Customer Reviews

Frommer's Las Vegas 2002 (Frommer's Complete Guides)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Frommer's Las Vegas was the second travel book on Las Vegas that I have purchased. The First was the Discovery Channel's Insight Guide, which proved to be more history and color photos than travel advice. Frommer's is known for their "opinionated" and "honest" reviews of travel destinations. We'll this one is no exception.

The book is laced with sarcastic tones and comments about the looks and feel of the casinos' and attractions in Vegas. The information is very personal and honest, to a point. The author Mary Herczog, is very opinionated about the feel of the places she visits. In a good sense, she lets you know about the space and attractiveness of each hotel and the feel of being there. But these are merely her opinions. Some of the places she finds distasteful and tacky, you might say magnificent! But never the less the whole book is very helpful in planning a trip to Las Vegas if you have never been before. Read again. Is helpful if you have never been to Las Vegas. Otherwise, you should have visited most of the major casino's there and decided for youself.

The book is more of a Encylopedia of Las Vegas, you pay for the organization of information. Very well written, but very steep in bias. Note to Fellow MEN: This book is written from the perspective of a WOMAN(No Offense). A smokey, crowded and noisey casino to Mary Herczog might be heaven to some of us Male Wager-Holics.

Overall the book is fun to read, informative, helpful in organizing addresses and phone numbers, insightful and interesting. Very opinionated, but good. Hope this helps.

The time this saves you in phone calls and walking around for information is worth the cover price alone. If you love discounts, shows, shopping this is your best resource for the truth about what is worth doing. We got fantastic hotel accomodations and felt like we were in the right place at the right time throughout our stay. I will buy the most recent edition each time I return to Vegas. Yep, we'll absolutely be back!

I own a number of travel books on Vegas, and Frommers falls squarely in the middle of the pack. It provides a lot of great information, but it's not quite as comprehensive as some of the other books I own.

Once you get past the generic introductory fluff of "check the web for good prices", we start into the meat of the book. They have the hotels broken down into area of Vegas and then price range. While this might seem OK, I would have much preferred something that actually listed them by things I'd care to break hotels out by - do they have a pool? What restaurants do they have? Are they right on the strip? I do agree that the descriptions of the hotels here are much better than in other books about Vegas, but you still have to dig through that description to draw out what you are looking for and then make your own feature grid. Also, I just have to mention this, the author seems to LOVE making side comments (there seem to be a pair of parenthesis and side comments every third line). While it's cute once or twice it gets really annoying (especially when the side comments are completely meaningless - oh, did I mention that I should get to sleep soon?)

Once you wade through all of the commentary, you do end up with a good sense of which hotels will appeal to you, to go investigate further. However, they could have done a much better job of organizing that up front for you.

Next we move into restaurants which has the same bad/good balance - there are great reviews, but sometimes the tend to drift, and they just aren't organized very well. Then we promptly go into shows - only a few are mentioned - and then unlike the other books, we drift into some pretty strange categories. The book lists out coffeehouses, strip clubs, even wigs and getting married. It hits a number of topics. There's a small section on non-Vegas attractions too.

Really, I find this a great "second book" because of the detail it goes into on the hotels. I find it fascinating that what they CHOSE to tout on the cover is "with insider gambling tips" when really this book has far less info on gambling than many other Vegas books I own. Certainly none of the tips shared seem very insider. Still, I suppose a book has to have a cover that entices people to pick it up. Maybe people wouldn't pick up a book that said "great thorough reviews of hotels in Vegas". But that is really where this book shines.

I purchased this book for our second trip to Vegas. As always, I found Frommer's to-the-point opinions to be right on. We used their dining advice and were never disappointed. (Make SURE you try the Le Village Buffet at Paris). We also took their advice to get off of the Strip and sampled some excellent Thai food that we would have never known existed otherwise. We stayed at the Mirage and loved it!! Frommer's was right in calling it an old favorite. We will definitely stay there again.

I have only one complaint. Their reviews of nightlife were pretty good but they highly recommended Coyote Ugly. We had free tickets and did not pay the $15-20 cover charge to get in and were we ever glad. The place was nothing but a bunch of drunk bachelorettes dancing on the bar (well at least trying to dance). We never saw any of the Coyote Ugly girls we had heard so much about. But-to give Frommers the benefit of the doubt-we may have caught the place on a bad night.

Otherwise, great book. Not to sound cheesy, but I always feel like I get the most out of my vacation by doing a little Frommer's reading. Their guidebooks are by far the most organized out there. Have fun in Vegas!!!

All travel guides have the same problem: how to give the visitor(and sometimes even a resident) up to date information such as phone numbers and opening times, while offering useful maps and general advice, and wrapping it all up in a package that is worth reading. In other words, how to be both a book and a bulletin board.

I think Mary Herczog has done a very impressive job here. The book is marvelously written, a book so funny and informative that you might enjoy reading it even if you live in Vegas or have no intention of ever setting foot there. That is important, because some of Frommer's guides have lots of numbers, but no narrative skills to tie them together.

I should point out that two of the negative reviews of this book by other reviewers refer to a previous edition that I have not seen. This book does discuss the new(ish) Aladdin and other topics those reviewers said they could not find.

The book spends about two thirds of its length on the Strip and its offerings, and the rest on non-resort offerings around town, which seemed about the right mix for me. Please note that not all hotels are covered, just a selection of the more prominent resorts.

I personally would have preferred a general overview of the major casinos; instead the accomodations are reviewed in one section, the shows in another, the restaurants in yet another. All authors must make decisions, though. It's not all Mirage and Mandalay Bay, either: bookstores, strippers, and gay clubs get their own sections, and much else. All in a book so well written that you won't want to throw it out in 2003....

Frommer's Las Vegas 2006 offers everything you want to know about Las Vegas - both good and bad. Having been there before, and having read a previous edition of Frommers Las Vegas, it is useful to get an updated perspective of the 'old' and 'new' hotels, attractions, dining, gambling and so much more. Frommers is the best guide on Las Vegas I have come across.

Look, everything about going to Vegas is a gamble, but Frommers helped us cut the odds with every part or our trip. With the prices of shows there it was invaluable to have this guide help us pick. The author was absolutely right about "Blue Man Group" -- both the kids and adults loved them. And the only time we went against a Frommer's recommendation (choosing a buffet purely for convenience) was the only time we were disappointed. It was our own fault!

This book was exactly what I was looking for. So many of the tour books out there just list information. This one has critical content and seems to honestly evaluate properties for the things that matter to me. Cleanliness, room size, noise levels, and comparisons to similar or nearby properties.

Like the former reviewer, I also wished for greater descriptions of the swimming pool areas.

I would take the price information with a grain of salt -- room rates vary so much depending on promotions and availability, it seems worthless to try and even ballpark a figure.

One thing I would like to see is, for each hotel, a description of each of the hotel's different room types, using the lingo of that hotel. For example, the MGM Grand has several different types of studios -- a description of the differences between each type of room would be VERY helpful. The author did do this some, but not as thoroughly as I would find useful.

Overall though this guide was absolutely way better than others I have seen and well well worth the price.

I've always relied on Frommer's for any travel literataure I need. This book was no exception....all my questions asked and very good reviews, etc.

Ms. Herczog is a wonderful writer who manages to make her guide entertaining as well as helpful. The guide is well organized and managed to save me quite a bit of cash in the first few pages...by planning around the major convention dates she listed, we got much better room rates. However, it does seem there are some areas where she is a bit less than objective. She raves about a restaurant, the Enigma Cafe, without letting us know that it's in a decidedly seedy little neighborhood where you don't feel quite safe (it also appears to have closed in 2000...but those things do happen all the time). She is perhaps a little too enamored of the Mirage...a great place for sure, but you do get to wonder if she's got an ownership stake it it. She has great tips on getting around and shows...though quite a few of the prices have raised since press time. I would have like to see a bit more info on the hotel pools...finding out which ones were heated would have been worth its weight in gold in March (from what I could see...the strip's best pools are at the Mandalay Bay...heated, beautiful, include "beach" and wave pool...and the rooms are fantastic, too)...however, since the Mandalay is so new, we can forgive the author for slighting this gem...the pools probably weren't open as of press time. In any event, keeping in mind that the book might be a little too subjective here and there, it's definitely worth the investment...you'll definitely get a lot more out of your trip if you read this guide first...and bring it with you.