Everybody hates the Alexis Park Resort. But I'm really not quite sure why. So far, my only complaints with it are 1) the ethernet in my room didn't work (but, seriously, can't I survive a few hours a day without network?) and 2) breakfast is a little overpriced.
It's certainly possible that if I did some comparison shopping with other hotels, I'd find that I was paying a little too much, but I like being right there with the conference.
Presumably, some folks don't like the location, but, as for me, I find it to be adequately far away from many of the reasons that I dislike Las Vegas in the first place. ie, The Strip.
So, in the hopes of receiving useful feedback that will be informative in our choices for next year, I believe that I'm going to have to embark on a quest to collect some of the reasons that people revile the Alexis Park so much. As for myself, I liked my room, I like the folks that work there, and I like the location. Perhaps, as Bill would say, it's a third world thing. I expect beds to keep me off of the floor at night, and I have very little further expectation about hotel rooms. I guess I tend to think that some folks are just too darned hard to please, and so when they complain that the bar ran out of a particular kind of beer, or that the swimming pool wasn't warm enough, my reaction is inclined to be "waah waah poor baby" rather than anything more feeling.
When I was there for DefCon this year I was impressed by the hotel. The room was fine. Location-wise, the only problem was that I ate at the Hard Rock Cafe every night as very few other places were within walking distance.
Next time I go there, I'll be taking a lot more in the way of packed lunches and sugar-kicks to keep me going through the day.
Pricewise, the flight to vegas was the biggy [as defcon as only 50 or 100 usd] so I didn't pay much attention to the hotel price.
I liked the close-circuit tv system which showed every conference room thing. As I'm not that much into the defcon thing, I happily spent the first 2 days watching things on TV, then went to meetings on the last day when a lot of people had already left.
That was probably a grumble. The hotel kicked us out of rooms at midday, but the conference went on until early evening. For something where the entire hotel was taken over by a conference, I would have hoped they could have changed the usual stupid 'checkout by midday' policies that hotels have.
Posted by: Henri Yandell on November 29, 2003 01:54 PM