Great View, Lousy Channel Selection
Written: Sep 28 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great location, beautiful weather and view, good service.
Cons: Parking is pricey, cable channel selection is limited, broadband option is not a great deal.
The Bottom Line: A good deal for a seaside resort.
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| philipchu's Full Review: Marriott Laguna Cliffs Resort-Spa |
When they talk about a two-class society where the have-not's don't have access to broadband, I guess I qualify as one of the underprivileged. No broadband, not even a landline phone at home.
I'm exaggerating, of course - normally the Wi-fi access at a nearby cafe is sufficient for my Internet needs, but once in a while, particularly for my contract work, I need to make some huge downloads. In those cases, I take a work vacation and sequester myself for a couple of days in an Internet-equipped hotel room.
This last time I chose the Marriott Laguna Cliffs in Dana Point, not as close to the San Onofre nuclear reactor as San Clemente, far enough from my home in Huntington Beach to seem like a real trip. At less than $200 a night for a seaside hotel, it seemed like a deal compared to, say, $400/night at the nearby Ritz-Carlton. And the location didn't disappoint - the hotel sits atop a hill surrounded by a relatively quite portion of the Pacific Coast Highway, Doheny State Beach, a small park, and Dana Harbor. Half the rooms face PCH, and I expect in one of those, the view of the Holiday Inn Express across the road would be a taunting reminder of how much extra you paid to cross the street, but my first-floor room faced the ocean - no beach view, but a view of the adjacent park. Rather than sit out on the cheap plastic chairs in the small patio, and I took to turning off the air conditioning during the day and allowing the ocean breeze to flow into the room from the open patio door while I worked on the bed while I watched TV.
This is where the major flaws in my stay showed up. The bed was very comfortable (I didn't wake up with my usual sore back), but the fitted sheet had some kind of stain or scorch mark on the side. The TV channel selection was limited to basic, very basic, cable, plus HBO. (No Sci-Fi channel meant I missed my Eureka fix!) Internet access is free in many hotels, but here it cost me $9.95/night for wired and wireless access. The download speed was usually slow for both wired and wireless, about 50KB/s, but sometimes jumped to around 150KB/s. More annoying, it would cut out in the middle of the day and either prompt you for an identifying room number to log in again, or sometimes ask for a credit card.
Work aside, it's a nice place to relax. The two large pools are clean, large enough for decent lap swimming, and warm enough despite the brisk breeze. After Labor Day seems to be the offseason - the other guests consisted mostly of people in the pharmaceutical industry (walking around in my Hawaiian short and shorts, I was mistaken by one of them as hotel staff). Overall the service is not quite as polished as at the posh-hotel level, but no complaints - and the service in particular at the on-site restaurant where I tried the breakfast was quite attentive. But if you don't want to spend $20 on a buffet, you can walk down the hill to visit Denny's, McDonald's, Jack-in-the-Box, and walk up PCH a bit to a cozy strip of stores that includes a coffee shop, a Thai restaurant, and a couple of burrito places.
My final bill went over $200/night due not just to the usual mystery taxes and fees and the Internet access, but also the $22/night self parking fee (I noticed past reviews of this hotel listed this fee as $16, so unless my recollection is mistaken, they raised it). It's not exactly a metropolitan area, and the garage was hardly crowded, so that seemed excessive. But as I drove back home along PCH and passed the sign pointing to the Ritz-Carlton, I still felt it was a pretty good deal overall.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
philipchu
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Member: Phil Chu
Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Reviews written: 60
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
writer of software and prose
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