The Hilton NF is directly across the street from the new Niagara Fallsview casino, and there's been many good reports about the hotel here on FT. Your views of the falls may be partially blocked by the casino tower in front of the hotel, however. We've stayed at both the Embassy Suites Hotel (half a block from the new casino) and the Niagara Fallsview Hotel in the casino building (no FF points or miles) and find both to be really nice accomodations with great views of the falls. Always been upgraded to a nice jacuzzi suite in the ES with a great view overlooking the Horseshoe Falls, as a HHonors Gold, as the ES is only a block away from the falls, with nothing impeding your view.

The Niagara Fallsview Hotel has very comfortable rooms and suites (we got upgraded to a larger jacuzzi suite as regular visitors to the casino), also with fantastic views of the falls if you get a room facing them (don't forget that "Cityview rooms" in all the properties face away from the falls, so you'll have limited, if any, views of the falls from those rooms). Both the ES and Niagara Fallsview Hotel are newer then the Hilton, but as I mentioned above, there's been many good reports about the Hilton also, but we haven't stayed there, so I can't compare it to the others. All the hotels charge a rather high parking fee ($20 CAD per day at the ES, for example, but thats' usual for this area), but the casino parking garage (ten stories attached to the casino) is free on weekdays, and free on weekends if you have a players card from the casino which is available at no charge at the players club desk there.

We were at the Niagara Fallsview Casino last night (no hotel stay, just an overnighter from Toronto), and it was packed due to a boxing match held in the casino's theater. Note that on any event weekend down there, the hotel rates at the surrounding properties always jump appreciably, as the lowest rate for this weekend at the ES for example, from their website, was $275 CAD, almost double their usual rates. Weekends, especially in the high-season, are very busy in NF, so book as far in advance as possible, and search as many sites as possible for the best rates. We often find that calling the hotels directly gets us rates lower then seen on their websites, due to "unadvertised specials", so a call may be useful in finding a better rate.

Hope this helps.

BTW, as mentioned above, Niagara-On-The-Lake is also a nice area to visit. Less then ten minutes drive from Niagara Falls, with interesting shops and views of Lake Ontario, with vineyards close by. Supposed to have a Hilton Garden Inn opening there sometime in August, 2005.

bj-21.