About a month ago, we finally went on the longest-wait-ever cruise (it was supposed to have been in June of 2020). Seward seemed like a neat little town, with several neat day-trip options, and a *right* pain to get to any other way than cruise, so it seemed silly not to spend a couple nights there before heading back home. Being kind of in the middle of nowhere, and not a very large town, though, I suppose it's not surprising that hotels were all quite expensive. So I ended up here, still paying ~$180 a night (one of the cheapest rates I could find that wasn't in the middle of nowhere.) I definitely wasn't expecting a lot... in some ways, I was actually pleasantly surprised, but in a couple important ways, I was still disappointed, making this yet another review where just a numeric 1/5 rating isn't necessarily as useful.
First, everything good about the place: everyone there was super friendly and helpful, zero complaints. You could tell the front desk person was excited to help us with any questions we had about Seward or with any questions we had about our stay or the hotel. Checkin and checkout were quick and painless even though we had booked the hotel through Chase. They also had no issue with us leaving all our luggage with them on the way to an immediate day tour before our room would be ready, even though we basically took up the whole front of their lobby with all of it all afternoon (sorry about that!). And the location is hard to beat, which was another reason I chose it - roughly halfway between the docks and "downtown", so you can really walk everywhere. Plus, I didn't even realize until we landed that morning with all our luggage and didn't feel like walking, there's also a free Seward shuttle every half hour, and one of the handful of stops happened to be right out our window!
The room itself was basic, but surprisingly spacious - plenty of outlets, plenty of space at the desk, plenty of space for our luggage, everything you'd generally expect from a hotel room, and everything felt totally clean. Bed was a *tiny* bit hard, but totally useable. Pretty spacious shower, too, with hot water that worked great.
I definitely also had a few complaints, though - mostly outside of their immediately control (again, everyone there was great), but put together, if I were back in Seward, I probably wouldn't stay here next time. First off, complaints about sound insulation are totally valid - normally that doesn't bother me so much, but we were in a corner room pretty close to the main road, so I could absolutely hear whenever a car drove past. Could also hear our neighbor's shower running like the shower was literally in our walls every time they ran it - also, starting around 4 AM when the sun came up, birds chirping all over, which also sounded like they were chirping in our room. I'm used to sleeping with earplugs, but it wasn't the quietest.
Speaking of the sun, not being used to Alaska summers - I will say, the main two windows in our room had *mostly* light-blocking curtains, not perfect by any means, but still way better than our designed-for-the-Caribbean cruise ship - the small window in the back had regular blinds that let in plenty of light, but at least it was small and in the back. I definitely missed the proper blackout curtains from the Hyatt we stayed at in Vancouver, though.
Wifi... worked when it worked. Most of the time it worked and was a reasonable speed, every so often it just stopped working. Sometimes it was out for a few seconds, sometimes it was out for a few minutes, then it started working again. That happened a few times a day, both days we were there. Finally, while this would probably not be relevant the majority of the time, we had "unseasonably" warm weather for most of our trip, so I did want to mention that their rooms don't have AC, just heat, so our room got a bit toasty in the afternoon. read more