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.]
