Total Chaos: The Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada

Right after Christmas in 2010, my fiancé and I booked a room at the Circus Circus hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was there for the North American Open chess tournament, a strong chess event that happens from December 26^th to the 29^th each year. We arrived in Vegas right on time after a four-hour drive, and were excited to check in. Excited, that is, until it came time to park.

It was a nightmare. There were no spots available, and their parking garage was a total mess. The "lanes" we were supposed to navigate in were a complete disaster. It was supposed to be a two-way traffic setup, but the path was so tiny that we constantly had to back up and maneuver to let other cars by, especially around the curves that led to upper levels. Most of the time we could find no rhyme or reason to anything happening there.

When we finally found a spot, it was a tight squeeze to say the least. The parking spaces in that garage are ridiculously tiny. After some time and a lot of back-and-forth action, my mid-sized Taurus was grudgingly at rest in a "parking spot". Opening the doors to get out was another matter altogether. Too bad we didn't have any butter.

After a ridiculously long walk back to the hotel, our eyes were greeted with a scene right out of a horror movie. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the lobby. They were on the floor, they were on the benches, they were leaning on the walls. Many were even sleeping. The line just to get to the check-in counter was over twenty-minutes long.

My fiancé is disabled and so we approached the Service Desk to ask if there was any way we could check in sooner because she cannot stand for long periods. "No," we were told, plainly and simply, "You'll have to wait in line like everyone else." Verbatim. And the guy telling us this was not a grunt. He had a suit and tie on and a "Manager" name tag. We were appalled, disgusted, confused, and concerned.

We asked the guy several times, very clearly, if they had any disabled people services we could use, and were told the same thing each time. We could not believe it. We thought surely we misunderstood him but no, he was not going to help us. We just looked at each other, eyes wide and mouths agape.

Of course, we had gone through Hotels.com to book the room, so we could not cancel there at the desk. We would have to use cell-phone minutes. At least it got us out of that barnyard of a lobby.

After trying and trying to get them to waive a cancellation fee, we finally just gave up and paid over thirty dollars to not stay there. After that, we had to once again traverse the bumper-car style parking garage in order to leave Circus Circus, once and for all.

Although we had forgotten the "family" oriented feel that Circus Circus touted and probably should have booked another venue, neither of us remembered ever seeing the complete chaos that was the lobby before. We went in expecting a nice hotel, and were greeted by what looked like a soup kitchen for the homeless.

We ended up booking a really nice room at Terrible's hotel and casino, and were completely satisfied. We may be a bit over-sensitive to the sort of thing we saw at Circus Circus, but we are one couple who will never again consider that hotel when we travel to Las Vegas, which is quite often.