Tips for a Vegas Vacation

Where to stay and how much to pay

Being flexible in your travel dates and booking early can literally save you hundreds of dollars. As Vegas fills up, hotel prices skyrocket. Even the top resorts have huge variations in room rates. For instance, room rates were $59 in mid December, then jumped to $225 over New Year’s Eve at one downtown hotel; an off-strip hotel went from $99 per night to over $400 per night; a top Strip resort went from $99 to $599 per night. You can even book rooms at the Wynn for under $150 per night if you get in at the right time. We checked December 16-18 against December 30 through New Year’s Eve.)

More than in any other town, where you stay in Vegas will determine your vacation experience. With park-size swimming pools, tennis courts, bowling alleys, movie theaters, shows, restaurants, attractions and one-of-a kind décor, one could easily spend an entire weekend without leaving one of the mega-resort properties. Off the Strip, a traditional hotel may cost significantly less, offer fewer in-house goodies, yet let you avoid the constant barrage of casino noise while still allowing you to quickly access the Strip. A third option is to concentrate on Southern Nevada’s increasingly recognized outdoor opportunities by staying at one of the outlying resorts. Staying there you’ll still be close enough to drop by the Strip for a day of sightseeing.

Pools—the reason to stay on the strip

The only reason I would stay on the Strip would be to spend the day in an elaborate pool, which resorts always reserve for guests only. There are a number of pools with sandy beaches, water slides, wave pools and more,. Among the best is the 15-acre Flamingo Las Vegas pool complex, which includes a wildlife habitat and three pools with water slides, water falls and dense foliage that wrap around each other and safely allow kids to pop from pool to pool all day. The Four Seasons Resort pool is a quiet oasis with two whirlpools and an abundance of lounges and arbors for shade. Attendants glide by offering light meals and smoothies , Evian spritzes, fresh fruit, chilled water or icy cucumber slices to refresh your eyes. Four Seasons guests who want more excitement also have access to the pools at Mandalay Bay, which include a wave pool, lazy river, three swimming pools, jogging track and 2,700 tons of real sand. The pool at Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino remains one of our all-time favorites with a winding lazy river, 11,000 square-feet of waterfalls and four pool areas, as well as a wave pool.

• Cirque du Soleil stuns crowds in Las Vegas with top-of-the-line acrobatics.
• Al Seib

All pools offer cabanas for an additional fee so that you can eat and stay cool all day. Downtown, the $30-million tank at Golden Nugget is open year around – as are many, but not all, Vegas pools – with a three-story water slide that swoops through a 200,000-gallon shark tank. Kids can swim alongside the sharks, separated only by a thick (we hope!) Plexiglas barrier as adults sip Cosmopolitans at a shaded cabana.

A number of resorts now offer “European bathing.” Meaning topless. These are not open to the under 21 crowd, but may be adjacent to all-ages pools. And while all hotels offer some kind of pool, many would be more aptly labeled “wall-to-wall cement lounge areas surrounding a puddle.” So, if you are booking for the pool, call to ensure that it will be open and kid friendly, and be sure to ask what kind of features it offers.