Room Quality: The rooms in the pyramid are cool because of the slanted windows, and you get to ride the inclinator up to them. Plus, you get to bump your head on the window every time you try to look out. They are okay, average sized (actually a little larger, but you lose some space because of the slanted wall), but the bathrooms are small and offer only a shower with no tub. The rooms in the non-pyramid towers are less exotic in shape, but they are larger, nicer and have tubs and separate showers. The twin queens aren't as fancy, but they still have separate soaking tubs and showers. The towers are also a slightly longer walk to the casino. Rooms have hairdryers and irons. Pyramid mini-suites cost more, but you can relax in your own bubbling Jacuzzi tub. Now, that's romantic!

Service Quality: Fair. This is one of the biggest hotels in the world, so they've seen every request you can imagine. Except some of ours involving Sit'n'Spin, vacuums and a goat. If it's a busy weekend, the wait can be long for extra towels or more soap. Like most large places, check-in can be a long and boring wait. Room service is good.

What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: Shampoo, conditioner and lotion, possibly more. It's standard for a big, fancy hotel. You also get nice, fluffy towels but you're not supposed to keep those (wink, wink). The mini-suites do it up right with fancier shampoos, bath salts, gels, ex-foliants and nicer lotion.

Clientele: Young to middle-aged. This place doesn't draw the big high-rollers, but you will see plenty of people betting big sums of money.

How's the Pool? It's pretty good, with a decent pyramid theme with palm trees, but the MGM Grand and Tropicana across the road have better ones. Mandalay Bay next door is the best around.

Table Games: Lots of games, including the regulars plus a few variations on Pai Gow. The casino is sort of confusing to get around, but it's a pleasant place to play if you've got the money.

Bet Minimums: $10 to $15 most of the time for tables, but if it's a hopping time, like a Saturday night, you can expect to see that go up more. Craps is likely $10 with 3x4x5x odds. Roulette is $1 chips with a $10 min. If you like single-zero roulette, you can get into it for $25 minimum.

Machines: Nickels to $100, with just about every variety of game you can imagine. They have lots of those crazy, multi-line nickel machines that are so popular. For the most part, we have heard the slots are tight, and there is very little full-pay video poker.

Cocktails? Good. You can get drunk enough to demand to see Nefertiti's titis if you tip the cocktail waitresses well. Nickel players tend to be ignored, so if you play the nickels, be vocal.

Who Gets Comps? The unified club serves for all MGM Mirage Properties and ain't so hot. People betting $50 at the tables for four hours a day will get casino rate, and the $150 bettors may get their room taken care of.

Backstage Deli: If it looks like a deli, quacks like a deli, and has corned beef that gives you the runs like a deli, it must be a deli. And this one sure is.

Burger Bar: It's a fancy burger place where you build your own burger to specs, which includes Black Angus or Kobe beef and top it with salmon or lobster. Don't worry, you can make a regular old burger, too, but if you want something really goofy, they'll help you out. This is in the walkway between Luxor and the Mandalay Bay.

Cathouse: Don't worry, you're not going to be dining on furballs and cat-hair laced soups. The cat house here refers to this restaurant's resemblance to a brothel. The look is complete with huge padded red doors, loads of red velvet and video screens of vixens dancing in the faux upper windows. The chef is celebrity Kerry Simon, who didn't stick around very long at the Hard Rock. The food is pricey and mostly standard gourmet room stuff like braised beef ribs, surf and turf, ribeye steak. After dinner, the place becomes a nightclub with overpriced drinks and lots of lounging in overstuffed booths.

Company Kitchen and Pub: Another restaurant that's high on style and not so much on unique dining. This place serves what it calls the coast-to-coast taste of America, with an emphasis on lighter, appetizer type dishes. In other words, steaks, chicken, lots of fancy finger foods. It is located next to LAX, so it wants to appeal to the young hipsters.

Fusia: "New Chinese Cuisine" is what they call it and it is pricey. This joint is open for dinners only and serves some tasty sounding food like twice-cooked duck, blue crab rock shrimp rolls and calamari. In fact, the menu has a lot of seafood options, but also some steak. And don't forget dessert; it's good.

More - the Buffet at Luxor: The name says it all. This is an unimaginative buffet set to serve people who want a buffet but don't know where the really good ones are (hint: Planet Hollywood, Wynn, Bellagio, Paris). It's passable, and that's about it.

Pyramid Cafe: Stop in for your morning fix of food and coffee, but don't go way out of your way for this slightly-better-than-average coffee shop experience.

Tacos and Tequila: Boy, is this place ugly. They call it highly stylized, but it's just weird: sort of minimalist but also sort of obnoxious. The guy who designed the room gets equal billing with the chef, so you can figure out you're paying for way more than the food. The food is Mexican, and there is also a pricey bar.

Tender Steak and Seafood: Dig into a decent steak in a decent room with a quite lame name. Although, it's better than "Supertough" steak. You won't find a hoof in your cut of meat, and the room is small pretty understated and classy (especially considering how gaudy the rest of the hotel is becoming). Still, there are better and more elegant steakhouses for the same money.

Carrot Top: Ugh. We're fans of neither prop comedy or the bigger-and-louder-is-funnier brand of comedy, so Carrot Top holds no appeal for us. If you like this sort of thing, though, here is the next generation's Gallagher with the added benefit that you won't get smashed watermelon on your clothes.

Criss Angel - Believe: Criss Angel's magic show is produced by the folks at Cirque and... the reviews are that it is an unmitigated suckfest. A lame plot, a dull star and, worst of all, pretty boring magic. The story is some claptrap about Angel being injured during a stunt and hallucinating/dreaming a show. Who knew that inside his head was lamer than outside? Go elsewhere for magic or Cirque.

Fantasy: Do you like the mammaries? Do you like to have them slowly revealed to you in a mid-priced tease show? If you answered yes, this "sexy" revue will foot the bill. It's actualy one of the better boobie shows on the Strip, but the seating is strange because it's a converted movie theater and steeper than a normal live venue.

LAX: Wow. Another ultra lounge. How clever. This one is an imitation of the hot LA club and has all the requisite things to make you feel small if you can't get in, and tall if you spend enough to slip past the velvet rope. Overpriced drinks and low booths are the features.

Liquidity: This huge, sprawling bar area dominates the casino floor and is annoyingly trendy. Actually, it's annoying because it's trying to so hard to be trendy, but is actually just like every other bar all gussied up just to make you pay more for a drink.

Menopause the Musical: This one is strictly for the ladies. It's a comedy-musical about women growing older, so we really don't recommend it for the men unless going with their wives is the only way to stop WWIII, or they just love jokes about hot flashes and sagging skin.

Number of TVs: Twenty plasma TVs plus five big screens are spread out for sports and racing.

Number of Seats: One-hundred-ten average chairs, all of which have individual TVs, but they are old CRTs that take up most of the table.

How Many Betting Windows? About eight for race and sports.

Free Drinks? They aren't fast about it, but they do serve free drinks to people who wager and ask for drink chits.

Snack Bar? Nope.

Minimum Wager: $10 straight, $10 futures in sports. $2 race.

Other Notes: This is just a decent book, worth checking out if you're staying here or at the Excalibur, but definitely not a destination. It is often not crowded.

Number of Tables: Eight.

Comfort of Chairs: Pretty average, actually. At least our butts didn't complain.

Closed Room or Open to Casino? Open but isolated, so it stays pretty quiet except for noise from the adjacent sports book. If you like silence, hope nobody scores a touchdown. It's non-smoking and far enough from smoke to be okay.

Game Spreads and Limits: Hold-em $23-$6 and a $1-$2 no-limit game with $40-$200 buy-in.

Beginner Games or Classes? Classes offered every day in the afternoon.

How Crowded is the Room? Usually fairly busy. Probably you'll wait a bit for a table on weekends.

Comps? Free drinks while playing. Comps are $5 for four hours of play.

How Good Are the Players? Average to below average. A pretty safe place to play on the Strip for beginners.

What Else Do I Need to Know? Bad Beat jackpot. High Hand bonus. In Hold 'Em games, you get a smaller bonus if you're holding just one card to make the high hand. There are frequent no-limit tournaments.