My wife and I stayed here recently and had a pretty good time, but we did have a few issues during…read moreour visit.
First, valet picked up our car outside the hotel and returned it promptly when we checked out, so no complaints there. The valet seemed to sincerely care about our time (he apologized for making us wait for a few minutes), so we appreciated that. Valet was charged directly to the room and cost $35, which was a little pricey but nothing crazy. The front desk staff were generally present when we needed them but weren't super warm or friendly. The hotel also didn't have ear plugs on hand, so make sure you bring your own :) Not a big deal, of course.
It was a special occasion so my wife and I rented the penthouse suite at the top of the hotel for the night. Honestly, was it worth the money? Probably not, but it was fun. The suite had a bathtub outside on the balcony, which was pretty cool, but unfortunately there's an apartment building right next door that's even taller than the hotel. My wife and I were taking a bath and chatting and I saw a woman in one of the apartments open her blinds and stare at us for a while. Kind of awkward! I guess there's a privacy barrier of sorts surrounding the balcony, but it's only a few feet tall and of course doesn't help when your audience is stories above you in another building. The view from the balcony was pretty nice, although you had to be standing to see it due to the aforementioned privacy barrier :)
We were also a little underwhelmed by the bed. It was comfortable, but smaller than we expected. We are not tall people and our feet were practically sticking off the end! We were also surprised that the bedroom TV was a little antiquated and only offered DIRECTV channels instead of Netflix / Hulu / etc. We were given a printout with the different available channels but the guide didn't seem to actually correspond to what was available on the TV. We were hoping to see a specific movie but our options were limited, so we ended up watching Family Guy and falling asleep :) Ah well. I didn't test the TV in the living room but since it had the same DIRECTV printout next to the remote, I assume it had the same channels.
Other random thoughts:
1) There were two bathrooms - a main bath and a guest bath, I guess. I didn't see any way of turning on the exhaust fans in either bathroom. Just kind of weird to have this issue in a fancy hotel room. There were also no hand towels ready in the guest bath. It also would have been nice to have an indoor tub for the main bath - what if it's storming outside? That being said, the shower was spacious.
2) They provided robes to use for the sauna, which was nice, but the second robe was missing slippers. Also, it was quite confusing to find the sauna - there weren't any signs, and we had to first enter the exercise area and then enter the sauna from there. The controls for activating the sauna were a little confusing / primitive, but it worked out OK. That being said, after we got out, we noticed that the nearby drinking water dispenser was broken. Man, you need to have access to water after you get out of the sauna!
3) The elevators were confusing! We always had to take two different elevators to get to our room, and we definitely got mixed up when we were trying to find the sauna.
4) The museum was OK. Nothing crazy cool, but it was a good way to spend 15 minutes.
5) The hotel is located squarely in downtown Durham, so it's a pretty solid location. There are coffee shops, bars, and restaurants all within walking distance.
Overall, we had a good time. Some aspects were a little disappointing, though, especially for the price tag.
