A week before we visited Las Vegas I called the Mandalay Bay and asked if someone could give us a brief tour when we first arrived to make sure we didn't miss anything for our review. I was told they didn't have enough time to do that. As I found out during the rest of our stay, that sort of hospitality is typical at Mandalay Bay.
The pool area was one of the main reasons that we wanted to stay at Mandalay Bay. There's a special area at the pool that my wife wanted to visit where they charge extra for admission. At the very least, she expected to get average pool side service. Unfortunately, nobody ever came by to take her drink order and she finally had to get her drinks herself the entire time she was by the pool.
To make matters worse, nobody was allowed to go into any of the pools because there was some sort maintenance problem. When I spoke to someone at Mandalay Bay about the problem, she was not very nice and I was told that I was "only paying for the room and not the pool." I don't think many guests at Mandalay Bay would agree with that point of view.
On the casino floor, things weren't much better. I stopped at one of the bars to play a little video poker and have a drink. Anyone that has been to Las Vegas knows that drinks are usually, if not always, free as long as you're playing video poker at the bar. However, I was told that a supervisor needed to approve any free drinks and I could either wait until the supervisor was there or pay for it myself. I just paid for it myself.
As a side note, I found someone's pocketbook on the casino floor with their cash, credit cards and identification. You would think it would be easy to turn it in to lost and found at Mandalay Bay, but I just got recordings when I tried to call the lost and found office. I ended up leaving my name and cell number with a security guard and asked him to contact me if someone asked about the pocketbook. I was never called, but we found out later that someone did in fact inquire about the pocketbook and we made sure it was returned ourselves.
In the poker room, they had low-limit tournaments 2 times a day during the week. I enjoyed the tournaments, but I didn't enjoy the poker room. If you decide to play there, make sure you know ALL the rules. They have one rule that I've never seen in 17 years of playing poker in California and in Las Vegas that could cost you all chips. Also, they should take Bellagio's lead and make their poker room non-smoking. Poker players sit too close together for long periods of time to have it any other way.
The only positive part about staying at Mandalay Bay was the room was nice. They had big, fluffy pillows and the window went from the ceiling all the way to the floor so we had a great view of McCarran International Airport. That sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but I really did enjoy watching the planes landing and taking off.
It's not likely that we'll be staying at Mandalay Bay again. There are just too many other choices on the Las Vegas strip that have the same or better amenities with much better hospitality.