Spent 3 nights at the end of June (second visit to hotel). Still think the bathrooms are the best part - huge & luxurious.

I wanted to mention specifically the golf available, particularly with reference to overseas guests who may not have brought their clubs. At present the hotel has negotiated a deal with the TPC Las Vegas & Angel Park (courses next door) to provide club hire to guests free of charge. This is a significant saving. So pack your shoes, glove, and a few balls and you have all you need. Hopefully the hotel will set up a similar deal at Badlands soon (another excellent nearby course).

It should be noted that to get this deal you must book the golf through the hotel's golf concierge. I tried to arrange direct with the TPC without success.

Incidentally, I'd read a couple of poor reviews about the condition of the TPC, but we found it in good shape late June 08.

Cottons.

We booked this vacation nearly 1 year in advance. We chose this location as we are fans of JW Marriott and we have had great experiences at our 2 visits to the Phoenix Desert Ridge JW Marriott resort. We thought it would be great to be off the Las Vegas strip but close enough. From the reviews at Trip Advisor I expected the JW Las Vegas to be at least as good as our experiences at the Phoenix resort. We chose June/July as we love the heat.

The biggest advise I would give with regard to staying at any Marriott is to go back and check room prices frequently leading up to your stay. You can do this online quite easily. As I said, we booked this approximately 1 year in advance (July/August 2007). When I checked the room cost 4 months later (December 2007), it had dropped by nearly ½. We called and we were given the new, discounted rate. When you’re talking about 7 nights at an upscale resort, which can be a significant amount.
Again, I checked the room rate 2 weeks before we were scheduled to leave and it had dropped again to the tune of $150 for the week. We called and they gave us the new rate. Keeping on this saved approx. $1000 for the week.

When booking we requested a balcony room upgrade as high up as possible. We also had them document that this was our 25th anniversary in the hopes that it would impact getting a better room at check-in. We waited until almost 4pm and our room was ready. It was a beautiful, very large King room. Did we get upgraded…no. But we got a great balcony room on the top floor (6th) with a great view of Red Rock Canyon just like we requested. Mid-week the hotel sent up strawberries dipped in chocolate and champagne for our anniversary. Very nice touch.

When we first arrived our room was not ready so we decided to take a walk through the resort. First impressions…..the place was very nice but darker and more closed in that I expected. Nearly all the restaurants and lounges at the resort were either directly attached to the casino or you needed to walk through the casino to get to anything. Apparently a common practice in Vegas. Although the resort and restaurants in Vegas are non-smoking, the casinos are all smoking….cigars and cigarettes included.

There are 2 main buildings (“Towers”). The Spa tower and the Palms tower. The Spa tower has only 1 restaurant in the lobby area (Ceres), which is where we spent most of our time. The food was decent and the drinks were good. What we liked most was the Ceres lounge area which has couches and over stuffed chairs. The lounge is full service and you can order off both the lounge menu and the restaurant menu. Very comfortable. The Palms tower was actually more nicely decorated, but there is little going on. If at the Palms tower, however, you have easy access to the Starbucks, Woolighans Irish Pub (greasy food), Speidini Italian restaurant (high quality food but lacking in flavor), a Shizen Japanese Steak House and the Rampart Buffet without having to go through the Casino. All the restaurants and lounges are operated by Marriott except the Casino, the Promenade café (literally almost IN the casino – SMOKEY), and the Buffet. The Waterside Grill by the pool has a great Mai Tai and OK food. It closes early though. I believe around 6pm.

I had read a lot on the shuttle at Trip Advisor. Some said too crowded and long waits, others said a long ride to the strip, and yet others said no problems. Our experience…..no problem. The shuttle was never full. That said, we went in June/July, apparently the slow season.

Our stay was from June 28 – July 5. Based on what I had read, I was not expecting anything significant for the 4th of July. When we arrived, we asked the concierge at the hotel if July 4th was a big event in Vegas. She too stated that it was not. The 4th came and nearly all the hotels shot off fireworks. It was quite a display.

When we made our plans to visit the Las Vegas JW, we knew we wanted to visit the Hoover Dam, Red Rock Canyon, and the Grand Canyon Skywalk. We did, therefore rent a car. I would not, however, recommend driving on the strip if you can help it. The traffic is unbelievable. That said, it is extremely easy to get around and through Vegas. The highway system is well designed and fairly easy to navigate. Just avoid the strip when driving if you can help it. Wall to wall cars, red light after red light, and crazy taxi drivers.

We visited Hoover Dam. Amazing. We took a hike in red Rock canyon. Beautiful. Just remember to bring lots of water. Never made it to the Grand Canyon Skywalk – 3 hour drive.

A few other things to note: Nice pool but not the cleanest. We actually called to complain because there were tissues and a used Band-Aid in the pool for 2 days. They say there is a refrigerator in the room, but is actually a crisper and not cold enough to cool drinks or keep leftovers. The resort is still using big 32 inch tube TV’s. I expected flat screens.

Overall a nice resort. If we were to go back we would stay for less time and stay at the Bellagio, which is in my opinion the most spectacular and classy hotel on the strip.

If you’re thinking of vacationing in Arizona or Nevada, I would recommend the JW Marriot Desert Ridge in Phoenix which is far and away a nicer place than the Las Vegas JW Marriott.

Great hotel away from the strip. The variety of restaurants was good, the food not totally memorable. The hotel is just up the street from some great restaurants. The room was huge with an awesome bathroom - jetted tub with separate shower complete with waterfall shower head and a seat. While the complimentary fitness room was not impressive, the spa was well worth the extra fee - it had every thing needed to get a great work out and the steam room, whirlpool, sauna and waterfall shower were great for relaxing. They should extend the spa hours.

So if you want to stay on the Strip in Las Vegas, this review is not for you. Nor is this resort for you as it is 20 minutes away by car west on the freeway.

However if you want to relax at a nice resort without all the crowds and packs of hormone induced young and old adults, this may be one of the few places that probably rates highly for that. I say highly because this was my first time to Sin City.

I actually used tripadvisor.com to help whittle down the choices I had to make and I'm happy with the selection.

Now being there at the end of June does test one's resilience to heat, but that comes with the territory. The fairly lush grounds with many water features and one large pool minimizes the heat sink that a lot of hard surface paving would otherwise create.

The JW Marriott Resort is in the town of Summerlin, just west of the City of Las Vegas and very easy to get to from the Strip and McCarran Airport via the freeways. Once on the freeway leaving the Strip, there is only one traffic light to encounter before driving onto the grounds so access is quick and easy.

The Resort is a collection of two 6 story towers of over 600 hotel rooms and probably Marriott timeshare units. As we were there for only 3 nights, I didn't get a chance to take everything in. Nestled between the towers, there is the hotel entrance and lobby, the full service Aquae Sulis Spa, and fully equipped exercise facility, 6 on-site restaurants, meeting facilities and the outdoor amenities including a large 4' deep free form pool with water fall, several jacuzzis and private cabanas and tying it all together a network of landscaped water features and gardens.....all very nice. Poolside service seemed quite attentive. Of course, being in Nevada, there has to be a casino, the Rampart Casino. Nice thing though is the entrance lobby of the hotel has no signs of the casino nor any sounds of slots within earshot. The Casino is completely removed, but also not far away. I liked that. Not being a gambler, I cannot comment on this amenity.

There is no grand architectural statement made by this hotel like you would find at the Strip or other out-lying resorts. Nor is the architecture of the resort going to turn any architectural eyes with the standard beige sandstone colored facades and Spanish tile roofs. However it is straight-ahead high quality, open resort planning with generous interior spaces and outdoor landscaping finished reasonably well.

My wife and I had a standard single room on the top floor with a shallow balcony (about $200/night). The king bed was very nice and the overall appointments were not anything really special, but it was well designed. The bathroom was very large and generous with a shower (with wall and overhead shower heads) and two person jetted tub and separate stall for the watercloset. Granite counters and marble floors were nice. Marriott toiletries were provided. The room itself, while it had a lock-off door to the adjacent room, was solid and quiet.

One thing of note, and I don't know if this is typical of most upper scale Vegas resorts as I know it doesn't happen in other desert places we have stayed in, but this JW Marriott treats the hotel room water to soften it (it's not hard water that I've usually found elsewhere in the desert). It's tastes very good, no chlorine flavor, and as is typical of soft water, feels like you've not rinsed off all the soap in the shower. HIgh marks for this.

If you've read some of my other reviews, I like to fit in some exercise and with 100F temperatures, that wasn't going to include an outdoor run or hike so I had to resort to using the fitness centre. Very plush and visually impressive with all the treadmills and step and elliptical machines having their own TVs. Weight machines are all on a carpeted area and most machines are there. There's also a glassed in hardwood floor, exercise fitness studio floor where they run some classes, but I didn't see any while there. Locker room is very nice and there is complimentary fruit, juice and use of special treatment baths. There is also a dedicated outdoor pool and patio which looked very inviting. All this comes at a price however, which I found to be the downside and limiting me to only one use of the facility. As nice as it was, the $25 fee for a day pass was excessive, especially if one only uses the place to workout for an hour or two and then is outta there afterwards. One consolation is that if you get a Spa treatment, the fitness fee is waived that day. They should work on a lesser rate for those who just need to get the blood circulating.

The large pool was nice with lots of deck chairs. We were out there by 9 each AM to beat the heat and there would only be few others out there too (late risers in Vegas). Lots of trees, grass and plants and some umbrellas for shade. There are several jacuzzis around and also cabanas with misted air conditioning and TVs. While the pool was fairly large and adequate for the numbers, a second separate pool would have been nice.

We only had one breakfast at the Ceres Restaurant on site and it was done well, but not memorably special. Other meals were had off site as we wanted to see some of the sights.

Front desk service was very good as was the Concierge. It definitely helps with the hotel not being inundated with guests. If there had been a convention, that might be different. We also noticed that the weekend brought in more people.

Parking on site, while available on the open air parking lot, is best done in the parkade connected to the Casino to keep the car out of the sun. We rented a Dodge Caliber from Dollar for 4 days for a total of just under $50 plus gas. Can't beat that!

For the golfers, this is a great location as the Resort is next to the TPC Las Vegas (formerly the TPC Canyons) and the Palmer designed Angel Park Golf Club which in addition to the Mountain and Palm Courses also features a night play 12 hole short course and 18 hole putting green. I didn't get a chance to play, but maybe next time.

While never really wanting to go to Vegas in the past, I can't say I won't go again. Finding this hotel would make that difference.

Apart from the hotel, here are a few other things we did that I would recommend:

1. We saw two shows. Bette Midler at Caesar's Palace Coleseum and Le Reve at the Wynn Hotel. Being a Bette Midler fan I'd have to give it 5 stars. She's not only a great singer, but a crack-up comic and so inventive with her spectacular show. Le Reve is an aquatic Cirque de Soleil type show which is in a theatre in the round, all good seats. This too is spectacular for completely different reasons with tremendous aquatic and athletic performances, props water and lighting effects and aquatic staging. You should check the website to understand the story first as there is little dialogue. Also note that big shows in Vegas command big bucks.

2. Shopping is great to buy things at the Fashion Show Mall across from Treasure Island and Wynn Hotels as there is Bloomies, Nordstroms, Macy's, and Nieman there and a three level mall. Also the Las Vegas Prime Outlets 10 minutes away by taxi or shuttle have the usual assortment of mid-range outlet stores. If budget is no object, the The Shops at the Forum at Caesar's Palace and at the Wynn Hotel are Rodeo Drive transplants. We never made it to Bellagio Hotel itself, but I imagine the shops there to be of this same no budget caliber.

3. See the fountains at the Bellagio. It's free and it's a different show every 15 minutes, each show lasting 3 or 4 minutes. Go at night.

4. A short trip to Red Rock Canyon, if you like geology, is a nice getaway. There's a 13 mile scenic loop with a number of stops and a Visitor Centre. HIke in the trails if the temperature allows. Entry fee for the drive is $5 for a car. While it's neat, Sedona north of Phoenix, makes this pale in comparison.

5. Of all the hotels we saw on the Strip (Caesars, Venetian, Paris, Treasure Island, Mirage, Palazzo and the Wynn), my favorite was the Wynn by far. It's probably at least on par with the Bellagio, but not having visited that, I can't compare, but being built by the same guy, Steve Wynn and with the Wynn being newer, I would lay bets, the Wynn may be at least a touch above if not more. Travel websites rate the Wynn as the best in Vegas and one of the best in the U.S..

Happy Travels!