Review - The Luxe Hotel
Introduction
Second Life has a lot of excellent resorts on restricted sims, where you need to pre-book and you get a group tag on check in.
But really good hotels on open sims that anyone can visit?
I can count the ones I genuinely recommend on one hand.
As a result, I was keen to see what the new Luxe Hotel would be like. This hotel is part of a wider Luxe LA roleplaying community, a self-contained experience with shops, restaurants and businesses.
Having stayed here for three nights, I thought the hotel rooms were some of the best I’d seen, and exceptional value with prices starting at 75L.
The common areas of the hotel don’t quite match the standard of the rooms, but ultimately given that you have the wider Luxe LA sim on your doorstep, it doesn’t really matter.
I reviewed the Luxe alongside my friend and fellow blogger Harmony Sandalphon, and some of these pictures are hers. Check out her website, and please give her a follow on Flickr.
Getting to the hotel
In RL, getting to a holiday destination is often part of the experience, and rather than simply teleport our way in, we decided to do things a little differently.
We asked Victoire and Bleze, the two owners of Le Chateau Motel and Airline, to fly us to Luxe LA, as the sim has a brand new and cavernous international airport.
Despite the flight being 30+ minutes, basically from one end of SL to the next, we were flown from Le Chateau to Luxe LA crash free.
It was a fun experience, so much so that I’m going to do a separate feature on dates you can do via plane (where you either fly yourself, or as we did, hire a private plane and pilots).
Overall look and feel
The main hotel building is on a separate skybox away from the rest of Luxe LA. There are ‘buses’ that you click on at the airport and marina to get to the hotel (or you can just tp in).
Though we understood that it was probably not possible due to space and lag reasons, both Harmony and myself wished that the hotel was more integral with the rest of Luxe LA,.
When you walk into the hotel you are greeted with a huge reception area, complete with marble statues and mesh people. I personally feel having mesh people in a sim helps and can make it feel less empty.
However, here the owners have gone overboard - there were just too many of them.
What was lacking was a reception bot of the kind you see at the Essencia or Rizzi, which will answer basic questions and pass on more detailed ones to the management.
The main building was also missing some kind of central focal point where people can congregate.
For example, the Rizzi and Essencia both have excellent bars you can hang out in, and both of which are in my picks for top hotel bars for a date.
Having said all that, you can’t really separate the Luxe Hotel from the rest of Luxe LA, and here the sim has a huge variety of really well built restaurants, shops, bars, a cinema, as well as more low rent area with a sketchy looking motel and XXX photo studio.
Overall
The hotel - 3 / 5
The sim - 4.5 / 5
The rooms
For us the rooms were the highlight. We stayed in a VIP suite for 250L a night, which included a living room, kitchen and large bedroom with a bathroom with glass walls.
Overall it was really well designed, with some nice touches and details.
We also had a look at the most basic (standard) room at 75L a night and the Deluxe Suite at 150L a night. Whoever designed these two rooms has clearly been to the Essencia as the layout is identical.
Does that matter? I don’t think so, as the Essencia’s model has been improved upon.
The rooms are larger, cheaper, and with better furniture, so much so that I’d say that if choosing between the Essencia and Luxe, and if the room is your main consideration, stay here (however, the hotel facilities at the Essencia are better).
No room costs more than 500L a night, there are a variety of suites at 250L, 350L and 500L.
Overall - 4.5 / 5
The facilities
As I’ve already mentioned, I think it’s worth separating out what you find in the hotel and what you find in the wider Luxe LA experience.
The hotel has everything you’d expect - a swimming pool, a restaurant and bar, a spa, and also a “casino.” These facilities are for hotel guests only.
Some of them (like the spa and gym) looked large, deserted and almost half built. I also think the restaurant and bar should have been moved downstairs to the main building, to as mentioned, give it more of a focus.
However, when you go to Luxe LA itself, you find facilities that are the match of any SL hotel. For example, the Sky Bar in the Beverley Centre is beautiful, and we spent much of our second evening there.
It also has a rooftop pool, which would have worked well as the pool for the Luxe Hotel itself.
Another highlight was the Aquarium, which is on three levels, the top level again being a really nice bar.
And if your desires are perhaps a little more basic, there’s a seedy motel, trailer park, meth trailer and XXX studio for you to visit.
Overall
The hotel - 2.5 / 5
The sim - 4.5 / 5
The animations
Some of the animations in the VIP suite did not work for us.
For example, a Ruckus engine seems to have been put inside the main sofa, but the cuddle poses resulted in us being moved into the wall, so these need to be tweaked.
However, the anims in the cheaper standard room worked fine. Here you will find a Songlos Adult bed, a black nest adult chair with desk, a Kaipaus Hammock Tub and a Ruckus shower.
You can also rez your own poses, which we did for photos.
Overall - 3 / 5
Other considerations
This hotel is new, and there are a few teething problems here and there.
The TP from the bus at the airport did not always work, and we experienced some problems with the anims as mentioned above.
In fairness, I know from the community discord channel that the owner is short staffed from having to operate both the hotel and sim - a common SL problem.
There was very little lag in the hotel itself, I could get 10fps when taking pictures on ultra on a 2019 macbook pro (and SL is not always mac friendly).
Rooms cost 75L -500L a night, you pay the panel in the room, and have the ability to add guests and tenants.
Overall
Despite a few small issues, we greatly enjoyed our stay.
The rooms I can recommend without hesitation, and here I would even suggest going for the cheaper 75L or 150L options.
I’d be less willing to recommend the facilities, but then the hotel is not something that stands by itself, it’s part of a wider Luxe LA roleplay community, and there you will find everything you need and want.
Indeed, if you fly in like we did you could easily have a several day vacation in Luxe LA and use the hotel as your base.
Recommended.
Special thanks to
A final thank you again to Harmony for coming with me, for the photo advice which made my pics far better, and for pointing out things I would have missed. Harmony will also be covering our visit soon, which will be on her website.