This garish Genting Highlands hotel claims to be the biggest in the world, but bigger doesn’t always mean better. Guests have to put up with tiny rooms, lackluster service, and an interminable check-in process – the guest rooms are really only sleeping areas for Genting Highlands visitors who come for the crisp mountain air and the First World Plaza downstairs.

You know the First World Hotel's a casino hotel the minute you see the building. Loud primary colors cover the hotel's two towers, and a bright neon assembly stands over the lobby entrance.

Check-in is unreasonably long - incoming guests are handed a ticket queuing them for two to five hours' wait to be checked in. Lost reservations and room mix-ups have been known to happen, and the surly attitude of the front desk people doesn't help the situation very much.

The First World Hotel is billed as the "world's largest hotel", and with 6,200 rooms it's definitely in contention. To get that many rooms out of one hotel, though, the designers had to make the rooms really small, with the smallest at 207 square feet in size.

Rooms below "superior deluxe" have no mini-bar, no hair dryer, and no room service. "Superior deluxe" rooms and "World Club" rooms, however, get the usual hotel accoutrements (a bigger TV, free coffee, and a room fridge). The rooms have no air-conditioning, as the Genting air is chilly enough.

All this is really nothing to grumble about, however, if one is there solely to enjoy Genting Highlands' gaming and entertainment diversions.

Guests can come down to the lobby level to enter the First World Plaza - a 500,000-square-foot shopping center and indoor theme park with restaurants, shops, skydiving simulator, bowling center, and a Ripley's Believe it or Not! Museum.

The Starworld casino in the Plaza is a smaller version of the Casino de Genting nearby, open to Malaysian Chinese and foreign non-Muslim guests. Ethnic Malays are forbidden by law from gambling, although they're free to enjoy the other facilities in Genting.

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Labels: First, Hotel, World