Affordable Strip Hotels: Excalibur

The Excalibur details and review: keep reading.
Circus Circus full details and full review: click here.

If you are on a budget or wish to stay in Vegas a long time (thus saving money each night), you are probably wondering which resorts may be best for you. We visit Vegas about three times a year and one of those times we tend to stay about three months, enjoying the dry and relatively warm weather Vegas offers in winter times.

When we stay a long stretch, such as three months, we often try a variety of options, from the most expensive to the cheapest, within the range of acceptability, of course. On this page we’ll talk about the pros and cons of the cheapest Vegas hotel resort options, starting from the Strip.

Whether you book directly from their website or book through a good travel site, such as the ones mentioned on this page, the following are going to be your cheapest options most days. There will be special dates, such as New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, or dates surrounding specific events, which will be more expensive, but generally speaking, the following are the cheapest Vegas hotel & resort options, starting from the Strip.

The Excalibur. Starting from around 25 dollars a night for their cheapest room type (although it’s easy to get comped at this hotel) and with their (just-increased, sadly) resort fee including free access to a good quality, large gym, this is always a good option. Tower 1 rooms, the cheapest, don’t have comfortable beds and are very basic all around, but their Tower 2 remodelled rooms can be very pleasant and very comfortable. On weekends and busy period it will be a noisy resort all around (also because of some of the clientele it attracts), partly due to the lack of sound-proofing in the rooms (sadly a feature in many Vegas hotels). It used to be very dirty and incredibly smelly all-around, but on our latest visit they seemed to have improved on both these fronts.

Sometimes you’ll be lucky and you’ll be given a free upgrade where the bed will be much more comfortable (and the pillows will be very comfortable!)with an overall remodelled room offering a huge flat screen TV (unfortunately still no high-resolution although they have improved on the number of channels avaialble). We often get the upgrade or are comped, so our budget stay at the Excalibur becomes well worth it, especially because we love its gym (see Best Vegas Gyms) and, if you are a pool lover (see Best Vegas Pools), they actually have very large pool area.

However, if you want to eat at the resort where you stay, the Excalibur only offers average to low food options, from its buffet to its food court. To be fair, they have recently added a few restaurants and you will enjoy a variety of choices, but don’t expect gourmet here: it’s mostly every-day fast food.

If you prefer a great buffet you can walk up to Aria or Bellagio as listed on our Best Vegas Buffets page. In terms of location, you will be on the South side of the Strip near New York New York, MGM, Tropicana and Luxor. We found that South Strip has limited choices, with the exception of unique MGM Grand amenities (such as special events and a huge nightclub) and, of course, plenty of bars all around.  I never though the best Vegas restaurants were in South Strip; however, things are slowly improving.  Having said this, one of the best pizzas is found inside the New York New York (otherwise, good pizza is hard to find in ‘tourist Vegas’).