Up Next on the New Hotel Circuit: Hard Rock�s HRH Tower

December 17, 2009 at 1:42 PM | by Whalehead | 1 Comment

Now that ARIA and (most of) the rest of CityCenter is open to the public, we can set our sights on the next big new hotel property in town to open: the HRH Tower at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, which opens Dec. 28.

OK, we admit this is just one tower (as opposed to a small nation over at CityCenter), but still, we�ve seen the new digs, and they truly are sweet.

Did somebody say suite? All of the 374 rooms in the new tower are suites. Some, like the two-story spa villas and cavernous penthouse suites, are bigger than the average American home.

Though the penthouses weren�t finished when yours truly visited (that�s why we don�t have video yet), some of the ones we saw had multiple Jacuzzi tubs and weird camera thingies that projected the silhouettes of naked women onto the walls. Another one had a bed big enough for 12. The word �orgy� came to mind.

Many of us will never see these rooms; hotel officials say 149 of the 374 are reserved exclusively for casino guests. That leaves 225 (including some villas) for ordinary folks like us.

HRH isn�t just a hotel�it�s part of an expansion expected to nearly double the size of the Hard Rock�s gaming floor. The property�s total number of table games will increase to 130 from 90; the number of slots will rise to 846 to 520.

In our not-so-humble opinion, this expansion is long overdue; though the Hard Rock�s casino is quaint, it�s been far too small for years.

Sure, there�ll be restaurants and a Diddy-backed nightclub in the new tower, too. There�s also exclusive (read: separate from the regular Hard Rock) check-in and valet. Is the place worth exploring? Absolutely, especially for $109 on opening night. Will it generate as much buzz as that $8.5-billion behemoth on the Center Strip? Probably never. Which may not be such a bad thing until the economy rebounds.

VegasChatter

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