At 8:00 in the morning on Fremont Street, the temperature was already pushing 32 degrees and Tim was staring up at a ceiling that looked like open sky. The night behind him had cost $113 all-in, taxes included, at the Plaza Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas‘s first all-inclusive property. For anyone who has ever booked a week in Spain and wandered back to the swim-up bar without reaching for a wallet, that number sounds like an extraordinary deal. The reality, as Tim discovered across one sweaty overnight stay, is considerably more specific than the brochure implies.
The wristband, the vouchers, and the fine print
Check-in comes with a plastic wristband and a printed guide listing every place a guest is allowed to use it. The European model that most people picture, where breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a steady flow of cold drinks appear automatically from morning to night, does not apply here. Instead, each night generates two food vouchers. Tim used his on dinner at Hash House a Go Go and breakfast the following morning, which is the obvious play, but the system has a trap built into it: if a guest stops at the coffee bar for a latte and a Danish pastry, that counts as one voucher, gone. A barista confirmed it plainly when Tim asked. One pastry, one voucher. The hotel’s all-inclusive menu at Hash House a Go Go covered a starter, a main, and a dessert locked in as a churro waffle, with no choice on that last item. Tim ordered biscuit bites to start and a burger. He also ordered a Pepsi without thinking, then discovered that drinks at Hash House a Go Go were excluded from the all-inclusive arrangement entirely, meaning bottomless drinks applied only at the Omaha Bar and the sports bar on the casino floor. He had to leave his meal to fetch a drink, then leave the drink behind because it could not come back into the restaurant.
The drinks list at the bar itself was generous enough: beer, whiskey, tequila, vodka, and wine, all available without a gambling requirement. Tim put it in context himself: ‘See, when I’ve been to Spain and done an all-inclusive, your beers are all in plastic cups, but here at least it’s in a bowl.’ The pool on the fifth floor, however, had its own bar that was completely outside the all-inclusive arrangement. Tim arrived at the pool entrance carrying a Bud Light and was told, with apologies, to drink it at the trash can or take it back to his room before entering.
Room 1502 and a very large pancake
The room itself was a standard king on the fifteenth floor, close to the lifts, with a view down Fremont Street toward Circa’s Stadium Swim. The window was noticeably dirty and the bass from Stadium Swim was strong enough to make the walls vibrate. The bathroom had no door separating it from the sleeping area, though the toilet had its own enclosure inside. The bathtub looked like it had not been cleaned. The shower head was described as not all that great. The air conditioning unit ran loudly through the night, and turning it off made the room too warm to sleep comfortably. The mattress, at least, passed the inspection.
Breakfast redeemed some of that. Tim ordered the combo breakfast at Hash House a Go Go, expecting flapjacks, and received what he called probably the biggest pancake he had ever seen in his life, alongside crispy bacon. The butter portion provided with it was, by contrast, very small.
The total package, one night, two meals, bottomless bar drinks, free self-parking for two vehicles, a 25 percent discount on cocktails at the pool bar, fitness access, and the elimination of a resort fee that would otherwise have added around $44, came to $113. The Plaza has been running the all-inclusive model for a couple of years, and enough other Las Vegas properties have followed that it no longer stands alone as the first. It remains, Tim noted, one of the cheapest options downtown.
The bingo hall that does not exist in Vegas lore
Somewhere between the casino floor and the pool, Tim walked into a bingo hall.
The session was running a triple bingo format, with a digital tablet handling the card-marking automatically, a practical feature after a few drinks at the Omaha Bar. The hot ball of the session was B12, carrying an extra $1,398 on top of regular payouts. Tim had three cards. The table across the room had around twenty. Nearby, a vending machine was selling bingo dobbers.
The Grand Total and What It Actually Means comes back to Fremont Street at 8:00 a.m., the Plaza’s facade familiar to anyone who grew up watching Back to the Future, the street empty enough to feel strange. One night, $113, a very large pancake, a Bud Light drunk standing next to a trash can, and a bingo card that did not win. Whether that is a deal depends almost entirely on how much a guest knows before they arrive.
