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Published: April 30th 2011
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Bellagio Gardens
Not happy to be leaving. Wednesday 12th December 2007. Home time.
It was the end of our stay and time to leave.
We had one last thing to look forward to though as we were going to have breakfast in the Bellagio Buffet.
I had read a lot about it and was really looking forward to it but dear oh dear, what a disaster.
We paid our $18 each, which I thought was reasonable and were shown to our table. All the staff were excellent including the waiter who swiftly brought the drinks we had ordered. I went straight to the traditional breakfast section. I took a couple of sausages, a few bits of bacon, some potatoes and my favourite egg benedict’s.
Unfortunately when I returned to the table I found that all of the food was cold. The benedict’s was luke warm but I had just seen that loaded onto the Bain Marie so that should have been piping.
I thought maybe I was just unlucky so pushed the plate to one side and went for more. I picked up just a couple of bits and found these were cold too. I called the waiter, who apologised profusely and promised to report it to the manager.
The manager arrived and apologised profusely and went to speak to the head chef.
I went to the Chinese section, as I was hungry after expending all that energy looking for hot food. I picked up some Duck! some Chicken Noodles and some spring roll looking things. The Duck turned out to be fish (which was stone cold and obviously wrongly labelled as Duck), the Noodles had no Noodles and turned out to be Sweet and Sour something else and the spring roll looking things were colder than the very rare Duckfish.
Oh no! This just wasn’t on. The manager was called again and was told of the latest horrors. He fetched the chef who was a very nice man. He apologised then made a major mistake. He suggested that I may have collected my food and then walked around a bit……………..”Walked around a bit!!” I said, “I could have walked to the Stratosphere and back and the food would be warmer”
I wasn’t a happy bunny!! I asked the others in the group if their food was OK but all were having problems finding anything that was warm enough to safely eat. I then entered into a conversation with the nice chef about legal food temperatures etc. I explained that I worked in a Prison in the UK and that if I had received food from the kitchens as cold as that, I would not have been allowed to serve it to prisoners!!
He was embarrassed…………….He disappeared somewhere, probably to shout a lot and maybe sack somebody?
What amazed me was, looking around the room, everyone was eating. They were all happily tucking into very sub standard food that really, for a 5 star, should have been perfect! At least it seemed that way. On closer inspection of my fellow grazers plates, there didn’t seem to be much “Hot type” food being devoured, just a lot of cakes, fruit and pastries.
I don’t like to complain. After reading the rest of this report, you may think differently but I really don’t enjoy it. What I also don’t like is being taken for a fool. I believe you should get what you pay for. That whoever is providing a service, should do so to the best of their ability. In a place like the Bellagio, who advertise themselves as a 5 star resort who are the best on the strip, you should be able to enjoy the luxury they promise and not have to worry about poor quality or, at worst, food poisoning from cold Duckfish.
I went and spoke to the manager and asked what he proposed to do. He offered to refund the cost of all our buffets, which I would have thought was the least he could do. After a while he returned and paid us all out at the table. For Roomy, that was the biggest pay out she had so far………..
What I would have expected was at least the offer of some vouchers to eat somewhere else in the hotel as we were obviously still hungry but they were not forthcoming.
So when all else failed I thought I would go for cake. Good god it was awful! G had just returned from the cake section with a couple of slices. As he laid them on the table I noticed the ends of the slices were curving up. He rocked one with his finger to demonstrate how solid and inedible it was. I decided to get some pastries instead. They were stale and old.
That was it, time to leave. As we went I told another manager (who tried to appease us one last time) how disappointed we all were and that the food in this restaurant was the worst we had been subjected to on our trip.
It was a beautiful morning as we wandered around the garden and pool area. I wanted to get some photos, as we couldn’t go into this area on our previous visit, as we were not Bellagio guests. P and I had brought our swimsuits with us with the plan to do some swimming if the weather was good but had not managed to use them. We were gutted when we realised the pool was heated to 84 degrees and we could have been out there no problem. Then we spotted the hot tubs and felt we had really missed out.
From here we wandered round to a café I forget the name of. Had huge hot chocolates and Cappuccinos coupled with some very nice Muffins.
Back to the room to grab the cases and down to checkout. A nice lady offered us express checkout and we were in the taxi in 2 minutes flat.
We had one last look at the wonderful fountains. The one thing I did notice was the lack of any traditional Christmas music. Sure there was “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” “Santa Claus is coming to town” and “Winter Wonderland” but I didn’t hear one song by Wizard, Cliff Richard, Slade or even the Wombles!?
Anyway, all 5 of us and the cases / bags (which had trebled due to Roomys shopping habit) managed to squeeze into one taxi and it only cost us $15 including tip.
At check in we were offered something I had never heard before.
Virgin had overbooked their flight, (by many it seemed) and there was hundreds of Brits trying to get home after the Hatton fight. The lady asked if we would like to stay another night and I just thought she was toying with us in a kind of “I bet you don’t want to go home?” kind of way. But she was serious. They were offering to put you up for the night at a top strip hotel, transport to and from that hotel, all food paid for and 50,000 air miles or a return trip to anywhere in the world.
Good grief, it was worth staying the night just to get the air miles. That would have given us 5 American return flights at least! I wanted to do it but everyone was in home mode and we really couldn’t take any more time off work. Incidentally, two guys who did take the deal, were later seen in the departure lounge so I assume that Virgin sorted out their over booking problem in other ways.
You would think that was end of the drama but there was more to come as we approached security. Roomy, against all reason, had resurrected the long dead Ugg’s. Standing in the long queue she suddenly realised that everyone was removing their shoes ready for the rigorous searching procedures. I looked at Roomy and it was like a scene from a drug smuggling movie. The look of panic on her face was a picture as she glanced all over the place as if to find an escape route to make a swift exit with her illegal cargo. With perspiration beading on her brow, she decided to try to smuggle the Ugg’s onboard.
As she approached, guilt got the better of her and she owned up to her lethal cargo to avoid arrest. The only arrest was of the cardiac variety from the poor guy who held the boots while Roomy walked through the metal detector.
So, that is it really. We boarded the flight after a 2 hour delay and ended our Vegas 07’ trip with night flight to Gatwick.
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