The Twitterverse, podosphere and blogland have been going nuts in the past week or so over photos leaked to VegasTripping.Com that show some fairly hideous design features for the redesigned basic rooms in the main Bellagio tower. A disgusted Chuck Monster of VegasTripping.Com, on the most recent episode of The Vegas Gang podcast, said it made the rooms look like they belong in the Stardust and others chimed in that it looked like something that would give Roger Thomas hives.
With good reason. That above and this...
...are pretty awful. Also, it reminds me of Blanche's bedroom in Golden Girls:
Well, I'm happy to report that a trusted MGM Resorts source tells me that even when the sample rooms were being shown to various employees, the staff was being told the designer herself had decided she didn't care for that wallpaper and that it would be replaced with something understated. No word yet what that choice is.
The rest of the furnishings and such, however, will be as these photos show them and actually look "pretty cool" in person, I am told. If you look at the pictures and imagine that wall print gone, the whole scheme is infinitely better if still not all that great.
The first floor of rooms come into circulation within 10 days, I am told. Starting last month, they are taking four floors out of commission at a time in the main tower and plan to completing/releasing a floor a week until December when they're all done. It's the first main-tower room redesign since before the Spa Tower opened, which puts it at about 7 years. That's letting things slide modestly, given the high-end Vegas standard is to redo the rooms every 5 years, but these haven't exactly been the flushest of times for MGM.
I tend to think that Chuck's analysis on Vegas Gang was fairly spot on: This is appears to be an effort to bring the Conservatory into the rooms the way Mirage has borrowed design motifs from the volcano. But, really, the pale greens and stripes and the clashes with the carpet do not feel sophisticated, and that will harm the Bellagio brand.
Still, at least someone had the wisdom to realize that wallpaper would be offensive in a Radisson, let alone in the best-loved and most iconic luxury resort on the Vegas Strip. Can't wait to see it for myself.
[Thanks to Chuck for permission to use these images. Check out a couple others on his site.]
5 comments:
I don't think the wallpaper is horrible.Tacky, perhaps. It would be dated in about 2 seconds- and is completely unnecessary for anything. I think the design element is less about the conservatory than about the floral elements that abound throughout the Bellagio- carpeting, the hideous Chihuly garage sale "chandelier". If you want to talk hideous.... Roger is great and has a wonderful way of tying things together. All this really says is that it is going to be difficult to get anyone at MGM even minutely close to the taste of Thomas' compositions. MGM will have an identity crisis on their hands at some point if they don't get it together. They are too big and diffuse in concept.
They are treating their best property like an unwanted step child. Ugh... Making the Bellagio suffer doesn't make Aria better.
SG
Why Bellagio would overpay some designer to create these rooms when an in-house knockoff of Skylofts would've been more current is beyond comphrehension... but then, that's a state often found when it comes to certain resort decisions...
For once MGM listened to the customer. While you're at it, please, please, please listen to what the buzz has been about for the past ten years and don't stop at just the rooms. Besides the MTV Real World from over a decade ago turning this town over to the low lifes, MGM is easily 2nd in line in destroying what made this town great. De-theming, homogenizing every property, pushing sex in every ad you have. You have pissed on the middle class, middle aged long enough and thats why you see less and less of them in your properties. No wonder people love Suncoast, South Point, M Resort because they're not forcing the "youth rules the world" message down your throat. You're in good company though as Wynn has given up and joined the crowd too. Thanks for destroying Vegas piece by piece.
This town doesn't belong to club goers, so please don't put loud music inside and outside of the hotel. You're alienating a massive part of your customer base. You honestly believe a guy in their 50's wants to hear a thumping beat wherever he goes especially while he's trying to eat in peace. I was at NYNY last night and couldn't believe 3 blasting songs were hitting my ears at the same time. You had low class stripper dancing to the thumping beat near the tables (great family resort you have there), another rotten song blasting 40 feet away in the central bar, then the dueling piano guys all going on at the same time creating acoustic garbage. I saw people in your italian restaurant trying to eat a meal in peace having to shout to each other to get their point across to the person sitting across from them. Boy you guys really know the definition of class. Ever ask your employees about them having to take aspirin every night after work as their heads are pounding, maybe you should. While you're at it, don't use every square inch of your hotels as a profit center with mini bars and cheap trinkits, MGM loves to do this. I can go on and on, but I'll leave it at that.
^^^ Thumping music, dancing girls, oh my! Sounds like somebody should've gone back to Branson. They do that middle class, middle age, no sex thing right. Rock the heartland, Phil!
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