Room Quality: The tower rooms are decent, especially in the newest, the West Tower, almost up to the standard set by other mid-level casinos on the Strip, including fancy beds and flat-screen TVs. Skyrise Tower rooms are almost as nice but also the most garish and brightly colored. They aren't horrible, just bright and colorful. The Casino Tower has muted colors, dark woods, attractive furniture and bedspreads. All tower rooms are slightly better than a Holiday Inn room, actually. However, in the back, they have the "manor" rooms, which are old and motel-style, and what you'll likely get if you book their lowest room rate. The decor in these rooms is spartan and sad. Sleeping here may cause you to wake in the middle of the night, with a cold sweat trickling off your brow.

Service Quality: Fair. If you have kids, this place offers the amenities you want, and lots of them, like arcades, swimming pools, and pizza restaurants. If you don't have kids, do yourself an enormous favor and stay away.

What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: The usual: shampoo/conditioner and a bottle of lotion. What you do with the bottle of lotion is your business. They don't even shape the bottles like clowns or pink ponies or nothing.

Clientele: Families, families, children and people who love children. The kids are screaming and running everywhere.

How's the Pool? Overflowing with rug rats and brats. The pool areas are okay, nowhere near the nicest on the Strip, but they are usually a nuisance for adults because of the number of kids in them. If you're a kid, they're fantastic.

Table Games: Blackjack, craps, roulette, Let It Ride, Pai Gow, and a few oddball games like Casino War! They have a couple fairly substantial pit areas, and these are one of the few places where you can avoid kiddies.

Bet Minimums: Games mostly start at $5 but they may have a $3 table if you can find it. Watch out for those single deck BJ games, because they pay you a dismal 6:5 on blackjack and double on ten or 11 only-Avoid! Craps has lousy double odds. Roulette chips can be had for a buck with a $4 min.

Machines: Slots from a penny on up to $25. Very little full-pay poker, but some varieties of slots exclusive to Circus Circus, with special circus themes. Oh, boy!

Cocktails? Fair. Maybe this place's social conscience keeps them from getting the parents too drunk, but we doubt it. Rather, we suspect that they don't want to give out too much of the free stuff.

Who Gets Comps? The Circus Player's Club is decent in cash, better in comps. At the tables, you better be playing $15 hands to get noticed. Either that or play something close to $25 and be exceptionally polite. No burping!

Circus Buffet: Advertised as "one of Las Vegas' biggest buffets," this used to be one of the worst in town, now it's improved to slightly substandard. The prices are low, but still higher than some quality buffets, like at the Station casinos, so it's not much of a bargain. Everything is just kind of moist and flavorless. It does, however, serve thousands of people every day, and that says something about people's inability to discriminate, or their lack of knowledge about any other buffet.

Garden Grill: Not much distinguishes this place from just another coffee shop, except that it's open for dinner only. Typical deep fried stuff, sandwiches, a wide range of dishes that include Italian, Mexican and Chinese. The downside here is that everything on the menu has the kiddies in mind. So skip it unless you have them with you.

Mexitalia X-press: A huge Mexican and Italian in a semi-fast food joint. It's nice that they can do two kinds of food. It's too bad that they do them both pretty badly. But, if nachos and spaghetti is your idea of a well-rounded dinner this is your place.

Rock and Ritas: This is a bar with loud music and what they call a party atmosphere. What that actually means is it's loud and excuse to serve just basic finger foods and meats without really doing anything special. Well, the special this is the flair bartenders who dance and throw stuff in the air.

THE Steakhouse: Considered by many to be among the best in Vegas, mostly because of the meat, not the appetizers and salads. In an elegant room (seriously, it's nothing like the rest of the casino), they serve big steaks, aged properly and cooked to perfection.

Adventuredome: There is a huge pink-glass dome behind the hotel, covering up a mini-theme park. It contains a good-but-short roller coaster, water flume ride, bumper cars, a motion simulator ride, wandering clowns who will paint your face or scare the crap out of you, depending on how you feel about clowns, and several other amusements for the kiddies. It's no substitute for Disneyland.

Circus Acts: Over the main casino, under the big-top, circus acts are performed daily every 20 minutes from 11 a.m. to midnight. They are not amazing or death-defying, but your young children will enjoy them. We've seen lots of acts involving trained dogs, and Chinese acrobats contorting themselves. The music is a three-piece live combo that grinds out the music with less passion and spark than your typical mud puddle.

Midway: Lots of the same games you find at carnivals and video games ring the circus area on the upper deck. It's pretty pricey for games designed to take your money and just give you crummy stuffed animals. But at least they aren't rigged like at carnivals.

Number of TVs: About 15, mostly for race betting. There is one big screen in the mix.

Number of Seats: About 50 specifically for the horse bettors, and 24 more for the rest of us who are either fan of sports or just sitting down. Horse fans get boob-tubes attached to their seats. All seats are of average comfort.

How Many Betting Windows? Seven windows with slate boards for odds and lines.

Free Drinks? Indeed they do offer free drinks to the sports gambler who likes to tipple.

Snack Bar? No, but the Casino Cafe coffee shop is right nearby (this is not a good thing).

Minimum Wager: $5 sports, $2 for racing

Other Notes: This sports book is noisy and small. It's just off the casino floor and it has no enclosure.

Number of Tables: There are eight tables, but usually they don't have anyone playing on more than a few. We don't know why. Maybe the other tables are covered with sandpaper instead of felt, and everyone keeps getting chafed.

Comfort of Chairs: Pretty dang average. We wouldn't play here if we had bad fannies. Luckily, we have really nice fannies.

Closed Room or Open to Casino? It's an open room off the casino floor and pretty close to the sports book. The room is right at the front of the casino, near the porte-cochere, so there's some chance you'll have to hear a lot of kids screaming as they arrive at the hotel all amped up after spending 7 hours in the car.

Game Spreads and Limits: Hold-em at $3-$6: and No Limit at $1-$2. The no-limit isn't always going.

Beginner Games or Classes? No classes, but the friendly poker staff will teach you the basics if you ask nicely. They will not help you cheat the other players, even if you ask really, really nicely about a million times. Trust us.

How Crowded is the Room? There are always at least one or two games going. On the weekends or busy weeknights, you might have a short wait for a game, but it's rarely more than fifteen minutes.

Comps? Plenty of free drinks, and a $4 food credit (plus line pass - wahoo!) for four hours of play. Also, five hours a day will get you casino rate.

How Good Are the Players? The quality of players varies wildly. There are some older, solid locals and regulars, then there are tourists who have never played before in their lives.

What Else Do I Need to Know? The games have bad beat jakckpots and hand of the day jackpots. They also offer single-table tournaments and a daily no-limit tournament.