I have been holding off on this review for a while since I don’t have any good photos of the rooms that I’ve been in. I’m writing the review now, because I have realized that the rooms are actually one of the reasons that I don’t have good photos.

I like the casino, restaurants and bars. When it comes to the amenities, Planet Hollywood is one of my favorite resorts. I tend to spend at least a little time there on every trip. I hadn’t actually stayed at Planet Hollywood until this past year, though. I made up for lost time and stayed in 3 different room types over the course of 2012. None of those rooms impressed me and one of them was really bad.

The Hollywood Hip Room was the first room.  It is a basic Las Vegas room. It is 450 square feet with all of the usual features (king or 2 queen beds, desk, sitting area, table, shower/tub combo).  Our room, however, had some problems.  The armoire was missing a few doors and drawers. We had been promised a coffee maker for our room and that was missing. We later found out that the coffee maker was only available in Hollywood Hip rooms on Diamond floors. Many things about our room and check-in experience seemed off. If the room had been properly maintained it would have been a perfectly fine, basic room.

The next room was a Resort Vista. It is about 100 square feet larger than the Hollywood Hip room.  The floorplan is a lot nicer. The bathroom takes up about half of the floorspace and includes a large soaking tub next to the window, looking out onto the Strip.  The Vista part of the name comes from the rooms’ location at the end of hallway that juts out towards the Strip and Bellagio. This room also had maintenance issues. The door to the toilet did not close and latch. It was July and a vent in the bathroom was pumping more hot air into the room than the AC unit (with extremely dirty filters) could handle. I think they missed out on an opportunity by not converting the tub to a jacuzzi as well.

The final room was a Strip Suite.  It is 850 square feet (about twice the size of the Hollywood Hip room). It isn’t designed well, though.  The bathroom area is large (which is great), but the light switch for the toilet room is at the entrance to the big bathroom area (a surprisingly long distance). It has as very big soaking tub, but again, I think they missed an opportunity by not converting it to a jacuzzi when they remodeled the rooms during the Planet Hollywood re-branding. The living room area is very dark and cramped. It was effectively wasted space.

I do not see myself staying at Planet Hollywood again.  For a hotel in the same basic range, I’d pick the MGM Grand, Mirage or Bally’s over Planet Hollywood.  I’ll still visit it though. Read my next post to see why.