This is a bit of a hard review to write. How do you explain what this place is let alone how your experienced it. I suppose that all depends on why you were here in the first place. Unfortunately for me I visited during the time of COVID. Which probably dampened my experience here.
I will be honest with you, driving up to this place is confusing. Especially if you have never been here before. You feel like you are driving into the wilderness or on a backroad in some very rural area. Now that you are disoriented a bit, bam, let's hit you with a barrage of buildings on a sprawling campus. If you are here for a conference and are staying on property it is a bit confusing to find the "main" entrance.
I think I need to explain something here. Maritime is a combination of things. But most importantly it is a school, geared towards those in our military that work on the water, hence the maritime in the name. Second it is a Conference Center. Third it is accommodations. Convenient when you want to hold a conference that is for sure. This place is laid out much like a college campus and it appears to be used by locals for an area to get some walking/exercise in.
Location wise it is pretty easy to get to. About ten minutes from the Baltimore Airport, close to major highways, and two access points to the campus. There is a shuttle service that they provide that will take you to the airport and/or train station nearby. However, until things are lifted, the shuttle service is not in working order due to social distancing. I suppose I should touch on something here as well. If you need an item, there is really nothing around to go grab quickly, you will definitely need to call an Uber or something to that effect. Or prepare yourself for a hefty walk.
As for the Conference Center portion of this place, it is HUGE. Tons of space to hold a very large conference with loads of rooms for breakout sessions. I believe each room has a setup where you can hook up equipment to allow for video conferencing and microphone capabilities in most rooms. Multiple entrances in and out of these buildings can get you turned around a bit, but it was great to know that you do not have to walk a hallway that felt like it was never going to end all the time.
The accommodations, yeah, let's talk about that. There are two towers here that serve as the accommodations. That being said they are in need of a major overhaul. Much of this place outside the lobby area looks very dated. The hallways to the rooms has this eerie feeling to it, like you may be in an older movie. The rooms themselves, yeah, I wasn't much of a fan. The bed was a little too firm for me, almost sleeping on the ground while camping. The television wasn't so bad, when it didn't go out. The closet in my room was a bit rough to open. The bathroom served its purpose, but you can tell that they did a real quick update in there with the shower stalls. Did not even attempt to match the tiles on the wall. But the noise was the worst. The walls were thin, I could hear my neighbors on both sides each night, and sometimes their tvs. I also got a lot of noise from outside, you don't realize how close you are to the highway with all the foliage around, but you are extremely close.
The WiFi was shoddy at times. There would be times that I had no problems connecting and ran several devices off of the WiFi. But it also depended on what building you were in and how deep in that building you were in. I noticed that the building that had the conference rooms was hit or miss.
Food wise, I was not a fan in the least. I was told that they use to have a cafeteria style set up, but because or restrictions they had to limit what they had and served it to you. That meant that there would not be much variety. I kind of got tired of the food, when I could eat it. It did not vary much while here, beef, chicken, fish. A lot of it was either bland or over seasoned. But I have a feeling that if I were here when there were multiple selections I would be singing another tune. I do have to say that they do provide loads of snacks throughout the day to supplement if you did not happen to partake in a meal.
Other things to note here, there is a small business center in the lobby area and I noticed throughout the buildings as well. There is a bar on premise, but it is limited in both time and libations. Smoking areas outside. Covered area being the towers and conference building in case of bad weather. Ample onsite parking. Pool and gym. read more