Room Quality: These rooms are nicer than those at a Motel 6, and they are clean. They are also on the small side, cheaply furnished and have showers, but no tubs. If you just want a place to sleep in a great location, they'll do fine. However, if you want your room to be a luxurious part of your vacation, we recommend someplace else. Ask for one of the "widescreen" rooms and get newer furnishings, granite counter tops, better beds and a flat-screen TV. It's still just okay, though. The basic guest rooms are getting outdated, have dumpier bathrooms and TVs, and still have cheesy kingdom furniture. They are cheaper, though.

Service Quality: Poor, unless you have kids. If you're traveling with kids, this place has tons of stuff for them to eat and do (at extra cost). But it is sorely lacking in sybaritic delights for adults. Check-in can be a time-consuming chore at just about any hour but especially Thursday and Friday afternoons.

What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: Lotion, shampoo and conditioner. However, if you're traveling with a family, bring your own because the small portions won't go far toward covering up the awful stench of cigarette smoke you pick up in the well-worn casino.

Clientele: Families who think Circus Circus is too downscale, and people who get a kick out of Renaissance Faires. If you have a family, you'll fit in. If you don't have kids and you don't like kids, take your armor and stallion and park them elsewhere.

How's the Pool? The landscaped pool area has a few small pools so they can separate the kids from the adults more easily. None are really that nice. There are also cabanas, if you feel inclined to splurge.

Table Games: All of the usuals, and loads of tables crammed in. They even have the oddballs like Caribbean Stud, Let it Ride and 3-card poker. Craps are in line with the competition, but the single-deck blackjack pays a lousy 6:5 on blackjacks. Do yourself a favor and don't play 6:5!

Bet Minimums: $5 at some tables in the joint. Man, with the carbon monoxide you'll be inhaling and the kids screaming, you'd think they could cut those back a bit. For craps, you will usually find the minimum to be $5 with 3-4-5x odds. Roulette is $1 chips with a $5 minimum.

Machines: Pennies on up. There are many video-poker machines and none of them are full-pay. There are thousands of slots to choose from, so you will easily find your game of choice in a denomination you want.

Cocktails? Poor. This huge, loud casino is packed with people, and the cocktail service does not do the customers justice. We expect about one drink an hour, and that's not good enough to get bombed.

Who Gets Comps? The MGM-Mirage slot club serves several properties and pays a fair cash rebate on slots, and a half that on video poker. They also occasionally mail out free and discounted room offers. The tables are also pretty good, with $50 bettors and higher getting some free grub.

Dick's Last Resort: Dick's is a chain whose claim to fame is ample portions of standard sports pub fare like crab legs, nachos, steaks, burgers and loads of greasy finger foods. The gimmick is the waiters are rude on purpose (the hostess will flip you off), hand out paper hats and silly bibs, and make an awful racket in general. It'd be sorta cool if only it weren't all so programmed. This place offers live cover bands, and it's also freakin' enormous.

Round Table Buffet: Consistently ranked in the bottom third in Las Vegas, the Excalibur is underperformed by few. You can get indigestion for the price of a decent meal. Casseroles and low-grade meats sit under heat lamps in this enormous buffet. Stay away at all costs. Ride the rails down to the better Mandalay Bay buffet or walk up to the much better Planet Hollywood. Their new experiment is to let you eat the buffet for 24 hours for one price. Don't do it.

Sherwood Forest Cafe: This is the coffee shop and it's average, which fits in with the rest of the resort. The serving sizes are not very big, so if you're really hungry go elsewhere. Also, their overpriced sides are ridiculous. Bring your own bacon in your pockets.

The Steakhouse at Camelot: This is the Excalibur version of fine dining, including a pianist tinkling away on the keys as you eat. Pricing is on par with an Outback, and so is quality. For those prices, we recommend you go for the Circus Circus Steakhouse, Delmonico or Palm, to name a few.

Defending the Caveman: Men and women are different. Whoops! I just gave away the entire comedy "Defending the Caveman". This is a polished show that treads on the well-worn comic premise that men are hunters and women are nesters, and men like sports and women like shopping. And so on, over and over.

Fantasy Faire Midway: Way past its glory days, the basement midway is pretty run down. The shooting gallery was 50% operational on our visit, and that takes into consideration our lousy shooting. The guess-your-weight guy is usually way off and bored. He thought Matt weighed 14 pounds. The Midway also has motion simulator rides, which are now called 4-D rides.

Louie Anderson: The former "Family Feud" host and longtime standup has been a regular in Vegas for years. Now he has his own room. Well, technically it's the "Thunder From Down Under" room, but when the Aussies aren't taking off their clothes, Louie does comedy and, thankfully, keeps his clothes on.

Thunder from Down Under: This one is for the ladies. Hunky men in hardly anything at all stomp around and glisten as they show off their hard bodies. Do we sound jealous? Heck no. You have no idea how many hotels have been begging us to roll our jelly bellies on their stages.

Tournament of Kings: A jousting show featuring actors in real armor on real horses really bashing each other with sticks. They also serve you a chicken dinner, which you eat with your fingers while you watch. This is ideal for fans of Renaissance Faires. It's a family show, so the room literally crawls with badly-behaved kids.

Number of TVs: About 36, mostly plasmas and one giant screen for big events.

Number of Seats: About 130 seats all told. None of them are reserved, and all are pretty uncomfortable, without individual TVs. 26 seats in racing have individual flat screens.

How Many Betting Windows? At any given time about eight windows for taking race and sports bets.

Free Drinks? Surprisingly, yes. In fact, we've heard that they are actually pretty good about serving bettors (or those who look like they're betting -- wink, wink) with cocktails.

Snack Bar? No snack bar, but a Starbuck's is there to whet your whistle.

Minimum Wager: $5 sports, $2 for racing

Other Notes: It's as garish as the colors gray and maroon can be.

Number of Tables: There are twelve tables in the Excalibur, which has done away with its experiment with electronic tables. It is now once again regular old poker dealt by real live human beings. About four to six tables go most of the time.

Comfort of Chairs: Decent chairs at average tables. The chairs are slightly above average in comfort.

Closed Room or Open to Casino? Open and right on the casino floor. There is the cigarette smoke and sound of slots, other tables games and the wailing of children being dragged through the casino.

Game Spreads and Limits: Hold-em, and hold'em only. They have $1-$2 no-limit and $2-$4 limit, both of which are pretty low-limit games.

Beginner Games or Classes? They will teach you how to play each day at 11 am. This is a good thing to do if you've never played in a casino before, if only so you know the etiquette of when it's appropriate to jump to your feet, shout an expletive and overturn the table.

How Crowded is the Room? Not busy. On a busy weekend you may have to wait up to a half hour, but usually there are enough dealers and tables to get you in right away if you don't care which table you play at.

Comps? Free drinks while playing. Otherwise, expect little and get less.

How Good Are the Players? Not very good. Figure there are 4,132 rooms of amateur poker players overhead and the stakes are too low to draw any talented sharks. Besides, what serious player wants to play this goofy setup?

What Else Do I Need to Know? There are better rooms up the Strip at the larger casinos. The main draw here would be if you are located at Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard and you really want a low-limit game. But a much better no-limit game is across the street at MGM. Saturday night they have a "Strip" poker tournament where you don't take any clothes off, but a woman does in increments, ending with her wearing underwear.