A four-star hotel? More like 2.5 stars, but I can't give half a star. Where should I start? Parking. We did valet parking, though there is little other choice. You enter the hotel from a one-way street into a very small drop-off area. The area can hold maybe a dozen cars at most, and maybe four or five of that dozen in the drop-off line. It's a workable arrangement unless (until) more than five guests are trying to get to the hotel at the same time. We waited in line on the street outside the hotel, blocking traffic, for probably 20 minutes while the valets processed the cars ahead of us. They do a good job, BTW, they just have to deal with a severe design limitation. Don't expect prompt valet service anywhere around checkout or checkin time. It took about 20 minutes to retrieve our car when requested shortly before check out time because there were so many ahead of us and so little room for retrieved cars. The following day was worse - my guess is that the queue waiting for cars was an hour deep. Also notable is that you have to request your car at the valet stand. You cannot request it from your room, for example, as many other valet systems allow.
Elevators. Simple transportation to upper floors, right? Yes, I'm going to pan these as well. Not all of the elevators go to all of the floors, but they are marked and it doesn't take long to figure out which ones to use. All elevators are setup to require your room key in order to go to your floor. This would not be a problem except that the room key wasn't required in every elevator. Some would happily take you to your floor without scanning you room key. Of the ones requiring your key, not all keys were recognized.
Some worked, some didn't. Very inconsistent. There are two key readers in each elevator, and in some cases a key would work on one reader but not the other. In one elevator, my key worked but another couple's key did not. And my key would not "unlock" the elevator to go to their floor so I could not help them.
The ice maker on the 68th floor was turned off. Not a big deal, right? Just use one on another floor. I refer you to the elevator key card issue above. If I got an elevator that required a key card I could not go to another floor's ice maker because the elevator wouldn't take me there. Fortunately, stairwell B is right next to the ice machine nook and is actually faster than taking the elevator to an adjacent floor - if you don't mind stairs. I mentioned the ice maker to the staff and they did turn it on, but the question remains - why was it turned off in the first place?
And that brings me to the room. Dated is a good description. It was clean, but everything in it was old. Wallpaper was peeling. Carpet was worn and in one spot bubbled to the point that it made noise when walking on it. There were holes in the wall behind one night stand where a previous piece of equipment had been mounted and removed. No attempt had been made to patch the holes. The bathroom is tiny and poorly designed. They could have extended it by.a foot or three into the room to make more space without compromising the rest of the room. The bathroom door opens less than 90 degrees because of the shower door right behind it. There is one sink and really only enough room for one person at a time, though two can manage if the second person entering doesn't mind stepping over toilet to get to the left side of the sink. The shower door arrangement is odd - the side with the usable handle on the inside is beside the toilet, leaving very little space to step out. The other shower door has the handle on the outside and is difficult to manipulate from the inside. The bathroom door must be closed in order to use that shower door anyway. The whole thing is... awkward. On top of all that, the sheet on the bed had a small hole in the middle that we didn't see until we turned the bed down.
The view from the 68th floor was spectacular. We could see Olympic Park, the Georgia Aquarium, and a large part of downtown Atlanta in general. The sounds were entertaining as well - we clearly heard a couple in another room... umm... very much enjoying their stay. We also could hear someone speaking from time to time, presumably on a phone call, clearly enough to understand what was being said. We were not able to ascertain which room the sounds were coming from, so I guess there's some anonymity in that.
We enjoyed our stay in Atlanta overall, but we were disappointed with the room. Had this been advertised as a three star hotel I would have less to complain about. A four-star hotel this is not, and I think people should be aware of what they are getting into so they aren't as surprised as we were at the state of the room.
