My wife and I stayed at the Rio Years ago and had the time of our lives!
We go to Vegas every year and always wanted to stay again, but their room rates were always too high, so we would take the shuttle from Harrahs -Have the time of our lives for a day and vow to stay here again when we could afford it.
Well we got great rates this time and stayed again.
Check in was good. Promised a smoking room-none available, even though I reserved one-Had smoking available but refused to upgrade us for free. I dont smoke that much so I took the non smoke room,( complete with ciggy burns on the furniture and the smell of smokes) Go figure?
No big deal! The room was beautiful! Floor to ceiling windows the whole length of the room viewing the Rio sign and the strip. Stained glass, mirrors, L shaped couch,large dressing area.
In room safe(does not fit a laptop as stated)
Refrigerator that only keeps items luke warm.
No coffee maker.
The Rio has a Sky Parade (instead of taking the time to explain ,you can look it up) that they have drastically cut back. this is the main reason the Rio USED to be so fun.
The Rio used to have a constant Mardi gra party feel, but now its pretty boring.
The staff was very friendly and we were never in want of a free drink . The drink servers were polite and eager to please.
convenience store prices were outrageous!!!!!!!!!!
Buy your booze and energy drinks across the street at the Gold Coast-its a short walk,but you will save TONS of money- their buffet is very good too. reasonable priced.
The Rio slots are tighter than(your metaphor her)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Overall if I hadn't experienced what the Rio was, I wouldn't be so disappointed. It was still worth the stay for the price we paid.
A cab driver said to us "Vegas is cutting back everywhere cuz of the economy- I never seen it so slow here"

This was the first time that I have ever stayed and the Rio and Loved every moment of it. We got the room comped for 4 days, that was a MAJOR plus. When we first got to the hotel, we checked in and when they were getting us our room they told me that we would be staying on the 13th floor (I know they really have one) and I asked them to switch my room..Im a lil superstitious. So they put me on a high floor and the view was amazing. :) We ordered room service all the days that we were there and all the waitors and waitresses were talkative and interesting. I love being to communicate with new people. We actually found someone that used to work with at Disneyland and now he works at the Rio. WOW! :)

The only thing I didn't like about the hotel was the table minimums. SO VERY HIGH! Even in the low business times. I can satisfy my gambling urge at another Harrahs Property.

Over all, I loved the hotel and Im going back there August 20-23, Again for a comped room for 4 days. :) I love it!

Have to say that we stay in the Rio once or twice a year on business for the past 4 years and elect to stay there for couple of days r&r afterwards. NO MORE. No more attending trade conventions there, no more holidays.

Agree it was cheap, it always was a bit funky but that’s what we loved about it.
I also agree that currently the service is poor and the offering is even smaller. E.g. the buffet is smaller, the show in the sky is not on regularly and other services etc are poor and mainly outsourced

The most important thing to us is that we felt safe there, however we had ALL our business paperwork, orders cc receipts. i.e. every single piece of paperwork from a trade convention, stolen from a bag (with the bag) in the room.
The Rio outsource their security and have no interest whatsoever in managing the process or apologising. Turns out they use agency cleaners and so have no idea whatsoever who actually is cleaning your room and no way of tracking them either. Anyone could be in your room, /cleaning/ it.

The irony is not lost on me that they search your bag upon entering the pool area in case you have a bottle of water or a snack /hidden/ in there but anyone it appears can be in your room and take something from it and the Rio do nothing about it.

NEVER AGAIN

To start off I really like nice hotel rooms so I would not normally pick a place like the RIO. But they had a suite and we were only staying one night before leaving for our drive to Sedona. We arrived 11 pm so it was late arrival. We arrived exhausted and the line was huge and so slow to check in. One person working the desk and another working priority guests. When we finally got up we asked for an upgrade if possible since we were only staying one night so we did get upgraded to a nicer suite on a higher floor and asked for a roll away bed as well. We head for the elevators to find that all of them are out of service and there is another huge line to use a service elevator. What a nightmare. We finally get to the room, we attempt to order room service but since the elevators are down there could be a 2 hour wait. We were starving so we wait in line for the service elevators and go downstairs to eat. We are told there is a 45 minute wait to eat. WHAT??? I have never had to wait in one of the hotels cofffe shops for that long. Frustration has truly set in. We eventually get seated after 15 minutes with slow service on top of it. Food was good but slow. Exhausted at it being close to midnight Vegas time but since we flew in from Chicago it was 2am body time, we head back up to our room, wait in line for the service elevator. Get to the room and no roll away bed. I call down and they said it could be up 45 minutes. I said I had two teens and we are exhausted. The rollaway did arrive about 20 minutes later. We all went to bed but as we got ready for bed, the bathroom had crap all over the floor and was dirty. I was totally grossed out at this point but too exhausted to want to change rooms. We got up the next morning, had breakfast at the carnival buffet which was good and left. Never again will I stay here. The only positive is due to a deal we were mailed the room was only $39 a night.