Newest Las Vegas Hotel

Let me start by saying I have no financial interest nor do I work for the Aria in any way. I am just a person that was offered a comp to go and visit.

What an amazing place. The Aria opened in mid December of 2009 and has 61 stories with 4,000 rooms and is located in City Center, a 67 acre city within a city on the strip. The Aria has eighteen restaurants, numerous nightclubs and lounges, a showroom theater that can seat up to 1850 guests, shopping that is unbelievable, a banking center, state of the art fitness center, salon, some of the most beautiful waterfalls, and 4 swimming pools.

It has it's own tram that connects to Bellagio and the Monte Carlo. The Aria has art from world class artists from around the world. The difference with this art as compared to other casinos on the strip is most other casinos' art collections are contained to a few dedicated rooms but the world class art is everywhere in the Aria for all guests to enjoy. The Aria is part of the "new world" City Center, a massive undertaking on the Las Vegas strip. There are numerous other buildings within City Center that offer amenities to all who visit or live within City Center, this is just one building. This review will focus on the hotel room but I wanted to set a background to this review.

When we entered the hotel, we did not know what to expect but we did have some idea of what should be there since we have been going to the Las Vegas strip for many years and have stayed at most of the great casinos.

We entered The Aria. It was huge and full of marble and stone with new-age decor. New-age simplicity seemed to be the dominant theme of the hotel-casino. We were given our key to the room on the 37th floor and when we opened the door all we did was laugh! The door opened, the curtains automatically began to open to display an amazing view of the strip and mountains, the TV came on to a relaxation channel, the heat turned on to reach the optimum comfort zone, and the lights turned on. Now you have to remember, this was done just by opening the door.

Everything in the room could be controlled by the remote control or by the control next to the bed that displayed on the flat screen TV. You did not have to get out of bed to do anything except shower and go to the bathroom and I was looking for how they possibly accomplished that - just kidding! Again, the room was dressed in new-age simplicity with the size of the room comfortable for two people. The bathroom was beautiful with a tub set to the side of the shower in the same enclosure.

The room was cleaned everyday but only if you turned on the sign on the outside of your door - of course, controlled by the remote that displayed on the TV. Now why is this important? Have you ever been to a hotel room where the housekeeping knocks on your door, yells "housekeeping" or worse yells out and then walks in? Won't happen at The Aria. When you are ready to have your room cleaned, you notify them. The bed was "turned down" every night with chocolates by the bedside.

I cannot begin to tell you how friendly the employees were throughout our stay at The Aria. As I stated before, we have stayed at almost every casino on the strip and The Aria staff were beyond compare with how helpful and friendly they were. Not once did I ask a question that the staff did not have a helpful answer to and actually appeared pleased to answer.

Now the important part of the stay - gambling. I have had a firm belief that new casinos did not pay well for your gambling efforts because they had to start paying for all the money invested in building the beautiful casino so I am always a little leery of gambling. To my surprise, I won a reasonable amount of money on the slots! Beautiful room, beautiful hotel-casino and friendly staff - what more could you ask for?

By now you are wondering if there is anything I did not like. Well, yes there was. The Aria is difficult to find. We drove up to what we thought was the front of The Aria but it was not the front of the hotel and because it was not the front of the hotel, there was no baggage service. The Aria oozes up-scale and needs to have bell-men at every entry. Other than that little detail, nothing to report that was negative and trust me I am always on the lookout for things that are wrong. Hard time with this hotel-casino.

I do not think I need to tell you I would recommend The Aria to have a fun, beautiful place to escape to for a few days. How do you get offers for comps? If and when you go to Las Vegas, use the cards they give you to play with. They track how much you spend and no, you do not have to spend a lot to get comps. They really do get you great bargains. Enjoy your stay at The Aria, I know we did and we will go back.