The Golden Nugget was awesome and I recommend that anyone who stays downtown stay there. I have stayed at the Golden Gate before which was a pleasant experience, but the room was nothing to write home about. I would rank the Golden Nugget room higher than any of the strip casinos I stayed at including Luxor, Excalibur, and Tropicana.

Originally, I had planned to play 8 poker tournaments during my 3 day stay. As it turned out I did only 6. These were:
11am Golden Nugget ($60/40/40) three times
2pm Binion's ($70/40)
7pm Golden Nugget ($130/$100/$100)
midnight Plaza ($60/$50)

The only ones I really enjoyed were the 11am topurnaments at the Golden Nugget. I was outclassed at the 7pm tournament and just never got comfortable at the other two. The play was so much tighter than I was used to, that it was hard for me to adjust my game accordingly. The 11am game did not have that problem.

I don't think the Plaza and Binion's tournaments were necessarily bad. I recommend playing them at least once just for the experience. But make sure you are ready for a slow paced, grind it out type of game. The players at Binion's were weak tight; whereas the players at the Plaza tended to be tight aggressive.

See my cardroom reviews of each for more details on the specific tournaments/rooms.