Let’s Waltz!
The Let’s Waltz! expansion for Grand Austria Hotel: its five modules — Vienna Ballrooms, Celebrities, Unique Hotels, Start Player and Would You Like Some More? — with setup, rules and scoring.
Short tag: [Waltz]. Expansion by Simone Luciani and Virginio Gigli (Lookout Games, 2021). It has five modules; play any of them with the base game, alone or combined. Try each on its own first — Vienna Ballrooms and Celebrities together make the longest, hardest game.
Four new score markers (225 and 300) work with every module. The expansion uses the names of the revised base rulebook: Politics cards are objective cards, rows are floors, the guest row is the queue, and the virtual die is boosting the action.
Module 1: Vienna Ballrooms
Guests whose order you complete can go dancing instead of to bed: pay 
champagne
to move one of your 10 dancers from your rehearsal rooms into a ballroom. Ballrooms pay row bonuses
at once and score after each Emperor scoring. FAQ FAQ FAQ
Adds: 5 double-sided ballroom boards and a balcony board, 3 Round indicator tiles, 4 rehearsal room boards, 40 dancers, 25 champagne, an Action board overlay, 29 guests, 15 Staff, 3 objective cards, 3 Emperor tiles, 2 overview and 2 final-scoring cards.
Setup changes
- Lay 3 random ballrooms above the game board, on the side for your player count, with the Round indicator tiles 3, 5 and 7 above them from left to right; the balcony goes on the right, level with the top row.
- Turn the Action board to its champagne side (or lay the overlay); add champagne to the supply.
- Each player starts with 1 champagne in the kitchen.
- After the Staff cards: one rehearsal room board per player is laid out; from the player right of the start player, counter-clockwise, each picks one and fills its 4 sections (1, 2, 3 and 4 dancers) with their 10 dancers.
New actions: champagne
| Action | For each die take | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  ,  or | strudel ≥ cake ≥ champagne |
| 2 |  ,  or | wine ≥ coffee ≥ champagne |
Champagne is not a dish or drink, but follows their rules (on guests or in the kitchen). A
reward never gives champagne; 
does.
Sending a guest to a ballroom
Instead of moving a completed guest into a room:
- Choose a row with a free space in any ballroom and pay its champagne from your kitchen (bottom 1, middle 2, top 3). You must be able to pay.
- Put a dancer from your rehearsal rooms on the first free space from the left in that row.
- Top or middle row: take the row bonus shown. Bottom row: none.
- Discard the guest and take their points and reward as usual.
- If you emptied a section of your rehearsal rooms, take its room bonus.
Pay first (steps 1–2), then collect 3–5 in any order: champagne you gain cannot pay for the same dancer. The guest’s colour does not matter and no room is turned. Dancers never move again.
The rightmost ballroom’s top row never fills: when its spaces are full, pay 3 champagne to put the dancer on the balcony, which counts as that top row. A full leftmost or middle ballroom takes no more dancers. With 3 players, the spaces marked for 4 players are unused (cover them with a spare colour, which does not score).
Ballroom scoring
After each Emperor scoring, the ballroom under that round’s tile scores (left after round 3, middle after 5, right after 7). A player with no dancer there loses 5 points. FAQ
| Picture | Ballroom, row bonuses and scoring |
|---|---|
 | Apollosaal — top/middle bonus 3/2 krones; score each dancer using the highest row they occupy (bottom 1, middle 2, top 3). |
 | Goldener Strauß — top/middle bonus 3/1 Emperor steps; score each row separately: most dancers 7 points, second most 2; a 2-player game has no middle row. |
 | Odeonsaal — row bonuses: occupy any room plus 3 points / occupy a room on floors 1–3; score n dancers as n² points, capped at 25 (3 dancers score 9). |
 | Zum Sperl — row bonuses: strudel, wine and coffee / 1 cake; rank scoring is 10/3 in a 2-player game or 15/10/5 with 3–4 players. |
 | Zur Kettenbrücke — top/middle bonus 5/2 points; score 7 points per pair of dancers. |
Ties share the tied ranks: add the points of the shared and skipped ranks, divide by the tied players, round down.
Game end
The game ends after the third ballroom scoring, then the base final scoring; each champagne left is 1 point. Ties: dishes, drinks and champagne in the kitchen plus money.
Module 2: Celebrities
Three white dice become colored dice. Taking a colored die brings the matching celebrity from the lounge, who helps you for the rest of the round.
Adds: a lounge board, 12 celebrity tiles (Puccini, Mata Hari and Picasso only with Vienna Ballrooms), 3 colored dice, 3 victory point chits.
Setup
Swap 3 white dice for the colored ones (same total). Put the lounge by the Action board, the celebrities face down beside it, 3 face up on the lounge, and the chits nearby.
Taking a colored die
Dice colour never changes an action’s strength. When you take a colored die:
- Pay 1
per other die on that space. - Take that colour’s celebrity from the lounge.
- Score 1, 2 or 4 points (the tile or the chit on it).
- Carry out the action as usual, counting all dice there.
The celebrity works on your turns for the rest of the round, starting now.
When passing, put a white die in the dustbin if you can. Only colored dice left and no money? You lose the turn.
End of round
Before any Emperor scoring: everyone’s celebrities go to a discard pile. Lounge celebrities with no chit get a “2” chit; a “2” chit turns to “4”; a celebrity with “4” is discarded. Refill the lounge left to right (reshuffle the discards when needed). The celebrities are listed on Cards & Components.
Module 3: Unique Hotels
You bid for hotel entrances that change your start and give you a power for the whole game.
Adds: 10 hotel entrances (The Ren only with Vienna Ballrooms) and 5 bonus tokens for Dove.
Setup and auction
- Do not put dishes or drinks in your kitchen (with Vienna Ballrooms, still take your 1 champagne).
- After the Staff cards, lay out one random entrance per player (Dove: its 5 tokens; Ninas Melange: one more A, B and C objective card; Grand Wray: two more A, B and C Emperor tiles).
- The start player auctions an entrance, bidding 0 or more krones; clockwise each player raises or drops out for good. The winner pays, places it left of the Hotel board and takes its starting items. Whoever has not won starts the next auction; the last player gets the last entrance free.
Only the owner uses an entrance. Every entrance is described on Cards & Components.
Module 4: Start Player
Turns go clockwise with new Turn Order tiles, and an action lets you become start player.
Adds: 9 Turn Order tiles, an Action board extension, a skeleton key.
Setup
The extension goes left of the Action board, the key on it. Use the new Turn Order tiles. Starting money by turn order position: 1st 9, 2nd 10, 3rd 11, 4th 12 krones.
Start Player action
On your first or second turn of a round — not after passing — instead of a die you may take the key (it covers your lowest number). Take 1 dish or drink of your choice (no champagne) and carry out any action 1–5 at strength 1: no boost, no die-number Staff. The players you pushed back get 0, 1 and 2 krones in order (4 players: left 0, next 1, right 2).
At the end of the round the key’s holder becomes start player and tiles go out clockwise from them; the key goes back. Nobody took it: pass tiles left as usual.
Module 5: Would You Like Some More?
More Staff cards, objective cards and Emperor tiles; no rule changes except bell Staff: they do nothing when hired, but the first time afterwards that you meet the condition left of the colon you may take the reward and turn the card face down for good (it still counts as hired Staff). Skip it and you must wait until you meet the condition again.
Adds: 14 Staff cards, 3 objective cards, 3 Emperor tiles.
New cards and tiles
Modules 1 and 5 shuffle their guests, Staff, objective cards and Emperor tiles into the base stacks (the cards are marked to sort them out again). Every one is listed on Cards & Components.