Apr 11 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Large casino, Tram to Bellagio, Clean and tidy interior, Attentive staff
Cons: Rooms could use some updating, Linens were worn out, Limited dining/entertainment options
The Bottom Line: The Monte Carlo Resort/Casino is a decent value when you’re looking for a place to stay on the Las Vegas Strip
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| jps246's Full Review: Monte Carlo Resort And Casino |
The Monte Carlo Resort Hotel & Casino is a decent mix of value and luxury when compared to some of the other resorts on the Las Vegas Strip. The Monte Carlo offers a good centralized location on the strip, easy access to other casinos and within its own walls, several different restaurants, a large casino, the Lance Burton theater and a decently appointment hotel with plenty of amenities.
Even though I had been through the Monte Carlo many times before, it wasn’t until I was staying there with my partner and another friend that I really got to explore the Monte Carlo and see what it was all about. Before, it was a place we generally walked through, but never stayed at – but now that I’ve been there and stayed in the hotel, I’d probably be more likely to stop in on future travels and for me, it is a resort I would consider staying at again in the future.
Room rates at the hotel are reasonable and the amenities provided to guests are pleasant. If you’re looking for a decent hotel that straddles the line between being economical and a little more luxurious, you could do a lot worse than the Monte Carlo. In all fairness, I think most people will be pleasantly satisfied with a stay at the Monte Carlo, though I’m sure there might be a few bones to pick afterwards.
Where is the Monte Carlo?
The Monte Carlo is located towards the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip and is situated on the western side of Las Vegas Boulevard between New York-New York to the south and the Bellagio to the north. New York-New York is immediately to the south (just across the entryway), but the Bellagio is several blocks to the north with a currently vacant lot between them. You don’t have to walk though – as a free tram connects the Monte Carlo and the Bellagio. They are in the process of building a new resort between the two casinos though, so in the near future a different hotel/resort will be to the north of the Monte Carlo, before you get to the Bellagio.
Nearby casinos include New York-New York, the Bellagio, Excalibur, Luxor and MGM Grand. With a little walking Mandalay Bay is also close, as are Caesar’s and Paris (especially when you take the tram to the Bellagio).
What’s at the Monte Carlo?
The Monte Carlo is a big resort/casino that offers a lot of different things for people visiting. There is not only the hotel, but restaurants, a theater, a lounge, a casino, a mall and a tram station – all in the one place.
The Hotel
The Hotel lobby is located to the side of the Monte Carlo and is like the check-in area of almost every other Las Vegas resort I’ve been to. When we arrived around 11pm, there was a slight line for checking in, but I don’t think we waited more than about 10 minutes. Check-in is a fairly painless process. Checkout was much the same – you take care of any charges you’ve billed to the room and you’re on your way.
With somewhere just over 3,000 rooms, the hotel at the Monte Carlo is big. The majority of those rooms are what they consider deluxe rooms – which are your standard hotel rooms. These rooms come in two configurations – a room with a single king-sized bed or a room with two queen-sized beds. Because there were three of us on my latest trip to Vegas, we got the Deluxe Room with the two queen-sized beds. There are also suites available if you want something more than the basic room and if you have lots of money, there are the penthouse suites, up at the top of the building.
The deluxe rooms, from what I could see through other open doors and my travels around the hotel are all laid out the same way – the door opens into a hallway and off of that hallway is the bathroom. The hall then opens up into one large room where you’ll find either the single bed or the two beds. There’s also an armoire that holds the TV and offers drawer space, along with a closet area, a table, two chairs and a desk, in addition to a nightstand for the bed that holds an alarm clock.
The bathroom is probably the nicest part of the room, with marble floors and wall tiles, a granite countertop for the sink area and a bathtub for those who want more than a shower. The bathrooms look nice and are spacious, though I would have appreciated having the sink area separated from the shower and toilet area (like they are in some of the rooms in Mandalay Bay), especially with the three of us in the room – one of us was always waiting for someone else to finish using the bathroom – even if we just wanted to comb our hair or wash our hands.
The room was clean and neat when we arrived and all the expected toiletries were stocked when we arrived. I can’t say I was impressed though when I went in – while the rest of the hotel looks generally up to date and well maintained, the rooms tend to look as if they’ve been forgotten since they opened the hotel. This comes right down to the bedding. When we pulled back the comforter we noticed it had holes in it, along with the bed sheets. That didn’t exactly leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling, especially considering what I was paying for the room – I would have thought they could have linens that didn’t have holes in them.
We called housekeeping and they immediately came up and changed the bed – but that wasn’t really the point – why was it okay to put something like that on the bed in the first place? Out of everything else about the Monte Carlo – this was what bothered me the most.
The only other real complaint we had about the room was with housekeeping and it was probably more due to shift changes than anything else. We had slept in one day and therefore had the ‘do not disturb’ sign up when they normally did the room cleaning. We told them when we left that we would be out for the day – and they could clean the room when they wanted. We got back around 6 that night and the room still wasn’t cleaned. We had to call housekeeping again and they came up about 15 minutes later to finally clean.
Room service is available 24-hours a day and during the business hours of the various restaurants, you can have meals from those restaurants sent to the room. I only ever had coffee sent to the room, but it was brought up quickly and was hot, so I was happy.
Besides the rooms, hotel guests have access to the fitness area within the Monte Carlo Spa (which is open to both guests and non-guests). You have to pay to go to the gym ($19 a day for guests), but you get everything you’d find at your local gym, plus some nice extras like a whirlpool and a sauna. The gym area is clean and I enjoyed working out there – but only did it once because of the fee.
You can also go to the pool area as a hotel guest. There’s a regular pool, a kiddie pool, a wave pool, and a hot tub, along with a lazy river that goes all around the pool area. The area is well designed and offers plenty of space for people to lay out on the amply provided lounge chairs. We were there in late November and the pool area was open and the pools heated – so even in the cooler weather, you could enjoy a swim, or at the very least enjoy some sun.
There is also a full-service spa at the Monte Carlo – that is open to guests and non-guests. I never went, but it offers a variety of typical spa services.
Room rates were on par with the other larger resorts on the Las Vegas Strip. We booked our room over the Thanksgiving holiday and we paid on average about $150 a night. However we had a third person in our room, so we were charged an addition $25 a night, so the average rate worked out to somewhere around $175 a night when all was said and done.
Dining
One of my biggest disappointments at the Monte Carlo was the lack of a real selection of restaurants at the resort. I wasn’t expecting the choices of say a resort like MGM Grand or Mandalay Bay, but I figured that the Monte Carlo would have a variety of restaurants that made it easy to have lunch or dinner at different places every time.
There is some variety, with restaurants spanning the spectrum in both cost and cuisine, but overall the restaurants are mostly generic copies of the restaurants you’ll find at most of the mid-level resorts along the Strip. There’s the 24-hour café, the buffet, the steakhouse, a ‘fun’ restaurant, an Italian place, a Chinese place and a French place. None of the places we ate at were bad, but they weren’t that spectacular either.
When it comes to specifics, The Café is Monte Carlo’s 24-hour restaurant. It serves mostly traditional American food with breakfast available at any time. There are no reservations here and the lines, especially for breakfast, can get quite long. The food was decent – and the portions a good size. We ended up eating here mostly for breakfast because the line was usually shorter than it was at the buffet, but we did have a late-night dinner a few times, which wasn’t bad.
If you want to try to eat yourself under the table, there’s the Buffet, which is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and offers a champagne brunch on Sunday mornings. I personally wasn’t that impressed with the buffet, there are several others in nearby casinos that offer a better selection and a better value for what you pay for. The other problem is that this buffet always seems to have a line with a significant wait – we went once and waited about 45 minutes to get in and whenever we walked by the buffet entrance, it looked like the wait was about the same.
Blackstone’s Steakhouse is, as the name suggests a steakhouse. Reservations are helpful (otherwise you’re going to wait) and the steaks are good, though nothing to write home about.
The Monte Carlo Pub & Brewery is the Monte Carlo’s ‘fun’ restaurant. It offers micro-brewed beers that are brewed on the premises (you can look at all the brewing stuff). The pub offers a range of typical pub food including sandwiches, burgers and some basic dinner plates. The big draw is the beer and at night, the Pub & Brewery plays host to live entertainment.
If you’re in the mood for Chinese food, there’s the Dragon Noodle restaurant, which gives you a chance to sit down and have some decent Chinese food. The meals were okay, but it’s probably not a place I’d end up going to again because I’m not that big of a fan of Chinese food, especially when I’m on vacation. Reservations are a good idea so you don’t have to wait.
The Market City Café is the Monte Carlo’s Italian restaurant and offers a variety of Italian dishes. The prices are fairly reasonable and the dishes were quite good. I would consider eating here again and all three of us enjoyed our meals, so this was one of our favorite places to eat at the Monte Carlo. Reservations are also helpful here – so you can eat as soon as you get there.
Finally there’s Andre’s French Restaurant, which I never ate it, but is the Monte Carlo’s fine French restaurant. Prices are significantly higher than the other restaurants and reservations are pretty much required. The restaurant has won several awards for quality, but not being a fan of French cuisine and not wanting to spend that much money, we never made it here.
There’s also the food court at the Monte Carlo, which offers fast food for those who don’t want to wait for a table at the restaurants. There’s a McDonalds, a Sbarro’s, a Nathans, a coffee/bagel shop and an ice cream shop there. Most are open for breakfast (not the ice cream shop though) and the McDonalds stays open until 3am for those of us who have a hankering for some late night fast food.
Entertainment
Compared to the other big resort casinos on the Strip, the Monte Carlo for its size is really lacking nighttime entertainment options. Besides going out to dinner, the only real ‘club’ at the Monte Carlo is the Pub & Brewery, which offers live entertainment most nights, along with other events (usually sport themed depending upon the season). If you’re a bit mellower, you can check out Houdini’s Lounge, where you can have a drink and listen to the piano. Otherwise – there isn’t much at the Monte Carlo – for dance clubs and more bars, you’ll have to travel to other casinos.
The Monte Carlo is also the home of Lance Burton and he does two shows on most nights. His theater is located near the front of the Monte Carlo casino, just off of the strip. The show is enjoyable and when compared to the prices at some of the other shows, quite reasonable.
There’s also a mall at the rear of the Monte Carlo that connects the casino and food court area to the tram station in the back. Along the mall are several small shops in addition to the Pub & Brewery. You won’t find the finer stores like you find in the Forum or Bellagio shops – these are mostly souvenir shops.
Casino Gaming
The Monte Carlo is part of the “One Club” group of casinos (which includes casinos like Mandalay Bay, Excalibur and the Luxor). The more you play, the more you can earn cash back, comps, and discounted hotel rooms. You’ll also get information on the latest news when you join and play on your card.
The vast majority of the slot machines are nickel slots with some penny slots and a few slots with higher denominations of either a quarter or a dollar. There are also higher denomination slots for those of us who want to go really high limit. The table minimums go anywhere from $5 at times up to probably more money than I have.
All of the slots have been converted to the ‘cashless slots’ where instead of getting coins when you cash out, you get a ticket that can either be put into another machine or can be exchanged for cash at the cashier or via a ticket redemption machine.
There are not a lot of table games in the Monte Carlo, but in the middle of the casino there is an open area that is all table games. All of the typical casino games are represented here – with blackjack and roulette, along with craps and some other games. Table limits run the spectrum from $5 up to more than probably most of us could bet.
I found the play to be okay in the Monte Carlo’s casino – I neither won a lot of money, nor lost a lot – but I did enjoy myself. When you’re playing on the casino floor, there is complimentary beverage service – including both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. The staff is fairly attentive – I always found a cocktail waitress, though the wait for the drink could sometimes last for 10 minutes or so as they finished their rounds before getting your drink.
The Tram
There’s a free tram that runs from the rear of the Monte Carlo’s mall to the Bellagio resort. This tram makes it easy to get the Bellagio and the hotels near there. The tram runs throughout the day and runs until at least 4 in the morning.
Overall Impressions
We stayed at the Monte Carlo for five nights and in that time, I got a pretty good idea of the entire resort. Overall I was quite pleased with the stay – I even said to my boyfriend that this was a hotel on the Strip that I would consider staying at again (which is more than I can say for some of the places we’ve stayed).
The biggest negative in my eyes was the bedding. These rooms aren’t cheap – the least they could do is find sheets and comforters without holes in them. When we pointed this out, they did change the beds, but they shouldn’t be using linen like this in the first place, not at a resort of this caliber.
My only other real complaint about the Monte Carlo was the lack of many mid-level restaurants. Within two or three nights you’ll have exhausted the finer dining options available and unless you want to repeat visits, you’ll need to look outside the Monte Carlo to eat. That’s kind of minor – but something to consider.
I liked playing in the casino at the Monte Carlo – I was able to play there for several nights without either winning or losing a lot of money (though at times I did win quite a bit – but I just kept playing). I found the cocktail waitresses to be fairly attentive (especially after a good tip to start off with) and the casino was a fairly comfortable place to play in. A slightly better air cleansing system would have been appreciated, since like everywhere else in Vegas – you can smoke anywhere, and at times the smoke did get quite thick.
I also really liked having the tram over to the Bellagio – it allowed me to spend more time there than I have in the past and really explore the Bellagio because it wasn’t so far away from where I was staying.
Final Thoughts
The rooms can be a bit pricey for what you’re getting (depending on when you’re booking), but I’ve found the Monte Carlo Resort/Casino to be a decent value when you’re looking for a place to stay on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Monte Carlo is conveniently located near several other large resorts and offers direct access to the Bellagio via a free tram. There are several different restaurants within the resort, evening entertainment options and a large and comfortable casino.
Overall – I’d stay at the Monte Carlo again - I just hope they get some new bedding.
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