Stayed there the night of August 18, 2003 for one night with my twin 15 year olds. The previous night was spent at the Stratosphere. Having read the reviews of both, which imply the Stratosphere to be dubious and the Orleans to be exquisite, I was surprised to find them to be quite equal overall, had I not had some problems that Orleans refused to deal with. Overall, the Orleans is a nice place to stay, and a bargain, but I'm absolutely baffled by its #1 rating on tripadvisor, and by people who rave that they'll take care of problems for you. For me, they didn't. I'd stay at Stratosphere (love their casino, observation deck, and rides) or Gold Rush (love their buffet) before I'd go back to Orleans.Here is the story: I had not been sure whether I'd be arriving in Las Vegas on August 17 or 18, so I booked and prepaid for a room at Orleans for August 18. Note that I said one room.
It was booked on usairways.com (where I was Chairman's Preferred during 1999, 2000, and 2001...and I tend to still use them for reservations) and appeared to have been made by usairways.com using Travelocity, who in turn booked it at a SABRE prepaid rate of $33.93 Before leaving for vacation on August 12, I checked my USAirways reservations, and there it was: one room at Orleans 8/18, prepaid and nonrefundable for $33.94.
Then I checked my credit card and there were two identical charges 2 days apart for $36.25 each. Presumably SABRE, Travelocity, USAirways, or someone along the line decided to take the extra $2.31 per day. No big deal, certainly not the fault of the hotel. But charging TWO days instead of ONE day is a big deal. Not the hotel's fault, but also not my fault. Just hopefully a problem that they or I can fix, short of doing a credit card chargeback, right? WRONG!!The first time I tried booking it online, the (USAirways.com) website bombed out (some typical "Cannot complete transaction, maybe you hit the back button, or maybe a software error" message) and never finished, never sent the confirming email, and never showed up as a reservation in my usairways account status. So two days later, I checked that it hadn't gone through, then I tried again, and it did show up OK. So I leave for vacation with one room showing on the reservation site. One confirmation number for one room. And two rooms charged, two days apart, on my online credit card statement with precious little info other than "Discount Hotel" in Texas. (Turns out to be an alias for SABRE's charges.)A few days before arriving at Orleans, I call them and ask if I have one room or two, and tell them the whole sad story. I offer to either arrive there on the 17th instead of 18th, and call it even by taking one room for 2 nights, or to cancel the extra room which was never actually purchased by me, but was charged to my card by SABRE in error.They refuse to do either thing, but offer to sell me a room on the 17th for $59 in addition. So I can pay 3-1/2 days rate for 2 days, or pay 2 days rate for 1 day.
Thanks, but no thanks.Orleans refused to deal with tracking down what went wrong at SABRE or USAirways.com, or to just cancel the room without making me do it "from the travel agent's end". Mind you I'm sitting in a hotel in Holbrook, Arizona on a Sunday, then burning up cellphone time at Meteor Crater as the telephone chapter of this saga comes to an end and I give up. They give me a number to call at SABRE, but I'd already tried that, and the "traveler" access on Sunday morning is nonexistent. I have a friend back home chase SABRE (by impersonating a travel agent) and USAirways.com (by impersonating me) with little luck. USAirways told her to either charm the hotel into accepting a cancellation, or to just refuse the second credit card charge....they were honest enough to say that route would be easier than fighting their own system to get them to admit their online error, or to have SABRE fix it.So on the 17th we stay at the Stratosphere, which proves to be a nicer experience for us than the Orleans anyway. Night of the 17th, pump $100 into slots at Stratosphere in a session lasting 4 hours at just one $1 (x2) slot machine, win a $500 jackpot and put it firmly in my wallet. Being up $400, I was tempted to stay at Stratosphere another night and forget the whole Orleans/SABRE/USAirways.com ordeal.
But a paid-for room is a paid-for room....so after buying an "unlimited all day" pass to the Stratosphere rides, it's off to Orleans we went.They expect me to check into both rooms, and I tell them the whole story, that I only ordered one. I have the confirmation paperwork with me. Fine, they say, but we already have your money for both rooms from SABRE, and we won't let you cancel the room. "You have to have SABRE cancel it" they say, and of course at 4:10pm hotel time, the SABRE phone number isn't even taking calls as it's after 6pm CDT. Plus, they say that they're keeping SABRE's money no matter what happens, and that they only want to have me chase SABRE so that I'll get out of paying SABRE. Yikes!So now we get to the room, a nice room. Equally as nice a room as we had at Stratosphere. Only two minor/moderate problems with the room or facilities at Orleans:1. The 150 degree garbage on the other side of the pretty stucco wall from your shady rental car parking spot. 2. The air conditioning controls.The only MAJOR problem is with their money-grubbing reservations folks being unwilling to help fix an error made by neither themselves nor me, even when given plenty of notice about it.Nice view of somewhat distant wasteland from the 12th floor at Orleans, compared to the nice view of the somewhat distant Strip, hotel pool, etc. from the 19th floor at Stratosphere.Both hotels impressed me with clean AC grills or ducts, quite unusual even in nice hotels. Both had nice bathroom floors, walls, fixtures, etc. and were clean. Both made me feel very secure. The Orleans bathroom floor was clearly a color intended to hide dirt, but none was found. The Stratosphere floor was polished black granite and would show dirt easily but none was found.At Orleans, there was a wall AC unit on the exterior wall, and it first appeared that the temperature knob on the AC itself was functional. But in fact, it was disabled, and you had to set a wall thermostat to get it to cool. A bit confusing having to use the on/off/low/hi knob but not the temerature knob on the AC itself.
Because the cold air blows right on the thermostat on its journey from the AC to the main part of the room, we found that setting it at about 6-8 degrees lower than you wanted the room to be was required. In other words, attempt #1 of using the AC knob left us sweltering. Attempt #2 of setting 70 degrees left us at maybe 76-78 degrees, and setting it at 64 actually cooled the room. (The AC setup at Stratosphere was nicer and easier to use than at Orleans. Set the very obvious wall thermostat and let the central AC do its job.)Last but not least, a couple of comments about the gambling at Orleans. I was tempted to play Texas Hold'Em, but because of my success at the slots the previous day at Stratosphere, I decided to play slots. If you're looking to take a whack at a large, progressive top prize, maybe Orleans slots are OK.
Maybe not. There was not a single machine or section with a posted payback rate. I played for a while and saw why. Either the payback is low, or maybe just so much of the payback is at the extreme long-shot end of the scale, or maybe both. I suspect that for anyone who DOESN'T win the $1.5 million progressive jackpot on a $0.25 slot, you get drained of your money pretty quickly. I found just a few machines with sensibly-sized top prizes, so that I could actually play for a while without it just being "lottery ticket" donations to some future big-jackpot winner. And those machines relieved me of $87 in due course. So I should have paid the extra night at Stratosphere and stuck with their marked bank of 98% payback machines. Oh, and one last thing.
We decided to take the shuttle to Gold Rush for the buffet. After waiting and waiting to no avail, we took another walk past the dumpster smell and drove our rental car instead. No big deal to us, but to folks relying upon cabs and shuttles, it's something to think about.The Gold Rush buffet was beyond excellent, with all the food very well prepared.
Simple stuff unusually well executed, and great dessert selections considering the price.
