No Pool, No Breakfast, No Restaurant
After researching multiple Hilton hotels in the area, I chose this one for our family trip to bring my son to CHOP because it was close to Philadelphia and had breakfast and a pool for the kids. Once we checked in, we were told that the pool was not open due because the state says they cannot open it due to COVID. This is not true at all according to the official site for the State of New Jersey and New Jersey Department of Health. My guess is they don't have the staff or want to spend the costs to adhere to the requirements to keep the pool open. My issue is that it should be made known up front that the pool is not available at the time of booking. If I knew that, I wouldn't have booked the hotel. The second main issue is that their website and the Hilton app say there is free breakfast. When we asked about this, we were told there was no free breakfast, but we could purchase a breakfast box for $15. That is not fair or acceptable if you claim that it is part of the amenities of the hotel and then try to charge people for something that should be free.
At this point I called Hilton Honors customer care. Over the course of the next hour the person tried to evaluate my options and eventually just connected me to the hotel front desk. So, talking to Hilton customer care is a complete waste of time.
At that point I discussed my two main concerns with the person at the front desk as well as the other issues I found. The blood on the shower curtain, stains on the floor including one where my socks would stick to the carpet, no soap in our room and when we asked for a plastic fork to try to eat what food we did have they didn't even have that. All I really wanted was to get back some of the Hilton points I used or money for the time we were here since I wouldn't have booked the place in the first place. I was given two options, checkout and get half my money and points back or deal with it. I asked if they could maybe put me up in another Hilton hotel that had what we needed but he said not because they didn't have enough staff and he started to get agitated with me. I continued to try to explain to him that both those don't really work for me because I need a place to stay with small kids and don't really have the funds to spend much more on a new hotel, plus this whole thing was making us late for our plans. So, we made the choice to stay because at this point there was nothing they were willing to do to put us up in another place.
I honestly think they are just too thinly staffed, and the place is just not able to be maintained or operated on the number of people they do have.
But if you are looking for a pool and free breakfast do NOT stay here.
The only other issues are that the "kitchen" area is just a counter with a sink and a microwave with a TV. We thought we would be getting more of a functional kitchen, but I guess the room we ended up with doesn't have that.
The beds were comfortable. Only issue was with the pull out there was food and other stuff on the sheet that was on the mattress, so we took that off and put on the top sheet on the bottom so that the kids had something clean to sleep on. read more