| |

Putting Personal Items in the Minibar is Going to Cost You

a small refrigerator with a label and soda cans

A last minute thought right before I went to bed cost me $50 this weekend. Well I got lucky (I think), but I almost had to pay a lot of money all because I stuck a small bag of wine (don’t ask) overnight on top of the drinks in the mini-bar at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas.

I thought my big problem was accidentally locking the mini-bar when trying to open it. But when I mentioned my issue to fellow conference attendees, their first response was “You didn’t put the wine in the minibar did you? They might charge you for putting personal items in there.”

Wait what!?

Apparently Scott Mayerowitz had recently written about the $25 fee mini-bar use fee being charged by Aria and other Vegas hotels.

Horrified I ran back to my room during one of the conference breaks. The Mandalay wasn’t charging $25 for personal use, they were charging $50! I had shoved the bag of wine on top of the soda cans late at night as an after thought, totally missing the little tag on one of the water bottles (since I wasn’t planning to consume anything).

a small refrigerator with a label and soda cans

And it was mentioned again in the little rate card, which I hadn’t seen since I wasn’t eating anything.

a close up of a paper

Ack.

Ack. Ack. Ack.

I checked my charges via the television after I called down to get the minibar unlocked and nothing was showing up. As of check out yesterday, nothing had appeared and I’ll admit I wasn’t going to volunteer that I had put something in there if the sensors hadn’t picked that up. I will now be checking my credit card statement for the next couple of days, just to make sure.

Whew.

——–

Don’t miss out on any of Jeanne & Keri’s adventures and tips. Follow us:

a logo of rss Invalid request error occurred. a blue square with white letter t a blue square with a white letter f

Full Disclosure: I may receive affiliate credit from links in this post or on this site which will help fund my travels. Thank you for your support!

Related Posts:

15 Comments

  1. I really think this extra fee to store personal items is unreasonable! I’m surde they still charge resort fee too. I hope you’ll not get charged.

  2. The way the notice is hidden is predatory. Why would you read a water bottle tag if you don’t plan on drinking it, and how is that an appropriate place to put a note about the fridge use charge? Same with putting it in fine print at the bottom of the price list. Why would anyone read the price list if they don’t intend on taking anything from the fridge?

  3. so you are supposed to rent a refrig for $35 a night? on top of all the ridiculous fees? wow just wow! another strike against the “riches”, make’em pay their fair share. i suggest Macau for a better experience, 6x the gaming volume of LV, huge, nice casinos. it is half a globe away true though.

    1. Since she stayed two nights, it was technically more economical to get hit with the $50 fee than pay $70 to rent the fridge for two nights!

  4. i am horrified that hotels are starting to charge to use their fridges? i dont get it, why would they charge you to use it? id be questioning them why they charge$50 to put something in their fridge?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *