You get what you're willing to pay for.\n\nThe Tropicana is an older hotel with low prices, and with that one has to have certain expectations. We got a king-sized bed in a smoking room, which was exactly what we wanted. Yeah, there were mirrors on the ceiling, but that just adds to the \"Vegasyness\" of it, you know?\n\nThe bathroom clearly needed a retrofit - the outlet didn't work, and it was just a little run-down looking, like much of the hotel. However, everything looked and smelled clean - despite being a smoking room, it never smelled like cigarettes - and the Tropicana is in a nice, centralized location, so we were actually able to walk everywhere.\n\nThe pool is hardly one of those insane, elegant wave-pools with optional toplessness like you hear about in Vegas, but it had a great waterfall, and I felt as if I'd stepped into a film from the fifties - I kept expecting Frank Sinatra to show up. Also, the swim-up bar was a great perk!\n\nThe casino was...a casino. Pretty much what I would have expected, and as neither of us are big gamblers, I don't know how it really stacks up.\n\nThe big complaint I had was about the food in the restaurant - sub par. Really not great. The upside was that we were so close we could go lots of other places to eat, and the Excalibur and New York New York got a lot of money from us that way.\n\nBasically, the thing to do with the Tropicana (as in anything else in life) is not set your expectations too high - if you're getting a room at $60/night, you're not going to get all the perks and luxuries of a $200/night room.  Be realistic.\n\nThe Tropicana is a great home base, and that was all we were really looking for,