I like The Cosmopolitan. I don’t do much gaming there, but from the start it was positioned as an upscale resort with gaming, not a casino with a fancy hotel. It is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. If you don’t want to book your room through the casino website, you can book your room through the Marriott website and use Marriott Rewards to cover your room.
The hotel rooms are in 2 towers (East and West). The elevators for each tower are separated into banks by floor like most Las Vegas hotels. Even thought this is a boutique hotel with fewer rooms per floor, on a busy holiday weekend the wait time for an elevator can be excessive. It works well during the week, though. That is kind of how I feel about The Cosmopolitan in general. I like it a lot during the week when there is less going on. I don’t suggest going there on a Friday or Saturday night unless you are going to Marquee or a special event. Simply walking through the second level shopping and dining area can be a bit of an adventure on a club night.
The rooms are well designed and gorgeous. The website gives you a pretty good idea of what they look like. I have included my own photos of a Terrace One Bedroom in this post. Do not settle for the basic City Room. It is perfectly fine, but it does not have a terrace. I view getting a City Room the same way I view getting an inside room for a cruise. If you are going to pay to be there, pay a little more to have a room with a view. It is worth the extra $30 or so to get a Terrace room. The Cosmopolitan rooms are designed for someone who appreciates a nice room. If you consider your hotel room to be just a place to crash after a long night, this is not the place for you. These rooms are meant to be enjoyed. Their upscale C.O. Bigelow toiletries reflect that, too. My personal room preference is the Terrace One Bedroom with the Japanese soaking tub (pictured), but if you want a bathtub that you can lay down in, you will want the Terrace Studio. It is also worth noting that while most room types do have terraces, some of the Penthouses do not. All of the rooms do have the neat feature where you can turn the entire room on and off when you arrive and leave. You can also control all of the lighting settings via the TV.
When it opened, they did not charge a resort fee, but now they charge a $30 per night resort fee. It includes high speed internet access (excluding select meeting spaces), unlimited local toll-free and domestic long distance calls (50 states), 24 hour fitness center access and tennis court access (based on availability). The resort fee is waived for Identity Gold and Platinum players. For information about Identity, the Cosmopolitan’s players club, check out my Identity post.
One big surprise during our stay was that the room did not have a hair dryer. We called housekeeping and discovered that the hotel does not actually have enough hair dryers for every room (after being asked repeatedly if we had looked here or there). After going back and forth with multiple Beck & Call reps (their name for customer service reps) as well as the Cosmopolitan Facebook page moderator, we were eventually given a pass to the spa to use the hair dryers there. For future reference, if you aren’t getting anywhere with a reasonable request at the hotel, posts a message on their Facebook page. The Cosmopolitan is heavily invested in social marketing and will probably react a lot faster.
I love the food and beverage program at Cosmo. The Wicked Spoon buffet, Jaleo, Secret Pizza, Vesper and The Chandelier are all on my list of places to go each time I am in town. I’ll write more about the bars and restaurants in another post.
I’m a big fan of the Art-O-Mat machines scattered throughout the resort, too.
All of the things I really like about the Cosmopolitan can be enjoyed without staying there. It is easy to walk from Aria, Planet Hollywood and Bellagio to the Cosmopolitan. I will absolutely be back, but I will probably wait to stay there again until I get a good mid-week offer.
12/5/12 UPDATE:
The Cosmopolitan will start charging a resort fee on January 1, 2103. Click here to see my post with more info.
