Planet Hollywood – What You See Upon Arrival

On my trips to Vegas, I usually stay at Planet Hollywood. It has a great atmosphere, usually keeps a high-energy vibe, and is centrally located in terms of being able to easily get to other places on The Strip. With this article, I’ll try to give a view of some of the first things a person experiences as they arrive at PH and then get up to their room. It will hopefully be the start of a small series covering the experience and features of the resort and casino.

Planet Hollywood’s lobby does a good job of setting the tone for what a person should expect from the hotel in general. Upon entering, music is playing at a level that can be heard–yet doesn’t overpower–and it is usually something that makes people feel like dancing or partying. The look is modern, with clean lines, pushing towards glitzy in some respects, to evoke that Hollywood feel.

To the right is an escalator that looks like it is set up for glamor shots, and that is exactly what it is used for in movies and, in PH promotions material. This escalator leads up to the casino floor, and one can usually find people taking pictures around it. Additionally, one can find a lobby level Starbucks, as well as the concierge desk.

To the left, there is a fairly extensive hotel store, which contains a lot of PH themed materials as well as your traditional gift shop and convenience store types of items, as well as an “experiences” desk that is used for promos and other tours.

Past all of those items, on either end of the lobby, are the North and South elevator banks. The front desk is directly ahead and runs most of the length of the lobby. The majority of it is used for general check-in and check-out. However, there are a few stations on the right-hand side that are dedicated to access for Total Rewards Platinum guests to expedite them.

I have seen the lobby absolutely packed during busy times, and the hotel does a good job of organizing the lines and making sure that the front desk is staffed at a level such that wait times are manageable.

Much like most of the Caesars properties, PH maintains a separate registration lounge for Total Rewards Diamond and Seven Stars members. This sits off to the right of the front desk, behind the glitzy casino escalator. This makes it a bit of a challenge sometimes in terms of navigating the rest of the traffic within the lobby to get to it, but the overall distance isn’t bad, so a small price to pay for the benefits that the dedicated registration area provides.

Inside the lounge, VIP representatives are present to help check you in, put you in contact with a casino host if needed, get you some water, and otherwise help figure out what else they can do to help your stay start off on the right foot. If there happens to be a short line, there is a nice seating area available along with TVs that are usually tuned to a sporting event if there is one going on, in order to make the time pass a bit more smoothly.

Sometimes casino hosts are available at desks in the registration area, in case you need to talk directly with one. And, depending on the day, there are sometimes other treats and favors that are made available to customers within the diamond registration area. These can include small gifts, candy, and even champagne served to you by a waiter.

Once checked in, the next step is to head to the elevators and make it up to your room. There are two banks of elevators, one on the north and the other on the south. Each of these is broken into two sub-banks, one serving up to floor 23, and the other 24 and up. On the lobby and casino levels, the elevator doors were previously Peepshow themed, and now each of them contains a larger than life-size Britney Spears.

The room I usually have is on they call a “Resort” room, at 585 square feet, it is about 135 square feet bigger than the standard “Hollywood Hip” rooms. Like the regular rooms, it can come in either a 1 king or 2 queens configuration. There are always two lounge chairs that flank a central table that contains memorabilia related to the movie that themes the entire room. The bathroom additionally has two sinks, split on either side, in an area that is larger than those in the smaller rooms.

All rooms in Planet Hollywood contain a desk and an office chair for use as a workstation, a 42 inch TV with remote, iron and ironing board, in-room safe, multi-use armoire, and a few dressers and other cubby type space. The rooms also have Wi-Fi access, which is good for 2 devices per 24 hours as part of the resort fee (if you are charged that). Otherwise, it runs about $15 per day. Additionally, all the rooms have a shower as well as a hot tub. While the hot tub is a nice touch, it definitely contributes to the bathrooms taking up a larger proportion of the floor space within the PH rooms compared to other hotels.

The current rooms are all themed around a movie, but as I found out on my trip in November to attend the Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon, PH is currently in the process of updating their rooms. At that time, it had already been done on portions of the top three floors, and was moving its way down. The reason I was given was primarily that the movies were becoming increasingly out of date, since there was no program in place to update them thematically. The update will make the rooms much more sleek and modern in terms of appearance, still keeping in line with the overall PH theme of glamour and glitz, and will better represent that PH is considered in the top tier of Caesars properties within Las Vegas.

These rooms are currently being termed “Ultra Hip” at the base levels, and other than the renovations, it appears that they will all come standard with a coffee maker as well as a mini-refrigerator. Both those items were previously available for rooms, but typically had to be requested. As of my most recent trip last week, it appears that at least the coffee maker has started to make its way into all of the rooms. The rooms appear to be bookable on the Planet Hollywood site, although I have not tried to do it myself, so I can’t say for certain if they are actually available.

The theme of the room I had back in November was “A League of Their Own”, and a few pictures of the memorabilia can be seen in the gallery below. With the upcoming renovations, perhaps one of the articles in this series will cover some of the themes and memorabilia that I have seen in my various stays in the different rooms. That way others can see them if they are not able to make it to Planet Hollywood before they are all renovated out of existence. For now though, hopefully this article gives you a good overview of what you will encounter upon arrival if you decide to stay at Planet Hollywood.

[Images: gennadius]

gennadius

A former VegasChatter contributor, gennadius is a regular visitor to the Las Vegas area. Some areas of interest include aviation, sports (gambling, watching, participating), blackjack, craps, and science fiction.

When in Vegas, gennadius can be found looking for good food, spending time at the clubs, hanging out at the tables, and watching games with friends.