We have stayed in the Excalibur twice in the past years, the most recent was last year as five of us booked in for a 10 day holiday in Vegas.

The main draw for the Excalibur is the price as you can easily pick up rooms for $50 a night at times, sometimes they are cheaper during the week other times they go up over the weekends, but you are never going to pay that much here.

The thing to always remember is that you don't actually spend that much time in the room of the hotel, especially in Vegas where you are more likely to be in the casino of the hotel or walking the strip to another hotel. Therefore the room needs to be functional, clean, with a good bathroom and good bed for recovery time.

The Excalibur matches these requirements pretty well from the times we have stayed and the location isn't bad for traversing the strip.

Check in processes in Vegas are mass scale, you are often checking in with large numbers of other guests, but Excalibur (and the others) do this well, with lots of desks and of course the brilliant American service. The last time we were there we had booked through the iPhone app so had a free upgrade to a superior room, they often do deals when you check in so be aware of that.

The room itself is pretty basic, but carries the castle motif through to the decoration. The beds are huge and comfortable, with good bathrooms and lots of space. If you have stayed in America they are pretty standard American hotel rooms which normally trump anything in the UK for the same price. They of course don't have tea and coffee making facilities, but there are numerous coffee shops to buy from first thing in the morning.

We had a view over the swimming pool complex which was nice. We did actually use the swimming pool a couple of times including renting a cabana which was very nice as it provided shade and drinks and food for about $100 for the day.

The Excalibur resort itself is one of the younger styled resorts, with a lot of lively bars and a carnival type areas of games and shows. It is not posh at all like a Belliagio, but it is probably not as tacky as things like Hooters sound.

There a number of food options, from steak, to buffet to Quiznos and McDonalds. The fast food places are all in one food court including a number of tacky souvenir shops.

Excalibur is nicely linked to Luxor in one direction and New York New York in the other, making it a good base for what I would class as the Party end of strip. It is also possible to get a monorail up to Mandalay Bay (beyond Luxor) or walk across to MGM to get the monorail down the strip to the other hotels. As a base there may be better but for cost it works pretty well for what you want from a hotel.

In conclusion if you want a comfortable room for the night and not much else this is it. It is not top quality, but it is good for Vegas and you can then spend more money doing other things on the strip.