Review: The Mandalay Bay Resort King

BigAzMarty reviews the Resort King at Mandalay Bay…

As part of our spring vacation, the wife and I decided to do a So. Cal stay at the beginning of the week, and a Las Vegas stay the latter part of the week. After much convincing (we had stayed exclusively at NYNY for M Life properties) I got the approval to reserve the “Winter Special” and add a day at Mandalay Bay. We picked the newly remodeled king resort rooms as our room type and crossed our fingers. After a very, very long drive (Southern California traffic never gets better does it?) and almost getting run off the road by a semi (60mph gusts on I-15…how fun is that?) we arrived in Las Vegas in basically a dust storm.

We got off at Frank Sinatra Drive and did a self-park because we were early by a day and needed to see if they had a room available. Up to the front desk we go, and no shocker, the line is probably 1-2 hours long, but hey, we have Gold status, so I bailed out and walked around the corner to the “Invited Guest” check in for M Life. I called to the wife, and we got checked in (yes, we paid for one night, but it was under $100 even with resort fees) we explained we’d never been there at the hotel side of it but had gambled a little there. They notated it and said we have the room and quickly printed off the keys and explained how to get to the room. We were on the 34th floor room 34035.

We went into the elevator lobby, and there are different banks of elevators depending on the floors you are on. The same elevators that go to the 34th floor also go on up to the high roller suites, the Foundation Room and another Lounge we never got details on (looks like no 40’s or 50’s on the elevator buttons), it jumps from high 30’s to 6X floors. Interesting and a little confusing, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. We get to our floor, and it’s nice…there are three hallways, and they are loooong. Our room is about two-thirds of the way down. I wave the key in front of the lock and BAM, holy cow! My wife loved this room, almost as much as she liked the Caesars Palace Augustus Tower Rooms.

Differences are the Caesars Palace room has a couch and a full table in the room while Mandalay Bay room has a much nicer TV and an outstanding bathroom layout.

Matter of fact the Mandalay Bay TV menu reminded us of The Cromwell TV Menu.

Inside you have a nice wingback chair up against the floor to ceiling windows (got a trick on this since the thermostat is near the windows) and a large floor lamp.

King bed is all done up in white with a little color, but four regular sized pillows, not the itsy bitsy hotel pillows you normally get (pictured top of article).

His and hers closets

Dual bathroom sinks, an auto-close door for the toilet, a separate shower, and a big separate tub.

Space galore, we never seemed to get in each other’s way. The bed was super comfortable, bed stand lamps have electrical outlets in the base.

There is a connectivity hub off the desk.

There is the standard layout of pay for snacks and pay for stuff in the fridge. You are warned not to put anything in the fridge as it will change the weight sensors and start to charge you.

The view was fantastic over the pools and airport…yes, there is noise from the airport but hey I never set the alarm once as it would eventually wake us up and it does stop or really quiet down by 11 PM.

At that height, and that side of the hotel, you will get helicopters coming in from tours for the Sundance hanger. They come in a lot around 9-11PM so be aware you are pretty much going to hear it a lot. I would recommend possibly staying on the other side away from the airport, strip view perhaps if the noise will bother you. They have room service (menu looks like the cafe menu, but it’s available while the cafe closes pretty early; breakfast 24 hours a day. I had an omelet, and I haven’t had one that good since the Costa Mesa Chester Drawers Omelet Parlor closed up in the aughts.

Food, service, and housekeeping were all outstanding. We did somehow get three washcloths one day and then the next one, but that was the only issue. My wife enjoyed blackjack and found $10 table players were grandfathered on the table after the limits were raised at night. VP was O.K., but slots seemed to be much better. We had a blast at the $1 ($3 max bet) giant Big Bang Theory near the Ruby Blue shop with the giant screen…left that machine about $140 to the positive. I hit several dealt 3 of a kinds and a Full House on the 50 play nickel machine on a whim, popped out about $160 from that. They still have one Ruby Slippers machine that was constantly being played, and my wife got the lucky machine for The Flintstones. The Classic Batman not so much. Once they fixed the OMG Kittens…my wife attempted to milk it as much as possible as everyone we saw on it including her won.

You will need walking shoes as we walked the Mandalay Bay to Luxor to Excalibur and tram’d back. The Mandalay Bay food court is way over near the Shark Reef aquarium, so that is a fairly long walk as well, needless to say taking care of your feet here is necessary.

The pools looked so nice but it only got past 65 on one day and in the morning it never cleared 55. As we’d planned to go to Planet Hollywood for Gordan Ramsay BuRGR (must try the Onion Rings…a must) in that time frame and to check out the Miracle Mile shops so we missed the pool explorations. They did look wonderful and kids for sure were in the wave pool even at 50 degrees. All in all, a really good stay (VP punted us back a bit, so slot wins and BJ were nice counters to that).

Now, for some room and hotel tips:

1) Use the valet and arrive before the crowd, it fills up fast. The front desk for the hotel is right there; self-park is a fairly long hike to the front desk and at the time we used it we had to do the escalators as there was only one elevator.

2) Room temps: lock that thermostat to 65…for some reason the room gets warm because the temperature near the windows is about 10 degrees colder than say two more feet into the room. A good solution would be to move the thermostat to the hallway but hey that would require engineering. In the Summer, I would say you would want the temperature pegged that low just to overcome the heat transfer from the windows.

3) Yup…no idea what’s in it but there is a “Romance Kit” here as well. Such a small box for so much money.

And yes we would stay here again…but it has to get warmer to try those pools out.

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BigAzMarty

A computer professional who has worked at several types of positions with several different businesses and still learning and changing.
Introduced properly to Las Vegas and Laughlin by the spouse and have been going ever since 1990.
A frequent visitor from not to far away where it’s almost always 10 degrees warmer than Vegas.