This hotel gets heavy use by people the night before their cruise, as well as various tour groups. So you’d expect it to have that “wear and tear” look. We didn’t notice any. We were staying one night following disembarking our cruise early on a Sunday morning. We got to the hotel at 9:30 am, and knew that we’d have to drop off our luggage to be stored. Though the lobby was filled with groups who’d been checking out, a friendly & professional front desk person immediately waited on us and took our things. He told us the hotel had been 100% full the prior night, and couldn’t say when our room might be ready. I had booked a specific type of room - top floor, with a balcony. Waiting for those to be cleaned vs other rooms could be longer, so we said we’d be fine with any room. He gave us directions to the Bayside Market, which is a large indoor-outdoor shopping plaza. So we ambled the half mile or so over, and spent as much time as we could walking around it, people watching, boat watching, and finally got an early lunch.
At 1:00, we decided to walk back to the hotel to see what rooms might have been cleaned by then. As luck would have it, we talked with the day manager at the desk. She said that our requested type of room wasn’t available, but since we were also Marriott Bonvoy members, she could instead upgrade us to a 2 room suite. She asked if we’d mind not being on the top floor. Heck no! The suite was at the end of a hall, overlooking an area that had lots of traffic noise. But that lessened by evening, especially as this was a Sunday.
The two rooms were great. The best part was the living room with its big puffy sofa that had a large matching ottoman for two. The king bedroom also had a nice small sofa, and was decorated in a way that suggested a recent remodeling. The bed was quite comfortable for sleeping, along with two of the four pillows. Plenty of plugs and USB ports in lamps in both rooms. The only disappointment was the rather small bathroom. Though it had a nice shower, the small sink had no real counter. And the toilet was crowded between the two. But not a problem for any short stay.
Here’s the best part - and I assume the same for every room in the hotel. It has connections to about 6-7 streaming services. If you have an account with one, you can log onto it and watch the same as you would at home. Because we got into the room by 1:30, we had lots of time to kill. And we had already walked over 2 miles in the morning. So we enjoyed watching Netflix for hours, with our feet on the comfy ottoman. Went to the small New York Pizza for dinner later, as it was one of the nearest places to go to. We did remember to log out of our Netflix account before going to bed. We’d easily forget to do that in the morning, as we had to be out of the hotel by 6:00 am to catch our early flight.
In summary, the desk staff were great in handling all the people it needed to deal with, our upgraded room was wonderful, and the hotel is located well for walking to several big shopping areas. It was incredibly close to Port Miami, so we will probably stay there in the future.
