I visit Las Vegas 4-6 times a year, and usually stay at the Mandalay Bay/THEhotel if I am traveling for pleasure or at the Wynn or Bellagio if I have to entertain in my suite for business. I had heard many good things about the value at the Signature from associates who had stayed at the hotel, and decided to try it out when I took my wife to Las Vegas this past weekend.
On the whole, I was very happy with the hotel. Check in was quick with only a short line, and the front desk staff was courteous and helpful. The concierge was helpful in making dinner reservations for our first night, but that was all we asked of him because I had already arranged for show tickets and dinner reservations off property for the rest of our stay. The room itself was very well appointed, with a balcony with a great panoramic view of the strip (granted that it looked at the back of most casinos as the towers are a good quarter mile back from the strip itself), bathroom with jacuzzi tub for two, and high quality linens. We walked in on housekeeping cleaning our room one day, and both my wife and I were blown away by the level of effort they put into cleaning the room from top to bottom - disinfecting the bathtub, dusting all surfaces, refusing to use linens with barely noticeable spots. I also loved that the hotel itself was very quiet and the public areas never packed - a benefit of being set apart from the gaming property at the MGM Grand.
However, being set off the strip also had its downsides. It was generally easy to walk to the strip either out the front gate and down Harmon, or through the moving walkways to the MGM Grand.
We had a problem, though, on Saturday night when trying to get to the Mandalay Bay for dinner. My wife was dressed for dinner and didn't feel like walking to Mandalay in the shoes she was wearing, so we went to the lobby about 45 minutes before we needed to make our reservation figuring that would give us time to kill at Mandalay as there were maybe only six other people waiting for cabs at the Signature. The problem, however, was that there were no cabs to be found. When we walked out to the car port in our tower, the door staff took our names and destination and said they would arrange for a cab for us. However, 20 minutes later, not a single cab had come through the driveway. Other people who had been waiting for cabs started calling cab companies on their own trying to arrange rides. When I asked the doormen if they could call the cab company again, they told me that they "don't call cab companies" but rather turn on a light on a post on Harmon, where if a cab happens to be empty and driving by the light lets them know there are people waiting. So, the door staff refused to call a cab company and could not have cared less if we got a ride or not. By the time a taxi pulled in that hadn't been called by others, we wound up being 15 minutes late for our dinner reservation and I had to deal with my wife being in a foul mood for the next 20 minutes once we got to dinner. On a Saturday night, no cabs are going to leave the strip unless they have fares that need to be taken elsewhere - the Signature staff knows this and management needs to find a way to make sure that taxis are available to their guests!
