I don't hand out one star reviews lightly. But I wouldn't recommend this place to my worst enemy. This is by far one of the worst - if not the worst - hotel experience I've ever had. Even worse, I endured it for two nights in a row.
Where to begin ...
The check in process was a total nightmare. There were three employees at the counter concurrently working on checking in three separate guests. I say "working on" because it quickly became apparent this process was a struggle. Each employee had an unrelenting intense look of confusion on their face as though it was each of their first day on the job. At various points during this 15 minute waiting period before they got around to me, each employee consulted with another employee on issues that they independently did not appear equipped to address on their own. The inability or unwillingness of each of the employees being quiered to simultaneously address the customer checking in and their colleague's questions led to further delay.
When they did finally get around to me, they advised I would have to wait approximately 30 minutes for my room, even though I arrived to the hotel around 2:30 PM, a very standard check-in time. Then, miraculously a room suddenly became available. Upon entering the room, I soon realized why. The loud construction (specifically, the sound of a hammer repeatedly banging away against steel, I think) would be enough to drive anyone back to the front desk. However, since I planned on dropping my bags and heading out anyway, I had hoped the construction would cease by sundown. Upon my return to the room in the evening, it had.
Unfortunately, my colleague was the one who ended up having to wait approximately 30 minutes to be assigned a room, after waiting just as long as me to check in. All told, he waited about an hour from the time he entered the lobby until he entered his room.
I walked away from the check in experience wondering how long those people checking in before me had been waiting to do the same since by the time I had arrived they were already being attended to.
The room itself was rather clean, spacious and had a pleasant smell. The safe worked. The iron sort of worked. The lighting in the bathroom sucked. No lights in the shower or in the separate toilet area in the bathroom. Not too big a deal. I mean, what man doesn't like peeing in the dark? After all, the poor maid is the one who has to clean up the mess if I miss. I wonder if the mop has a flashlight attached to the handle. If it didn't, she was going to need one because in addition to the lighting sucking, so does the plumbing. My toilet overflowed and after three attempts to contact the front desk over a 30 minute period, I decided to get dressed, go downstairs and advise them of the potential emergency on their hands if they didn't address it swiftly. Upon approaching the front desk, I witnessed two customers respectively being attended to and a third employee at the front desk carrying on in what was clearly a personal conversation. Laughing away hysterically while the innocent bystanders in the room below me may have been getting slow drips by this point.
After this fiasco, I decided that the next time I had to use the toilet, I would use the one in the gym. Too bad the only toilet in the men's bathroom in the gym was missing a toilet seat. Good thing I have a wide butt.
In addition to the missing toilet seat, the gym also lacked dry towels for sweat and wet towels to wipe up sweat. No, I'm not referring to existing empty wet towel dispensers. I mean there were no wet towels. Guests, this means the machine everyone used before you likely never gets cleaned. If you don't believe it, tell it to the unattended garbage lying around the counter past the gym entrance. As for the gym itself, the mostly inoperable 1990s equipment could really use an upgrade.
Despite all this, the following morning I felt brave enough to take on the breakfast buffet included in my stay. In retrospect, this could have turned out to be a very regrettable decision considering I had a presentation to give that morning in front of 50 people. But as it turns out, not only did I not get sick, the buffet ended up being the only saving grace to this hotel, minus whatever debris was floating in my coffee mug.
Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse, my second night was. For one unbearable reason only. Upon returning to my room, an intense odor of sewage entered my nostrils. And it never left. For this reason, I weathered the storm and actually managed to fall asleep, until I woke up at about 3:30 AM and decided I couldn't endure much more. I checked out far, far earlier than I had to and vowed to never return.
As of this review, there's a brand new Westin down the street. Do yourselves a favor, your lungs a favor, your nostrils a favor, your bowels a favor and whatever else you can think of and just stay there. Because nothing could possibly be worse than here. read more
