Hello beautiful people! Today I want to share with you my most recent hotel experience; it’s certainty an interesting one so I would definitely give it a read!

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I decided to stay in NYC for a night. We decided to stay at a 4 star hotel called Park Central Hotel. Neither of us had stayed in this hotel before but we found a great deal for it on Groupon and decided to give it a go!

First Impressions:

The second we saw the hotel we really liked the lit up sign, the carpeted entrance, and the beautiful trees next to the revolving doors. Overall, this hotel seemed very, very promising. We stepped inside and immediately were blown away by the luminous, gorgeous and spacious lobby area! The lobby also had beautiful artwork that displayed a bright pink tree and a park.

A major plus to this hotel is that they have an area to store your luggage until check in. Since my boyfriend and I arrived at the hotel at 10 am and check in wasn’t till 4 pm, this storing was perfect for us! We walked up to the concierge and told them that we would like to check in our bags. The concierge proceeded to give us a paper which we then brought over to the storing section of the hotel and they stored our bags for us and gave us a little ticket, much like a coat check. We then proceeded out of the hotel to go about our day.

Location: 

The location of the hotel is very convenient because it’s close to the subway as well as very close to some cafes, bike rental places and Central Park.

The Check- In:

We got to our hotel around 9 pm to check in. At the front desk, only one person was working and a line was forming. After a few minutes a second person showed up and checked us in. The concierge told us that our room keys would be useful to not only open our doors but also to operate our elevators. Basically, we had to swipe our key into the elevator in order for it to go up to the floor we wished to go to. We grabbed our bags, our room keys and went over to the elevator.

The Elevator:

There was an elderly couple in front of us waiting for the elevator and it seemed that they had been waiting for awhile…red flag. The elevator eventually came down and the door only seemed to open half way…strange? Not to mention the elevator was extremely small, making it feel like we were packed like sardines inside. I go to swipe my card to click on my floor and to my surprise…my key didn’t function. I tried the second key we had and once again…the elevator refused to read my key. The elderly man next to me tried his card and it worked. We clicked our floor and went up.

About an hour after being in the hotel we had to go back down to the lobby. We waited a couple of minutes for the elevator this time however, we waited ages to come back up! Only two elevators were going up and down and there were, I kid you not, a solid 15 of us waiting for the elevators. After waiting for about 10-15 minutes we got onto the elevator and again, both of my keys didn’t work, a lady next to me tried her key, failed, another man tried his key, failed and finally another person tried their key and it worked. We went up.

In the morning we had plans on going down to a cafe for breakfast. We get to the elevator and there were two elderly ladies patiently waiting at the elevator. I asked them how long have they been waiting and she replied about 10 minutes now…she also mentioned to me that she read a review online that said if you want to get out of this hotel you always need to leave your room 15 minutes early to wait around for an elevator…how ridiculous is that? After about a 5 minute wait we finally got our elevator to take us down.

After breakfast we wanted to return back to our room so that we could relax for a bit before checking out. Once again, we got onto the elevator of doom which again, didn’t accept either of our keys but we got lucky enough that another person on the elevator had a working key.

Overall, I think it’s very very ridiculous that certain keys don’t work for the elevator. My boyfriend and I got lucky enough that we always had someone waiting that had a working key however if it weren’t for that…how else could we get up? It would be one thing if this wasn’t a common mistake however we saw several people having the same issue as us and afterwards we wondered if this was a common thing; we checked YELP reviews and found out that it’s in fact a very common issue they have…ridiculous! Oh, we also noticed that on YELP this “4 Star Hotel” was rated 2 1/2 by costumers…

The Room:

We walked into the room and it was the standard hotel bedroom look. The theme of the room was grey toned and it looked very modern which is definitely my kind of style. I absolutely loved the artwork on the wall however I do think that one of the frames was badly placed (practically behind the TV). The bed sheets were the classic hotel ones that are white which I love and the bed was super comfy.

The bathroom had some issues with the tile of the tub having chips in it. The shampoo, conditioner and body wash were attached to the wall and on the same wall as the shower head. Personally, I think this was awful placement because if you didn’t want to wash your hair you had to do a weird kind of body curve away from the water stream in order to reach the products. Speaking of water stream, the water pressure wasn’t very strong what so ever and the water temperature? Luke warm at best! I don’t know about you but I enjoy hot showers so having luke warm water as my shower water was very disappointing…

Paper Thin Walls:

As I said before, we didn’t get back to our hotel until latish in the night. We were laying in bed, checking our social media and watching some TV when all of sudden we hear our neighbors coming in. Our neighbors came into their room with their child and had absolutely no control over their child. Their child attempted to come into our room several times (we had one of those adjoining rooms); the child tried several times to unlock our door and open it and continued to bang and scream on the door. The parents, would tell the child to stop but it wasn’t working. The child then continued to scream at the top of his lungs…this wasn’t any ordinary scream, this scream was high pitched and straight out of a horror film. We allowed for this screaming and banging to continue for about an hour before we said we had enough.

I tried to call the front desk using the phone in the room but that failed because it didn’t work so I tried to call from my phone. I called and it just rang…and rang…and rang…I really had enough so I changed out of my comfy PJs, got back into my regular clothes and walked down myself to complain. I get down to the lobby and there was no one at the front desk…can you believe it? A couple of minutes later someone appears at the front desk and I go to tell her that the room next to us is making a ridiculous amount of noise and she pointed me to guest services. I went over to guest services, explained that there is a child screaming and attempting to come into my room, I even gave her the kids name, that’s how well we could hear everything, I knew the kids name and she politely smiled, said she was very very sorry and that she would get security to take care of it.

After security came there was silence once again, however, the screeching, terrifying, ear piercing scream came back once again in the morning, although this time it was accompanied by the mothers scream. The child would scream and the mother would respond by yelling even louder at him…very effective. Luckily, my boyfriend and I woke up early and therefore this screaming didn’t wake us up however it was still very annoying.

Surprise:

Hotel fees are not uncommon at all. Typically hotels charge a facility or amenities fee, even if you don’t use what they offer. Although a very typical fee, typically, hotels charge you this included in the price when you pay for the room or at least mention it when you check in…not here. Not only did the total amount of the room not include the fee, but also no one told us about the fee! You want to know how I found out about the fee? You really want to know? A paper…a paper was slid under my bedroom door as I was showering  in the morning. I stepped out of the shower, out of the bathroom and right there in my face there was a roughly $35 facility fee…how professional…

The Email:

I suppose to make up for the noise and lack of happiness, the hotel decided to email me. The email thanked me for expressing my concern of the noise and hoped that even though I had that issue I was still happy. Not only did they want to mention this in an email they also wanted to provide me with a free breakfast voucher from their market in the hotel. Lovely right? Very kind after all that went wrong? No…they sent me the email at 11:43 am …precisely 30 minutes after I had already checked out and left the hotel.  Check out is normally at 12, however, if it was a breakfast voucher why was I not informed of this earlier? Why was I not given a letter under my door with this voucher instead of a hotel fee?

Final Impressions:

Unless the room is completely free, I will never be coming back to this hotel and I don’t advise that anyone come to this hotel. I can honestly say that this was by far the worst experience I have ever had at a hotel.