specialspeed
Family · November 20256/10
We stayed here in Octoboer. First I want to say the resort charge feels like a scam. I don't take that lightly. The resort fee is supposed to include a food credit and tours. They advertise that...We stayed here in Octoboer. First I want to say the resort charge feels like a scam. I don't take that lightly. The resort fee is supposed to include a food credit and tours. They advertise that on their web site. If they delivered what was promised, the resort fee would be ok. None of the tours on their web site that they advertise as free are available. The scam is that the only tours you can get are the ones that cost WAY more than the vouchers they give you. You might say, I will just do a tour every other day and double up on the coupons, but they don't allow that. You can only use one voucher. So the vouchers are useless unless you want some overpriced tours that you can buy for less elsewhere. The food credit is similar. It's $15 a day, and again you can't bank it and combine it if you stay more than one day. The credit expires every day. The other problem is that there is no restaurant in this hotel. You can clearly see Fogo de Chao in the picture and you think it is related to the hotel and you could use your credit there, but no you can't. You can do room service, but they tack on a $5 delivery fee and 20% service charger, so you can't even get a basic snack for the credit. To avoid those ridiculous fees you can order from the bar. You might also want to try to use the credit by buying snacks in the lobby, but they post no prices on the stuff there. You can ask someone at the front desk, but when we did it they had to look up each item on a price list. When we asked to see the price list, they refused. When we kept asking for prices on multiple items, they got annoyed. We ended up just walking away. Completely unacceptable. In the end we got the resort fee waived when we complained.
The rest of the stay was not as bad. First, that picture they use is misleading. That nice lit up picture with a restaurant is not the front entrance to the hotel. It is the back door and you need a key to enter there. You have to walk down a long corridor to get to the bar to then get to the lobby. The actual entrance is on a back street. To get there if you are walking means walking on a narrow street that is more like an alley. One day when walking back there was a truck parked on the sidewalk and you had to squeeze between it ande garbage cans to get to the front door. They really should have the main entrance on Canal st, not the alley in the back.
The hotel itself is decent. The elevators are fast and you rarely need to wait long for them. We got a room on a high floor facing Canal. The view was quite nice as you can see the river. The room was a decent size as was the bathroom. Unfortunately they offer very little space to put your clothes. I had to end up putting my clothes in the night stand. The closet had another night stand in it, but the way they positioned it you couldn't open it as it was shoved into the corner of the closet and the drawer would not open. I turned it 90 deg and had the drawer opening into the closet. On the plus side they do offer a good number of full size hangers. There is a safe in the room, but the safe was attached to nothing. You could just pick it up and move it. We had a fridge which was nice as we could store beverages in it.
The bathroom was ok. One really stupid annoyance is that there was only one hook in the bathroom. It would not be so bad except that the hook design meant you could not hang a towel on it without it falling off the hook. The bathroom also had a sliding barndoor, which I really dislike.
I used the gym. It is a nice size and had a fair amount of equipment. They have two peloton bikes, which I thought was a good thing as I like riding bikes. But one had a bent pedal axle that made it unusable. They other one had the the seat pointing up at about a 10 degree angle. I was able to use that bike, but it was not as comfortable as it should have been. The other machines and free weights were fine. They also had an outdoor pool. I dipped a finger in it to check it out, and it was heated. So we could have used it.
It sounds like all I have are complaints, but there are good things. First, the location is really good. Having an entrance on Canal means you can walk to Riverwalk as well as Bourbon street. You can also catch a street car to get to the cemeteries or City park. Staff, with the exception of the one who didn't want to show the price list, were all friendly and willing to help. This is the only reason they got three stars instead of 2.Show More
