You are given a review about a place. You need to provide a rating from "1 star" to "5 stars" for this place.

Reading all the reviews and seeing the LONG line for this place the last time I was at the Rio years ago, I expected much more than what we got. Being a huge seafood fan, I was really looking forward to coming here.

Sadly, I was very disappointed by the quality and selection of seafood. My friend and I got the Buffet of Buffets card and did the $15 upgrade to get into this place. Honestly, if I had to do this over again, I would ONLY go there if I had the Buffet of Buffets card and paid the extra $15. It's definitely NOT worth the $40 or so they charge. If I'm going to pay that much for a seafood or buffet by itself, I would go to the Bellagio or Wynn hotel instead and pay the extra $10 or so more it costs there for the better quality.

We got there at 8 pm on a Friday night, and we waited about 10 minutes in line, and then another 10 minutes or so to be seated. Overall, it wasn't a long wait.

Once we got in, I did a scope of the entire place and went directly to the hot seafood. There, I found very small halves of lobster tails (about 3 inches long, 1/2 inch wide) each. Of course, we grabbed a bunch of it. The redeeming factor was that there were large, plump and crispy (which means they were fresh) shrimp in that mix of lobster tails. There weren't many, but I picked out a lot of the ones I saw.

Then, I went on and got some oysters. To my sad disappointment, they were frozen and thawing. I could tell, because they had ice on them, and when I ate one, they were partially frozen. They were okay, considering this is the only buffet I went to on this trip (along w/ Paris and PH) that even had oysters. Once thawed, it smelled and tasted clean, though nothing very exciting.

Honestly, those were the only seafood worthy things I ate. The crab claws and long crab legs were just okay. You can tell seafood isn't good because it's mushy. Fresh seafood is plump, crispy (for shrimp and lobster), and juicy. The only fresh thing I ate was the shrimp in the lobster tail mix. Other cold shrimp elsewhere were pretty small and didn't look appetizing to me. I don't like seafood cold, honestly.

Anyway, the only other redeeming thing about this place was the variety of desserts. But even then, they were good, but not great.

If you're okay with just getting small lobster tails, a few plump shrimp (there weren't many in that mix), and some once frozen oysters, then this place would be worth your extra $15 to add to your Buffet of Buffets card. But by itself, it's not worth it. Most buffets offer the cold crab legs, if you want that. Nothing else here was unique, as most other buffets offer the same things.
2 stars