We booked fountain view rooms and it was worth paying the extra for-a great sight at night .We also went to the O Cirque du Soleil show .Before we went i had thought that this wouldn't be for me but we booked it for my daughter's 18th birthday and it was absolutely superb-an amazing experience.On the down side off the back of this we booked to see their LOVE show but thought it was nowhere near as good.
We went to the Bellagio breakfast buffet which was great .Howver a couple of days later we went to Wynns for the champagne lunch buffet .We had to queue for an hour to get in but it was well worth the wait -an amazing range of food .As it was late afternoon part way through they changed the menu to the dinner buffet with even more choices.
I would recommend trying both the Bellagio buffet and Wynns.
Now for the sour note-you must check your room charges carefully as it is clearly a profit centre in its own right .As we checked out the guests on either side of me were disputing in room bar charges that weren't down to them .My account contained a $68 charge for poolside cabanas-a bit difficult if you had never been to the pool ! I complained and the charge was removed .Once i got home the charge appeared yet again on my credit card and again after a complaint it was removed .This months statement has just arrived -guess what it has appeared again-why would a hotel of this standing try to take charges by the back door?

The Bellagio was our first stop in a 2-week road-trip, covering the following places & hotels:

Las Vegas - Bellagio
Grand Canyon - Yavapai Lodge
LA - Hotel Celebrity
Monterey - Spindrift Inn
San Fran - Sheraton Fisherman's Wharf (don't) and Executive Hotel Vintage Court
Yosemite - Sunset Inn (Groveland)

All were booked largely following Trip Advisor reviews & the TimeOut Guide, to give us a mixture of 'spoiling ourselves' hotels with the primary focus being the best location for the part of town we were visiting (although we had a hire car). We are well-travelled 30ish Londoners who like the finer things in life but very happy to get stuck-into rustic! We were happy to swing between paying $150 and $300 a night. If this sounds like your kind of profile then by all means see my other reviews of these places here.

For a 2 night stay (Tues/Weds) this was a great starting place - the centre of the action and great to recover from jet lag. For first time Vegas visitors, we found this the perfect place - well located for visiting the other hotels on the strip for 'sightseeing' or some great bars. Ok, so it's not cheap, but if that's what you are looking for, look off the strip - in which case, visiting this town doesn't have much point! It's a vast complex with numerous bars, hotels, casino (obviously) etc - many of the the hotels are very similar in that respect. We loved the huge bathroom with deep bath big enought for 2 and big shower. Lovely picture windows with a great view of either the fountains or the mountains at the back. You could ask for a fountain view, but you may pay more and to be honest it's more fun going up the Eiffel Tower and viewing them from opposite - MUCH better. Aim to do this just as the sun has set for perfect timing and fantistic photo opps.

Great variety of big swimming pools that did get busy by 11am if this is your thing, and stayed busy until close at 6pm. Lovely sun area and private pool facilities - all still in use in late September although we thought that Vegas was actually quiet than we expected.

Very little contact with staff at the Bellagio, you won't feel the personal contact - but it didn't really matter - that's not what you are here for. They were very helpful at providing a show timetable for various big gigs, Cirque du Soliel etc - many of these will be on vacation but tourists are helped to plan things easily. We didn't end up using the concierge.

Picked up a coffee & pastries from one of the hotel coffee shops but you won't find brekkie laid on, I'm sure this will be very similar with other big Vegas Hotels. The New York, Veneitian, Caesors, Luxor and Wynn all looked like places we would consider as 2nd timers but for first timers, you can't beat this spot. Olives for late dinner in Bellagio was great to ride out the jet-lag (and accommodated us for dinner at the bar as a walk-in), but consider booking maybe a week in advance if you want to make special dinner plans or shows here.

Consider shopping around for coupon codes online, you may save 10% if you have the energy! We booked online and got a small discount by scouring for discount deals. Clean, very comfortable king-size bed, great decor without being old, tacky, chintzy or ultra-modern - all in all everything you would expect from a hotel of this caliber.

We stayed here for 5nights from 09/22-09/27.
We had visited this property many times before and thought we had to stay here on our next trip. I am so pleased we did!!!!!
Explaining on here to the people who have not stayed at the property or visited it is so hard to do as seeing is believing. Within 5 minutes of arriving we were in our De-Luxe View room on the 27th floor, we dropped our luggage at the entrance to our room and hurried to see from our floor to ceiling window what view we had been given - it was perfect, an unhindered beautiful view of the fountains and Las Vegas strip! As if by magic as we had arrived the fountains started, if you put channel 22 on your tv on you hear the music as the windows block any sound from them. We watched many a performance from our room at night and day and the final piece of music was " Time to say goodbye" kind of ironic as we checked out moments later.
I can think of many adjectives to describe this hotel , one springs to mind ........spectacular. This is undoubtly the best hotel we have ever stayed in . We booked via The Bellagio hotel's website and paid $249 per night, we would have paid more for our experience. In England we do not have many hotels that are of this calibre and style and you would pay double or triple for the same standard.
The hotel is so huge , its soft lighting and decor is the best i have seen at a Las Vegas hotel and i used to get so thrilled to stay at The Luxor on previous visits. The restaurants seemed a bit upmarket and touch pricey, we tended to go to Mon Ami Garbi and PF Changs at Planet Hollywood, we did use the excellent buffet at this hotel and also at Paris which was very good also.
The pools and grounds were beautiful and there were plenty of loungers with ample parasols. We kept thinking that this was our 8th trip to Las Vegas why had it taken so long to discover the beauty of this place.
We play mainly on the slots and they were very lucky for us as we left with $1250 winnings, however the drinks service was slow at certain times of the day, just like busses , you wait for ages for one then three come together, although on the busy evenings they were more frequent. All the hotels that offer a drink service only Caesars and Wynns would suppply you with a tall glass of your desired beveridge.
The valet parking was very very good and efficient , they put a sticker on your windscreen to say you are a hotel guest and they greet you by name each time as if they knew you.
We were in Las Vegas for a further 11 nights at two other hotels but most evenings we kept returning to the Bellagio it was so special to us !
The bedrooms were very large and the bathroom was as almost as big , with loads of toiletries, body lotion, mouthwash, different soaps shower caps and the usual stuff you would also find. The bath was very deep but shorter than what we are used to back home but no complaints. There was a nightly turndown service, the maid replenished the used toiletries and left chocolates by our bedside. Imagine to my horror one evening when we returned i had left our room safe open with everything for our holiday, cash ,credit cards, flight tickets and valuables ( yes how stupid of me , to this day i do not understand how and why i did leave it open as iam so meticulous) it was left untouched and for that i was truly thankful- that would have been the end of our holiday !
When we left this hotel we were gutted , even though we still had 11 nights at Green Valley Ranch and The Luxor to come.
For the people that are thinking of staying here and it is in your price range please please do. You read of criticism of this hotel ( not much though) and you think , hey stay in one in England for a similar price and expectations and you will know what i mean. They are older , smaller, DEARER, dirtier, smellier so when you read that some guy has complained on Tripadvisor about a stain on the floor or slight crack in the ceiling or floor tile you think ........GET REAL!
Our next holiday next year will be at this hotel we have found our new home in Las Vegas, but next time it will be for longer....much longer.
Were we impressed ? You bet we were ! I could write and write on , i tried to keep it brief but it was so hard to do so , as soon as i sign off there will be something else good that i will have remembered about the Bellagio.
THEY DONT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS ! ! ! ! !

HERE'S TO NEXT YEAR !

There's nothing I can say about the Bellagio that other reviewers haven't covered except to confirm that this really is a great hotel.
However, I wanted to offer a quick word about our experience with the hotel reception staff regarding room allocation.

We'd booked a non-smoking Bellagio Suite (directly with the hotel) for 5 nights at the end of September to celebrate my wife's 60th birthday. When we checked in we asked for a Fountain View and were willing to pay for it:

Room 1 Mountain View: Very straight faced, unsmiling young lady receptionist told us that no fountain view was available but told we could try again in the morning. We were given a suite at the back of the hotel overlooking Las Vegas towards the Palms hotel and the mountains in the distance. Not a bad view at all and a lovely sunset. But this side of the hotel also overlooks a very busy road junction. My wife is a very light sleeper and as Las Vegas traffic never stops she had a very disturbed night and it wasn't the Fountain View we'd hoped for.

Room 2 Pool View: Phoned reception next morning to see if a Fountain view room had become available. Spoke to a young man with a very arrogant attitude and was told, very bluntly, that the Fountain View Bellagio Suites were under the control of the casino and were not available to us (we're not gamblers). He reluctantly offered us a Pool View room instead. We accepted it and moved. The Bellagio pool does indeed look beautiful viewed from above but be warned, it can only been seen if you press your nose up against the window and look down. Move back into the room and the whole window is filled with the blank face of a half finished concrete block opposite. Ummm...Lovely! It was also a smoking room (we'd booked a non-smoking) but the traffic noise was a bit better so we decided to make the most of it.
The room didn't seem to smell too badly of smoke at first but by that afternoon my wife's eyes were streaming and it was affecting her breathing. You really don't want to be in a Bellagio smoking room if you're a non-smoker, the smell just seemed to get more and more acrid.

Room 3 Fountain View: I phoned reception again that afternoon and asked to move again and by this time I didn't care about the view as long as it was non-smoking. This time I spoke to a very pleasant young man who couldn't have been more polite or helpful. He phoned back 10 minutes later and "Would a non-smoking suite with a Fountain View be acceptable?" We've never packed so fast. We moved, were not charged any extra and the rest of our stay was fantastic.

There's no doubt that some of the reception staff we encountered at the Bellagio were rude, less than helpful and it would seem less than truthful (what was all that nonsense about the casino controlling the fountain view Bellagio suites?)

Bad service shouldn't happen or be acceptable but from the experience of recent reviewers on Tripadvisor if you don't get the room you want, making a fuss and getting the management involved doesn't seem to get you anywhere except angry and frustrated and still stuck in a room you don't like.

This is a big hotel (over 3000 rooms) and people are checking in and out all hours of the day and night. Rooms are becoming available all the time. Reception staff come and go. If you don't get offered what you want.....wait for some more rooms to become available....try again later until you find a "nice guy" with just the room for you. Make a fuss if you feel the need (maybe we were lucky) but persistence worked for us.

And finally there's something about being in Vegas, listening to "The King" belting out "Viva Las Vegas" on the Fountain Channel on the TV and standing at a floor-to-ceiling window watching the fountains dance to every note, framed against the Eiffel Tower ablaze in lights. I can still hear the boom of the explosion as the fountains shoot higher than the building.

Despite the problem with changing rooms, our stay at the Bellagio was pretty amazing and we would definately stay there again. We moved to the Wynn for the last 4 days of our trip (just to try it out) and while we prefered the atmosphere and the restaurants of the Wynn, the Bellagio won hands down for comfort of the room, House-keeping, Room service........and those fountains!