How much are you willing to walk? How much do you want to gamble? Are you happy to drive?
In order to understand why these questions are important you need to understand a little about the size and scale of Vegas; Las Vegas can be broken into 3 meaningful areas as fas as tourists are concerned.
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| click on the map to see a larger image |
1 - The Strip; this is Las Vegas Boulevard in terms of street names and is commonly considered to start at Mandalay Bay at the South and the Stratospehere in the north. These two hotels are 4 miles from each other; this is therefore the length of the Strip as I will refer to it here.
In terms of scale this is a many lane highway - not dissimilar to the size to the M6 though Birmingham.
(Map of the Strip taken from Vegas.com )
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| click on the map to see a larger image |
some of the oldest and, in some cases, cheapest Vegas hotels. Not considered as glitzy as the Strip you can find some accomodation bargains here.
(Map of Downtown, again taken from Vegas.com )
3 - Off Strip; this is the area that surrounds the strip where hotels will be approx 0.5 - 1.5 miles from the Las Vegas Strip; these hotels will sometimes offer a shuttle bus to another hotel on the Strip. The hotels are on the Strip Map above and are any that are not next to the thick red line that denotes the Strip.
When most people think of an hotel they think of a Travelodge or perhaps the Ritz in london. Forget these images; the hotels on the Stip are known as resorts because they are self contained enormous things. The majority have thousands of rooms, shopping centres, theatre sections and restaurant sections; it can take you 30 minutes to get from your room to the Strip. Hence the first question; how much do you want to walk? If it is your first time to Vegas ( I am assuming it is, otherwise you probably wouldnt be looking for help and information!) you will probably want to see as much of Las Vegas as possible so consider the following before you decide on an area. I made the picture below to give more idea on scale and to show the distances between each group of resorts; it isn't to scale or to represent anything other than the distances on the green arrows
How much money do you want to spend? Location is everything and mid strip hotels will generally be the most expensive with Down-town being next and off strip being cheapest (generally speaking). You are likely to want to spend most of your time somewhere around the Strip so how much time do you want to spend travelling? If you stay Off Strip you will need to walk / get a shuttle or cab to go anywhere; this will also apply to the extreme ends of the Strip itself. So its no good saving £100 on your hotel to then spend it all on cabs if you aren't willing to walk...
So hopefully you now have some idea of location or at least which area you want to be in.
My next post will talk about the hotels themselves and how they differ.
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