Description: This was a perfect place for a family to stay in Vegas. Our game plan was to arrive just in time to meet friends for dinner, spend the night close to McCarran Airport, and head off for our 6:45 flight the next morning. Located just west of McCarran, and right off I-15, it was a perfect match.
We pulled in about 5:30, hot, tired, and reeling a little. The contrast between the glorious, open, natural spaces of the southwest, often experienced
sans other human accompaniment, and the… well… unusual, artificial, and extremely urban environment of Las Vegas couldn’t have been more striking. Spending 40 minutes parked in a traffic jam on I-15 was a severe and abrupt return to reality.
Vegas made my kids nervous, and staying off the strip was just fine. It’s perfectly possible to visit Vegas without a car, but I don’t think you’d want to stay here if you did: it’s not
that far from the strip—3/4 of mile from the Mandalay Bay, at the strip's south end—but this isn’t walking territory. The hotel sits in the middle of a large plot of land that’s clearly just being developed, and nearly all of the distance to the strip is on freeway overpasses or near entrance/exit ramps (the hotel runs a complimentary shuttle to the Mandalay Bay to spare you this experience).
We didn’t experience too much of the hotel; we simply didn’t spend enough time there. The pool looked inviting, the breakfast room was ample and clean (and unfortunately empty of food as we headed out the door at 4:30 am). It’s a larger property—for Holiday Inn Express, not for Vegas!—with four floors and 170 rooms. My experience in the newer HI Express rooms has been very positive: they’re larger than average and nicely furnished, with small fridges, microwaves as well as the usual coffee and iron. This one was no exception. We booked a two queen-bed room with a pullout sofa for $98 through www.hiexpress.com, and it was definitely a bargain (the pleasant clerk tried not to laugh when my wife asked the standard "Is that the best rate available?")
I had only two issues: one, for a large place, the passageway to elevators (on the first and every floor) is very narrow and tight, especially so with luggage. And as close as they are to the airport, it’s surprising that they don’t have an airport shuttle. In the end, that didn’t handicap us, since we headed out soon after our—yawn—4 am wake-up call, and the rental car return shuttle got me back to the airport almost before the rest of the family had checked their bags.
If a non-gambling, off-strip, newer hotel with friendly staff, pleasant rooms, pool, and breakfast is what you’re looking for in Vegas: stay here.
Directions:
Exit I-15 at Russell Road and head west. The hotel is on the south side, set back from the road by an open property and the parking lot. Turn left at the light Close