CityCenter’s Aria
Filed under Reviews, Travel
The past weekend I stayed at Vegas’ latest super casino: CityCenter. The hotel we stayed at in CityCenter is called “Aria.”
CityCenter is made up of 5 towers and a mall called “Crystals.” The 5 towers are:
- Aria: hotel and casino
- Vdara: hotel and condo
- Mandarin Oriental: hotel and condo
- Harmon: hotel
- Veer: condo
Aria’s rooms are the best Vegas rooms I have ever been in. First of all, the key card to open the door works by being close to the door…no need to insert it in a slot. That means you can just leave the card in your wallet and wave your wallet in front of the door to open it.
When you walk in for the first time, the room is completely dark with the curtains drawn. The lights thoughout the room slowly ramp up to full brightness as the curtains automatically pull back to reveal an amazing view. Then the HDTV turns on with your name written on the screen. There are two remotes: a standard remote and a touch screen that stays by your bed. Both remotes use RF instead of IF, so you don’t have to aim them. The remotes lets you control:
- TV
- Music
- All the lights
- The curtains
- Alarm clock
- Temperature
- Privacy indicator outside your door
It is very slick.
The room has audio/video inputs so you can easily hook your laptop/mp3 player to the TV. Two powered USB ports allows you to charge your devices without using an AC adapter…nice!
Here are some pics of our room on 54th floor…
View outside our room…
The sports betting area of Aria is amazing. It has the best/biggest HDTV I have seen (actually, two) if you take the one at Cowboy Stadium out of consideration. First drink is on the house here! I would *definitely* come back just to watch a basketball/football game here. Here is some video to give you an idea how big (and bright!) the screens are.
The next smaller TV’s are ~60”…and they look great, too.
Overall, I’m impressed with Aria. It is very different from typical Vegas casinos…but I enjoyed the change. The food was great, but our service at The Buffet and Cafe Vettro were sub-par. For example, I finished my meal and left The Buffet and never got the Diet Coke that I requested *twice* (the first request was before I went to get my first plate of food).
I still enjoyed my stay and would go again. It is an amazing structure and worth checking out.
Some photos from around Aria…
Mandarin Hotel @ CityCenter…
Crystals Mall at CityCenter…