Planet Hollywood review: Terrible first experience at Planet Hollywood

We booked Planet Hollywood for two nights. We arrived at the property at 4:30pm — notably much after normal check-in at 3:00.

We used the Express Check-In kiosk next to the front desk to check in because the line was extraordinarily long. Once we checked in, we received an email stating that our room was not ready (an hour and a half after check-in time) and that we would have to wait for a second email that would indicate when our room was ready.

We saw that we were going to be late for our event so we brought out luggage to the car and changed in the parking lot. “Things happen”, we thought. PH will do right by us.

To our surprise, we never received a confirmation email. We were away from the hotel until 11:00pm before we were finally fed up and we went to the front desk.

We told them that we had used the express kiosk, right next to the check-in desk, and we showed the email that said that we should wait for a room confirmation.

Imagine our frustration when the desk attendant told us that the “kiosks do not ACTUALLY confirm anything and that we needed to use the front desk for check-in”. There are no less than 9 kiosks RIGHT NEXT TO the front desk and I’m being told that they are, effectively, useless. When I said that we received an Planet Hollywood email asking us to wait for a confirmation, the attendant said that the email was basically useless and that there was nothing he could do about the fact that we had been asked to wait 8 hours for no reason.

We asked to speak to a manager and the conversation turned even more frustrating. The manager refused to acknowledge that there was even a problem. He repeated that the kiosks don’t work the way that they are presented and more or less blamed us for not checking in at the desk. I naturally asked why the kiosks are there if they do not work as presented, and the manager gave a half-hearted answer that the “kiosks only work when a room is assigned” — and then proceeded to contradict himself when we confirmed that we had been assigned a room.

I asked “what would have happened if I never received a confirmation email from PH”, and the manager replied that they would have simply cancelled our reservation. By this point, I was angry. Not only did Planet Hollywood’s own check-in procedure not work as advertised, then we were blamed — by the manager no less — for not somehow knowing that their system was flawed. In addition, the manager kept insisting that there was nothing wrong! He kept implying that somehow this was really our fault, for checking-in well after check-in time, for taking PH at their word that we would be notified, and then for expecting that the manager would simply acknowledge that something had gone wrong!

We were not the only ones with this problem. The couple behind us also tried checking in during the afternoon and were similarly told that the room was not ready. They told us that they had to get ready for their concert in the nearby restroom, because they didn’t have a space to change. When they told the manager this, the manager simply repeated what he had told us: that this was somehow their fault for not checking-in “properly”, that they would not take any responsibility, and that they could simply pay for the room as if nothing was wrong. The couple behind us very reasonably stormed off in anger.

This is to say that I do not think that this is an isolated incident. It seems to me that the staff is very aware of this issue, but that somehow management does not care enough to solve it. Quite frankly, even the smallest bit of forewarning would’ve gone a long way in preventing these problems. Instead, management will simply shift blame to the guests. By the end of our exchange, I truly just wanted some human acknowledgment that something had gone awry. But management’s insistence that nothing was wrong was maddening and insulting.

Something is seriously wrong at this hotel. Maybe you’ll get lucky and be one of the guests that simply get pushed along with no problem. But if you run into problems, boy are you in for it. Not only will the staff not actively help assuage the situation, they will blame you for it, and charge you full price for the privilege.

I will never return to Planet Hollywood. I might not ever stay at a Caesars property ever again. Up until now, I’ve only ever stayed at MGM properties — maybe it’s best if that’s the case from now on.