A Review of the 5-Star Signature at MGM Grand All-Suites Hotel
Mother MGM
The three towers of the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites rise up near The Strip’s southern end like a trio of Art Deco cheese graters.
These 38-story-tall vanilla and gold triplets glitter a block east of The Strip’s main action. Despite its name, the Signature at MGM Grand isn’t actually at its parent property; it sits almost a half-mile away, attached by a long tunnel like an umbilical cord.
The Signature Las Vegas is just one of 14 Strip properties in MGM’s Las Vegas hospitality portfolio. This collection all started thanks to the wild gamble of a movie studio/real estate fat cat: build the world’s largest resort and model it after the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer silver screen hit, The Grand Hotel (1932).
Alas, despite a subsequent strong The Wizard of Oz phase, the current iteration of the MGM Grand megaresort has been purged of its overt Tinsel Town motifs. Indeed, the theme for the MGM Grand and the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites now appears to simply be “Adjectives.”
An All-Suite Hotel
Constructed in 2006, the 5-star Signature’s online identity is a befuddling amalgam of official MGM hotel suites, hotel rooms operated by private parties, and vacation rental condos overseen by various companies with oil-slick names such as Jet Luxury.
Word on the cyber streets is that these privately operated suites don’t uphold MGM’s standards, nor do they grant access to MGM amenities such as the pools and free self-parking. Thus, I recommend specifically booking a room at the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites.
The Signature only offers five room types through its reservations: a Deluxe Suite, a Deluxe Balcony Suite, a Deluxe Balcony Strip View Suite, a One Bedroom Balcony Suite, and a One Bedroom Balcony Strip View Suite. All of the above include a king bed, a kitchenette, and a spa tub. The main differences are the balcony and the view, which are synonyms for wind and noise, respectively.
I reserved a cheap Deluxe Suite for “B” and myself through the now-defunct TripAdvisor Plus, which went under precisely for offering discounted hotel rates. For a Thursday to Sunday stay in March, I paid $131.52 per night, not including taxes and the $39 Daily Resort Fee (since increased). Not bad for a 5-star hotel.
Check-In at the Signature Vegas
As an off-Strip property, you can reach the Signature via Audrie Street or Koval Lane and skip South Las Vegas Blvd’s congestion.
Audrie Street runs alongside the Signature’s service area – that realm of steam and abandoned vacuums, and linens piled like snowdrifts in rolling carts. Here, you’ll get glimpses of the alchemy of heat, bleach, and water that forms hospitality like gold from lead.
Both back roads lead to the Signature’s only entrance, located on E Harmon Ave. Guests of all three towers percolate through this access point near Tower 3. When “B” and I arrived around 4 p.m., we luckily only had to wait behind one car. However, later we noticed the line snarling into the street, with cars trying to poke in from all angles.
The gatehouse attendant checked our ID, then sent us off with directions and a valet paper permit. During our stay at the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites, valet parking was complimentary, though the guilt to tip was perpetual.
We reached our check-in destination of Tower 3 in no time and pulled up to the valet. Stiff-legged and bums shedding car snack crumbs, we yanked our bags and trash from the car, and hurried into the lobby.
Hotel Lobby
Other guests ranged from ladies rolling Gucci, to frumps dragging lumpy sports bags. The space felt classy, but not judgmental. The cavernous lobby was stalactite-shiny, and since the Signature doesn’t harbor a casino, it was also refreshingly smoke-free.
Mellifluous glass pieces adorned the walls, molded into shapes that were both nothing and everything all at once. A tactfully placed ring of couches allowed guests to sit amid their luggage sarsen circles while their significant others handled check-in.
Like most properties, check-in for the Signature begins at 3 p.m., that odd afternoon hour suitable only for naps and airplanes droning across the sky. There’s a check-in option in the MGM Grand app, but the lobby line seemed short enough, and I wanted a human to say, Welcome, this is what you owe us.
At around 4 p.m. on a Thursday, I waited less than 5 minutes to reach the front desk. Due to a computer issue, the clerk presented a little handwritten paper with the math behind the resort fees and taxes clearly laid out. In the era of digital fine print, this penned note felt refreshingly authentic – the clerk’s intimate promise that this is all I would pay for my stay.
The $39/night + tax resort fee (now raised to $50 in 2025) included access to the resort fee, along with bare minimum amenities: Wi-Fi, airline boarding pass printing, fitness center usage, pool access, and unlimited local and long-distance calls.
We enjoyed the nostalgia of that final amenity (a communication between two people in which distance means something – lines across the land – landlines – I am here, you are there, and we are not connected in space, but on the earth, tethered through dirt and crust), but it still wasn’t worth the $39.
The Signature Suite
Home Suite Home (Paradise, NV: March 2023)
Just past the lobby, six elevators gaped and shut, gaped and shut like a Steampunk burlesque sextet shimmying to a cacophony of gentle dings.
Inside, the extensive button-panel evoked a 1960’s spaceship control board. Though we itched to press PH (Penthouse), we tapped our lowly 11 and watched it glow like the sun through a space shuttle porthole.
The elevator deposited us in the non-space of our floor’s lobby – that area furnished only with a lonely phone that looks like a direct line to “Call Time,” and the ice machine shuddering in its nook, waiting to avalanche glimmering cold clatter. We followed the deserted hall to our suite, where an expectant quiet greeted us inside.
Deluxe Suite
The Signature at MGM Grand All Suites is literally a collection of only suites, meaning semblances of home. Yet all signs that others had passed days of their lives inside this Deluxe Suite – had called this “home” for who knows how long – were well hidden at first glance, and upon more anxious inspection. Kudos to the housekeeping team.
The wide entryway led into an alcove where dim recessed lighting rained into a Chihuly-esque glass vase shaped like an alien’s head – perhaps an homage to Baker, CA, that outpost of extraterrestrial jerky and Whopper Wi-Fi once upon a time.
From this vestibule, we passed an enclosed bathroom with vanity, hot tub, shower, and toilet room, and entered the main suite space, which was divided by a screen/vertical pony wall into a bedroom/kitchen area and a living room. Furnishings included a king-sized bed, a couch, a glass coffee table, and a dining room set.
Ambience
The hardwood-forward kitchenette featured ample cabinetry, a microwave, a mini-fridge, and a basin sink (all stainless steel), along with a two-burner electric stovetop, and a coffee maker.
Floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows faced southeast towards the Top Golf property and the tip of Harry Reid International Airport. Throughout our stay, I pressed close to this glass wall and watched big-bellied planes lift off from Las Vegas’ lesser-known strip, escaping the desert.
Far below, a little armored cart rolled like a moon rover through the craters puncturing the Top Golf field’s pale green turf, eternally collecting balls as aircraft whooshed into space. The range is less than a 5 minutes walk from the Signature, but we never quite made it there.
The suite’s overall aesthetic was pleasant, but hard to pin-point. Glass, chrome, and marble accents glistened amid a woodland color scheme of olive green, dark brown, and every shade of tan. Sturdy cherry cabinetry and furniture anchored the earthy space. A gauzy conch-pink aura like the haze of 1980s soap operas hovered over the entire space.
Furnishings
Immediately forgettable art choices adorned the walls, though perhaps inconspicuousness is the point of hotel room decorations. The cryptic paintings above the king bed evoked the headboard or possibly the mini-fridge. The large, framed print above a beige sofa seemed to be a rendering of the coffee table laid out on the coffee table. The art collection could have been titled “Signature Furniture Fever Dream.”
Media paraphernalia included a 42-inch flat screen TV facing the bed, an iHome clock radio (wow!), and a bonus mini-TV on the bathroom vanity, perfect for blocking out farts from the adjacent toilet room.
It’s unclear which of these electronics is supposed to be the “state-of-the-art entertainment technology” listed on MGM’s booking page. However, if any of these devices failed to entertain, there was always the good old room phone, perfect for calling other suites and making fart noises.
All in all, our Deluxe Suite at the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites was plush and domestic, and fabulous for napping. We genuinely enjoyed lolling in the king bed – perhaps a bit too much. Where other Strip properties prod guests to Get Up, Get Up! to hit the slots and clubs, the Signature Vegas wooed us to sleep. The property doesn’t hustle; it cradles. At “550 square-feet of elegance” (according to its listing), our suite felt roomy, even without a balcony.
The Signature at MGM Grand All Suites Bathroom
The bathroom was orgy-big. Bunyan-esque.
Everything was oversized, starting with the supper-table-wide door. It weighed heavily on its hinges, slowly tugging itself closed, as if concerned for our modesty.
Then there was the vast wastebasket, which could fit at least four of those teensy trash cans that most hotels have adopted. What a delight to accumulate detritus, like a growing pile of evidence that we were living it up!
A dark vanity yawned on one wall, pocked by two big sinks – a surprise convenience for a party of two. A shower stall and a cavernous hot tub dominated the bathroom’s other half. I’m sure most guests would enjoy a frolic in the jacuzzi, watching it fill up like Lake Mead during the rains, then skinny-dipping in its burbling, warm depths. However, we couldn’t help but think of all the sphincters that had scooched around on its slick bottom, and since we hadn’t packed bathing suits, opted for the shower.
The glass-framed shower was set up to encase the spot-lit bather like a sculpture at a museum. A way-up-high rainfall showerhead poured big drops of liquified therapy that patted nuchal kinks. The chrome handle smoothly controlled the water temperature, and there was more than enough room to bend down when the bar soap inevitably slithered off the shampoo shelf into the forbidden zone of wet feet.
Those Little Inconvienences
Unfortunately, the sharp, translucent shower door frame was just narrow enough to snag and scrape my shoulder each time I stepped out. Indeed, though the bathroom was ample, nuisances reared up over our stay. We couldn’t find a switch to activate the ceiling vents, which was particularly troubling in the separate toilet closet, where we had to steep in our own scent. This booth of a room included a wall phone that looked like a direct line to 1989, but no shelf to hold bathroom necessities or set a book.
Moreover, although the hotel provided an excess of towels, all bleached crane-white-clean, their texture varied drastically from as soft as shaving cream, to 5 o’clock stubble.
Still, nothing was as troublesome as the hand soap bar. Oh, that damned hand soap! It waited benignly amid the petite shampoo, conditioner, and lotion bottles, like a mini full moon of oil and alkali gift-wrapped in wax paper. But when we mixed it with water, it mutated into a chalky, white paste that oozed all over the black marble counter and dried into salt flats.
This disturbed perhaps the greatest joy of staying in a hotel room: not having to clean. And as the days went by, the soap slowly encrusted us too, caking on our hands and puckering our skin, until our fingers became Mojave ghosts fluttering at the MGM’s slot machines.
The Kitchenette
Sheet Ghosts (Paradise, NV: March 2023)
After the “Quesadilla Debacle” of a prior Las Vegas stay (I’ll tell you the story sometime), we decided we’d never again forage for food in Paradise.
Instead, we’d cook – a genuine plan, considering we booked a kitchenette suite. Indeed, the Signature Las Vegas’ kitchen looked quite impressive with its real wood cabinets, its gleaming appliances, and its counter space just waiting for someone to prep a delicious meal while I pretended to help.
But first, I wanted a glass of water. In Vegas, the desert hits as a rabid thirst shortly after check-in. I opened the drawers, the cabinets, the fridge, peering deep into shelves in search of one cup, any cup, okay how about a bowl, a tablespoon, a pan?
It turns out, the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites’ kitchenette comes nude, so unless you packed your pots and pans, you’ll have to pay an additional fee for a supply drop of cookware and tableware. You’ll also have to hunt down the nearest grocery store for essentials such as salt and pepper, dish soap, etc.
No weekend traveler is going to fill their bags with the unctuous, metallic, squelching, crumbly, clangor of their home kitchen just so they can use the Signature’s kitchenette on a Saturday evening.
We’re cheap bastards, so once we realized our predicament, we ate out at expensive restaurants and salvaged takeout boxes, collected plastic cups from casinos, and filched napkin stacks from lobby restrooms.
Still, the appliances were quality. Italics quality. The wide-mouthed microwave accepted a whole personal pizza and reheated it evenly. The fridge/freezer combo hummed soothingly and cooled quickly. The stovetop was top-notch for storing our plastic bags.
Yes, the high-end kitchenette very quickly devolved into pretty storage. Without utensils, it turned from an amenity into a problem – wasted space for us weekenders. While long-term guests will find the Signature’s kitchen useful, for everyone else, it merely taunts.
The Water and the Coffee Maker
Las Vegas tap water begins as snow flakes twinkling on the Rocky Mountains.
Spring fever crushes the crunchy snow and sends it dribbling down the peaks as a cold, molten transparence. Downward it rushes like a herd of wind currents, gathering mountain as it goes, harried by gravity’s sheepdogs. Below, the snow’s past awaits, its future, downward it pours, to become the present that is the Colorado River flowing into the endless draining of Lake Mead.
Since we couldn’t find cups in our room at the Signature, we reached for the two fat water bottles on the vestibule counter. Only after we had cracked the caps did we notice the tiny note collaring each bottle, informing us they cost $9 each.
While we mourned our mistake, we turned to the kitchen spigot for future hydration. How delightful it would be to refill from a proper sink instead of in the bathroom, like at other hotels!
I lapped the tap and tasted a jet of pennies – copper flavor sopped up from old pipes and regurgitated as water as metallic as a cymbal clash. The bathroom spigot was just as bad, with the added aftertaste of bathing.
We spent the next three days plugging our noses and drinking, followed by parched hours, and then excursions to the gym to filch cups of cold, filtered water from the fitness center cooler. It seems Las Vegas hotels have finally recognized that their most precious amenity is not alcohol, not slots, not shows, but basic, tasteless water.
The Coffee Maker
All this brings us to the coffee machine, that interpreter of water. Many Las Vegas hotels have removed the appliance completely, realizing that guests will be forced to stumble down to the in-house cafe for a $9 vessel of caffeine.
Other establishments, such as the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites, have opted for the illusion of a coffee maker.
The machine sits right there on the counter, gleaming and tangible, reassuring in its solidity, with its stainless steel potbelly waiting for the morning brew.
We filled the tank with the coppery tap water and nestled the single-serve Arabica coffee pillow in the basket. The maker shuddered and gargled, twitched and burbled, and finally defecated gutter water that we ossified with the dust of the single creamer packet provided.
We carried this monstrosity downstairs like a little coffin containing the corpse of our morning routine and shelled out $20 for two Grande coffees at the Starbucks in Tower 1.
The Signature at MGM Grand Location
Floor 11 of the Signature’s Tower 3 wasn’t pin drop-silent, but traffic was muffled to a mere purr by the time it reached our window.
Even Harry Reid’s airplane roars didn’t permeate our space. And while we did catch the early morning whines of men in spoiler-bedecked sports cars speeding away from their bad decisions and toward even worse choices, I suspect no space is sacred enough to avoid those primal whimpers.
Of the three Signature towers, Tower 3 stands closest to E Harmon Ave and farthest from the Mother MGM Grand Casino. Thus, it’s the best choice for access to the core of the Strip – i.e. north along the Boulevard. Tower 2 is the Goldilocks Signature tower in the middle, while Tower 1 is nearest to MGM Grand gambling, though it’s still an indoor trek to the casino.
As guests of Tower 3, E Harmon Ave is an artery we used over and over to reach The Strip. It’s one of those side streets where tourism, maintenance, and residents collide in a chaos of chain-link, car horns, rumbling trash cans, and a parade of jaywalking.
On Harmon, the Hilton Club Elara slices the sky kitty-corner from the Signature tower trio. The reflected towers distort in wavers on the Hilton’s flat glass broadside, as if caught mid-demolition – the fate awaiting any resort that loiters too long on the Boulevard.
Though we cut through this sharp building and the adjacent Miracle Mile Mall many times to access the Strip, there are no true shortcuts in Las Vegas. They always lead to dead-ends or mazes or the dumpsters that hold the consequences of fun.
Casinos
The closest casinos to the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites are Planet Hollywood to the northwest and MGM Grand to the southwest. While PH is technically closer to Tower 3, we gravitated to the MGM Grand because of the connecting carpeted walkway.
This walkway begins all the way at Signature Tower 3, flows through the next two towers, and continues into the velvety dim innards of the MGM Grand Casino. En route are moving walkways that seem to only to be operational in the casino’s direction. Better hurry up, a jackpot’s waiting! they screech over and over.
At about 8 minutes, it’s a long journey within this umbilical non-space even with the assistive walkways, punctuated only by an overpriced essentials store in Tower 1 where we absolutely bought beer for the walk.
The tunnel spills into the MGM Grand Food Court, which is still a ways from the casino floor itself. The casino is dim and velveteen like the ocean’s abyssal zone, where no light reaches and unsuspecting creatures drift toward bursts of predatory bioluminescence.
The whole tunnel adventure was a bit of a slog, but at night, it was better than that bitter late spring wind that slipped through our sweaters and nipped at our nips on the Strip.
Overall, as a South-end property set off from the Strip proper, a stay at the Signature requires extra walking to access any food, drinks, gambling, or entertainment. And since there’s nothing south of the MGM Grand on the Strip’s east side except for the grave of the imploded Tropicana, we ended up headed north for most of our journeys.
The Amenities
MGM Signature Fitness Center
Signature Towers 1 and 3 both contain a hub for sinews and Vo2, but Tower 3 houses the bigger Fitness Center.
Located just off the lobby, it’s still bit too small for heavy exercise, with windows and mirrors merely creating the illusion of extra space. The Signature’s overall vanilla-woodland color scheme overflows into the gym, which made me feel like I was jogging in a fancy dining room. There was a smattering of cardio equipment, some weight machines, an exercise mat nook, and that was it.
Of only four available treadmills, one was perpetually offline. The working treadmills were decent enough, with cable access on the attached monitor, along with virtual running routes. How disorienting to be running in the Australian outback in a dining room in the middle of the Mojave! Over and over, I anchored myself with the gym wall clock, which is the only public timepiece I’ve ever seen in the intentionally atemporal playground that is Vegas.
The fitness center was crowded, with unspoken queues for equipment, but also oddly quiet. Every guest seemed to be focused on trying to recall what happened the night before and why they were now missing one pair of underwear.
As resort-fee-paying guests, “B” and I helped ourselves to the mountain of rolled towels, water from the cooler, the Clorox wipes, the tissues, and the hand sanitizer, and made sure to snag extra for our room.
The Pools
Each Signature tower also hosts a pool, but for most of the year, Pool 1 and 2 sit closed, holding their wet skirts tight against the ragged desert winds.
However, Tower 3’s pool is open year-round from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily and is only available to Signature guests. Furthermore, since Signature guests are all children of Mother MGM, the MGM Grand Pool complex is also free to access (when it’s open).
Signature pool seating is free for guests on a first-come-first-served basis. VIP seating is also available for an extreme premium, though everyone knows the best part about pools is laying on the warm concrete deck, leaking water and soaking up sun like a strange little reptile.
The Signature At MGM Grand All Suites Parking
In a strange stroke of benevolence, MGM Resorts has granted complimentary valet parking to guests staying at the Signature.
Of course, tipping is expected, but if you abandon your car until checkout, that’s just one tip required. You won’t need your vehicle anyways, what with the Strip within walking distance and the Deuce ready to shuttle you to Fremont Street.
We arrived early enough that parking wasn’t an issue, but based on the Signature’s website info, valet spots can run out. In this case, guests can park for free at the MGM Grand self-parking garage, which is again, oddly benevolent, considering MGM’s tendency to nickel and dime its poorer clientele.
Food & Shopping
Come prepared, or ye shall soon discover that hunger lurks even in 5-star hotels.
The Signature at MGM Grand All Suites is a food desert within a desert. As mentioned, the only in-house options are an overpriced Starbucks in Tower 1 and the equally inflated American joint, Delights, in Tower 2. Everything costs 30% more than it should and tipping is basically mandatory. Dining feels like a chore when staying at the Signature.
This isn’t unique to the Signature; the Strip resorts have collectively entered an era of underwhelming, marked-up food choices. However, since it’s more a hotel-style property, the Signature lacks even the bland food courts of the bigger resorts, which is compounded by its standoffish location. You absolutely will have to walk far to forage for food, and you will absolutely be hungry and angry by the time you find something.
Check-Out
We milked every minute of our booking, checking out as the clock struck 11 a.m.
We used the TV check-out option, which involved triple checking that we weren’t actually clicking the wrong button and ordering tiny champagne bottles that bang like cap-guns. The TV instructed us to drop our key cards in the lobby drop box, but of course we kept them as souvenirs.
Unfortunately, every other guest was also leaving at 11 a.m. More than five minutes after hitting the elevator down button, the carriage dinged onto our floor, opening its doors to reveal a snarl of people and luggage.
The passengers stared at us in dismay. We waved them on and waited for the next elevator, which too revealed itself to be sardine-packed. The third carriage finally had two slots to slip into, which we did, and instantly became the passengers we had just seen. The full elevator proceeded to stop at every other floor, baring its sojourner-filled innards to waiting guests, as if we were performing some voyeuristic, sadist play.
We all finally spilled out into the lobby, where a long line waited at the front desk for someone to say, Thank you for your stay, this is what you owe us. We bypassed the wait this time and handed our golden ticket to the valet driver. Unfortunately for us again, every other guest was also waiting for their car to be retrieved.
Thus, if you’re staying at the Signature at MGM Grand All Suites, check out early, especially on weekends. You’ll avoid the elevator and valet congestion, and perhaps some of the inevitable traffic headed back to Southern California.
The Last Word
Overall, the Signature felt a bit dormant or perhaps, domestic. Many suites are occupied by long-term guests/owners, so there’s a sense of settling in and settling down. While we would choose the property again for an extended stay, its lack of thoughtful amenities for its more ephemeral guests (i.e. one goddamn fork), along with the sparse food options, were too inconvenient to overlook.