Took my family on their first visit to Vegas, staying at the centrally located Planet Hollywood. Traffic and navigation is normally ideal from center strip, but this go-around was nightmarish as the F1 race barricades and road re-routing caused all manners of trouble with traffic, obstructed the beautiful view of Bellagio fountain, and resulted in a near 24/7 honking fest on the streets. While the rooms were cheap in the week following F1, I'd avoid for the reasons above.
In light of the above, getting to the parking garage was more work than I hoped, and this resulted in us doing a lot of walking to avoid the traffic. On the topic of walking, I hope you enjoy it - you need to walk through about half of the Miracle Mile shopping center to get from the garage to the hotel. This was a minor inconvenience to us after we committed to walking more to avoid traffic, but for those looking to drive regularly, could be a bigger issue.
The rooms themselves were hit and miss - used a travel booker (ie Expedia) to book 2 rooms for the 4 of us, requesting adjoining or neighboring rooms. Because of the mob at the front desk on check-in, we used the automated check-in system that Planet Hollywood loudly advises through posted signage should be used. It did not assign us adjoining or neighboring rooms, or even rooms on the same floor. What's more, rather than a single check-in, we had to check-in to each room individually, which made no sense when we had a single reservation - Not sure if this mixup happened because of Planet Hollywood's booking management system or Expedia's booking process, but it wasn't a fantastic experience. In addition, though the automated booking system asks for whether a person wants parking passes, they don't mention that you'll be forced to the front desk to obtain that pass ANYWAY, which really highlights how poorly thought out the check-in system is.
Upon getting to the rooms, one room was clean and had a nice touch with a hand written note from house keeping staff. The other had hair in the bath tub and toilet, with no such note from house keeping.
Regardless, the kids liked the bath tubs, and we made do with arrangements. We decided to give the in-house Italian restaurant a shot (Caramella) and BOY WAS IT GOOD. The first visit came with an experience with a waiter named Chris who knocked our socks off with his fantastic service. Everything was topnotch and easily worth the prices being asked, in taste, quality, and experience. The second visit was less glamorous, as we felt a bit abandoned in the patio seating area (we asked for that location for the fountain view, but we seemed to get less attention than in-door diners). Regardless, the food was still phenomenal, but the experience was less so. For that second trip, I'd question whether it was worth the asking price.
We also saw the Vegas! show, which was really enjoyable. We had a boy in our group who was a little put off by the sexualized nature of the show (skimpy costumes, suggestive dancing, etc) but we didn't think it particularly crossed any lines-might be worth a warning for more sensitive crowds, though.
Another note is that we bombarded by street hustlers out front of the hotel - an older Asian man was trying to force bracelets onto my arm, but also a brass band appears at night and apparently competes with honking on the streets to see who can be the most obnoxious part of the night life. Not great experiences for us.
Overall, I'd say Planet Hollywood was consistent in its inconsistency. The rooms were hit or miss, the booking process was unnecessarily convoluted, the show was solid, the access to the strip (on foot) was great, and the Caramella restaurant was the highlight of the hotel for us.
