What is the average period of time to visit the best hotels in Las Vegas?

4 days is more than enough. You can cover the entire west side of the strip in one day and the entire east side of the strip on the next day. I've done it many times, both walking and in a rental car. It's more convenient to walk but from Mandalay Bay to Stratosphere is 4 miles, and to Fremont Street is 2 miles more. If you're not used to walking a lot you'll want to use taxis or a rental car. Instead of driving to each property though you should drive to just 3 or 4 different "vicinities" and walk to each property. South strip could be one vicinity (Mandalay Bay to New York New York), center strip a second (Monte Carlo to Caesars Palace) and north strip a third (Mirage to Fashion Show Mall.) Circus Circus is the only resort between Fashion Show Mall and Stratosphere. The far north end of the strip is a desolate wasteland since Sahara closed and Frontier, Westward Ho and Stardust were imploded. A new place (Fontainebleau) was built near the old Sahara, but it never opened.

Self parking is free at every resort so I'd park at Luxor for south vicinity, Bally's or Paris for center vicinity and Venetian for north vicinity.

Walking around each resort takes about an hour, except for Caesars Palace which has the Forum Shops mall attached and will probably take 2 hours or more.

Fremont Street is small and might not even last 2 hours.

Read my taxi long hauling page if you plan to use taxis: http://www.urbanphotos.net/las-vegas-taxi-long-hau...

Four nights would be great. If you look at the corner of Strip and think of the hotels on each

Mandalay Bay, Monte Carlo, Luxor, NYNY, MGM and Tropicana

Free monorail from Monte Carlo to Aria and Cosmo (not a corner) and on to Bellagio

Bellago, Caesars Palace, Bills, Flamingo, Ballys, Paris

Wynn, Encore, Treasure Island/TI, Venetian Palazzo

Is Goretorium the Halloween at Circus Circus? Did not know they open before October 1. Check the Circus web site

Waste time on 1 cent slots LOL

Other attractions -

Madame Tussauds Wax Museum Venetian

Eiffle Tower at Paris

Manhattan rollercoaster at NYNY

Bodies the Experience AND Titanic Exhibit at Luxor

Mob Experience at Tropicana

And those on top Stratosphere

Downtown

Zipline

As a first time visitor to Vegas, may I suggest the following:

Stay at a nice hotel on the Strip. The Strip is 4 miles long so you want to be in a "center" Strip location. My choices for you would be----Caesars Palace, Bellagio, Bally's, Flamingo, Monte Carlo, Paris, Mirage

To save money, book a room Sun-Thur nights. The price doubles on Fri and Sat night

You will have to decide whether to rent a car or not. Some find a need for it while others don't

Go when there are as few conventions as possible in town. Go to www.lvcvb.com and click on "convention schedule" and see how many and how big the conventions will be when you arrive. When there are large conventions in town, the rates for hotel rooms go sky high.

There is a lot to see and do so my suggestion would be to stay 5 nights/6 days (including travel days). Most people don't go for this long because they go to gamble but in your case, you are sightseeing so you can afford to be there longer.

Things to see and do in Las Vegas----

volcano eruption outside Mirage, pirate show outside Treasure island, Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, fountain show outside Bellagio, top of the Eiffel Tower at Paris, Canal shops and St Marks Sq at Venetian, Freemont Street Experience in Downtown Vegas, top of the Stratosphere, Circus acts and midway at Circus Circus, Miracle Mile shops in Planet Hollywood, walk up and down the strip at night, gamble, hang out at the pool, see some shows, eat at a famous Vegas buffet, Fantasy in the Sky show at the Rio, car ride to Red Rock Canyon, Valley of Fire State Park, and Hoover Dam, visit some of the other hotels on the Strip (NY NY, MGM, Excalibur, Luxor, Wynn, City Center), go dancing at one of the nightclubs.

Things and events take time to get to in Vegas so plan each day out and don't do too much in one day. Relax at the pool and take it all in.

There are plenty of great things to do in Vegas. You said you are going to visit the Stratosphere; it's one of my favorite places to visit. If you're looking for an extreme adrenaline rush there you may want to consider the SkyJump. It offers you the unique experience of free fall from the 108th floor of the hotel. I also really enjoy eating at the Top of the World restaurant. The restaurant completes a rotation every 80 minutes around the Las Vegas sky line. It's a really unique experience. That's just the Stratosphere though! I really like looking at this site (http://www.cheapovegas.com/ ) whenever I'm planning out a trip to Vegas (check under the "Things to Do" dropdown). It will show you a list of cheap/popular things to do in Vegas. It helped my find things like the Adventuredome, the largest indoor amusement park in North America. It also helped my find a place to race go-carts (very fun and cheap!) at Fast Lap Karts. I'm sure your four days will be full of things to do; don't forget to relax by the pool though!

4 days will barely scratch the surface. Unless you want to hop from place to place quickly, you may have to choose your top priorities (must-do or must-see) and forget about the rest. Visiting a vegas resort such as Venetian can easily take 2 hours, then there's the time to get there, of course. You can make a day of visiting 4 main resorts on the Strip one day, but it'll be heavy going. A trip to downtown Vegas can take a whole day if you actually want to see anything (such as pieces of history scattered in several hotels), and then of course there are the special must-see or must-do, and there're lots of those...