There are some good things about this hotel. It's generally clean and well maintained. The front…read moredesk folks are generally friendly and helpful (with one exception we'll get to in a minute). It's within walking distance to a lot of restaurants and attractions, and very close to multiple bus lines and the blue line train. There's a lot of storage and space in the room, and having a kitchen is super convenient (don't count on the dishes being clean though, you'll want to re-wash them yourself). The fitness center is very nice and has a lot of options - treadmills, rower, Peloton bike, free weights, etc. And the breakfast area has plenty of seating, so even during crowded times you can find a table. My boyfriend and I were in town to run a race that started and finished at First Ward Park, which is just a couple blocks away, so that was super convenient. But then there's the not so good - the annoying, the bad, and the really bad.
First the annoying - you'll notice in the marketing materials for this hotel the frequent appearance of waffles. On the booking site, in photos in the elevator, and even on the walls in the breakfast area. And multiple waffle makers seem to have a permanent place on the counter in the breakfast area. Based on that you would assume there would be waffles at least sometimes at the provided breakfast. You would assume wrong. After being disappointed in the lack of waffles two mornings in a row, and hearing other people ask about them each morning, we asked the breakfast attendant when there might be waffles. Her exact answer: "We have waffles on Fridays and Mondays." Except we there on both a Friday and a Monday, and no there wasn't. Not a single waffle on any of the four mornings we were there. Waffle makers, yes, but never batter to put in them. So if you're deciding between this hotel and another and those photos of waffles at breakfast are luring you into choosing this hotel, beware - there will never be waffles.
The bad - the beds aren't great. My boyfriend and I had a king bed, which was handy since we needed the extra room to avoid a spring poking up on one side. And instead of a few different firmness options for pillows they were all the same thin at bedtime and flat as a pancake by morning variety. As a side sleeper, I found one way too thin, and even stacking two together was uncomfortably flat by morning. The comforter and top sheet also barely covered the top of the bed, so with two people underneath it it didn't even fully reach the edges.
But then we get to the bathroom. My blood pressure is rising just thinking back to the bathroom. The three lights in the bathroom (over the sink, over the toilet, and over the shower) are all on a motion sensor that you cannot turn off or disable in any way. So if you get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and don't want the lights on to wake you up, too bad. They're all going to come on blindingly bright and jolt you wide awake. But then in the morning, when you'd like them to stay on while you're in the shower, too bad. The sensor apparently doesn't reach the shower end of the bathroom, so your options are either showering in the dark or opening the shower door to wave your arm out to re-trip the sensor every 60 seconds. And you're going to be in that shower for a while, because the water pressure is not great. Slightly more than a trickle, so washing the conditioner out of your hair will take multiple rounds of arm waving if you don't want to be in the dark. And you're going to need to sacrifice one of your hand towels to put at the bottom of the shower, otherwise the trickle of water hitting the metal drain under the showerhead is going to drive you crazy. You can't move the showerhead away from it, and it sounds like someone is banging non-stop on a metal pan right in your ear. And whoever you share a room with can witness all this, since the sliding door to the bathroom has a good inch of a gap between it and the wall and you can see right in when you walk past. We stopped by the front desk after our first night to ask if there was some trick we hadn't discovered to turn off the motion sensor for the lights at night. The reaction of the woman behind the desk? She laughed. Apparently many people have complained about this, but instead of trying to make the situation better they think it's a funny joke? Not the reaction we were expecting.
So, despite the good things this hotel has going for it, the main two things I want out of a hotel are good sleep and a good shower, and I didn't get either here. I definitely won't be making a return stay the next time I'm in Charlotte.
