Doubletree Guest Suites, Times Square: It shines on New Year's Eve and more...
Written: Jan 05 '06 (Updated Feb 06 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Spotless, spacious suites and comfortable beds; good all-round amenities; professional security, housekeeping, concierge
Cons: Ho-hum commercial style; rat race at the front door; no meal or Internet deals
The Bottom Line: Located in the heart of the Theater District, the Doubletree Guest Suites Times Square has plenty of amenities and a can-do staff, but its public spaces need a good redesign.
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| MamaMiaEtc's Full Review: Doubletree Guest Suites Times Square New |
I love peace and quiet but sometimes I crave excitement. That partially explains why we decided to spend New Year’s Eve 2006 at the Doubletree Guest Suites, Times Square, New York. Along for the trip were my significant other and my two kids (ages 15 and 20), so we needed to reserve space for four. Finding spacious digs for four in New York City can be a challenge, but the Doubletree Guest Suites at Times Square fit the bill quite nicely without totally breaking the bank.
We spent six days and five nights at the Doubletree for our New Year’s 2006 holiday. Being registered guests afforded us special advantages on New Year’s Eve. At 9:30 p.m. that night as we returned to the hotel after dinner, we were quickly wisked through two police barricades at 6th and 7th Avenues simply by flashing our dedicated New Year’s Eve room keys. (Note: we were patted down and wanded.) But the best came when my children were able to exit the hotel at 11:50 p.m. and join the crowd in the street for the countdown to midnight. If we had not been guests, we would have had to take position in the street at about 6 p.m. to get as close as we did.
Then on the way back up the elevator, as they later recounted to me with expressions of mirth, they saw P.O.D., definitively clinching the evening’s and the trip’s success. (Who is P.O.D.? I have no clue, except that they are some kind of hard rock group.)
By the way, one can reserve a “Ball Drop Room” on New Year’s Eve night at the Doubletree for $1500. They were still available in early December when I made my reservations, so no need to make an early decision for 2007!
Location
The Doubletree is located on the corner of 47th Street and 7th Avenue, a very busy corner. Looking out from the sidewalk in front of the hotel, past the TKTS booth, you can see Broadway edging towards 7th, giving an impression of an open plaza filled with people spilling into the streets and slowing vehicle traffic to a crawl.
By 5:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, crazy-loud music plus the proverbial bright lights of Broadway bathed the hotel with Waco-like sensory overload. By 11 p.m. through our open window on 37th floor, we could hear the monster speakers below throbbing in synch with the live TV coverage in our room, supplying us with surround sound a la Times Square New Year’s Eve.
Otherwise, The Doubletree is wonderfully close to the Museum of Modern Art at 11 West 53rd, and is a nice walk up to the largest grocery store in NYC, the Whole Foods in the basement of the new Time Warner Center at 10 Columbus Circle. And as everyone knows, it is smack dab in the center of the theater district and the myriad of eateries in the area, many of which seemed to be crowded rip-off joints catering mostly to a non-NY crowd. (We went to a friend’s restaurant in NoHo, called Five Points, which I emphatically recommend for a great dinner or brunch although I am clearly prejudiced.)
Intake
Passing through the revolving doors at street level, you enter a plain entrance lobby which seems devoid of niceties and slightly grimy. There you must show your hotel ID to the usually formidable-looking but always friendly security guard. You then take an elevator to the main lobby on the third floor for check in. As New Year’s approached, these guards seemed to become more and more imposing in stature probably in order to keep out the non-registered guests. This busy location at 47th and 7th obviously has forced the hotel to develop a good security plan and from everything I saw it seemed to work very well leading up to and during the NYE festivities.
Upstairs check-in was the usual big-hotel experience, and looking around the lobby, there was not much that was distinctive enough to remark on here, except its lack of distinctiveness. The chairs and sofas were oversized and comfortable. The well-stuffed upholstered chairs did have an interesting design feature I noticed, which was that one arm was higher than the other, affording some privacy from strangers on one side while being accessible to whomever was sitting on your other side. There was a huge red sofa that I actually lusted after for our own living room and it literally engulfed my kids and would have been great for watching your favorite movie at home.
My daughter excused herself to use the women’s room off the lobby past the little snack bar, and when she came out she was literally cross-eyed and staggering and I thought she was going to faint. She was not acting because she hadn’t noticed me. It looked as if she had been assaulted. It turned out that the smell in the bathroom had totally overwhelmed her. Not that the air in North Carolina is so pure, it’s not, but the last time we visited New York she had innocently remarked to my ex mother-in-law that “the air in NYC smells.” I had forgotten this comment of hers but it obviously had been added to my mother-in law’s repertoire of anecdotes because she repeated it to me four months later when I spoke to her about this New Year’s trip. My daughter is just a bit sensitive to smells. Now when I entered the lobby bathroom I was prepared for the worst, but honestly it was not that bad, I have experienced far worse. I think the main problem was poor ventilation rather than infrequency of cleaning.
The rooms
Soon we were in our room on the 37th floor on the 47th Street side facing north. The hotel has 45 floors and about 460 suites, 12 conference suites and two 2-bedroom Presidential suites (I believe these are the so-called Ball-Drop Rooms). They claim the rooms are among the largest in Midtown and they may be right. However, we took the time to check out the suites at the Warwick Hotel a few blocks to the north. The sitting room at the Warwick seemed to be double the size of the Doubletree’s sitting room.
The sitting room at the Doubletree measured approximately 12’ X 19’, leaving enough room around the pull-out sofa when fully extended for a person to do exercises, while a second person still slept in bed. If you tried the same activity in the Warwick sitting room, you could have two or possibly three people doing exercises in the extra sitting room space beyond the extended sofa bed.
However, the bathroom in the Doubletree was much larger and measured approximately 12’ X 5’ accommodating all four of us very comfortably over our vacation, especially since it had two entry doors, one from each of our rooms.
The beds
The king size bed in our suite was a high-end bed with a firmness that pleased us and quality linens made for Hilton Hotels. Housekeeping brought us extra pillows right away and with no grumbling. The pull-out Queen in the sitting room was better made than most I have seen, yet the uncomfortable band of springs across the middle still was a significant negative for all but younger children. We put the mattress on the floor each night for a very comfortable night’s sleep. Looking around from that vantage point, I noticed the floor was very clean, indeed spotless, so that I had no qualms whatsoever about sleeping on the mattress on the floor. However, since we did have the advantage of removing the mattress altogether from the sofa, we noticed that several items had fallen through the sofa cracks and had been overlooked by housekeeping. Otherwise, the daily housekeeping was exemplary and our suite was spotless in every other respect.
Other amenities
Internet was available for $9.95 for 24 hours through a plug on the desk lamp. We did not order it. The lower tier of the two-tier desk was on casters and slid nicely under the higher tier and saved some space. There was an Aeron-style office chair. The TV’s in each room were fairly large, I’m guessing 32” or so and had what I would call standard cable which included MTV. There was a gaming controller, which we didn’t use. The room had a small safe with push button controls and a built-in dorm-size refrigerator, which froze our food and had no visible temperature controls. The cold-water-only wet bar in the sitting room had a handsome stainless sink and arched faucet flanked by a green granite countertop which held a coffee machine that made a very ordinary cup of coffee. There’s a Starbucks a block away outside and another with WiFi a few blocks down 7th.
The bathroom
The bathroom was stocked with Neutrogena lotions and shampoo products in sample sizes, and bars of their well-known face soap. For the shower was a nice milk soap simply labeled “French milled soap.” The tiles on the floor were non-slip and there was another generous stretch of green granite counter abutting the single porcelain sink. No heat lamp, or terry robes. The faucet and accessories were upscale and moderne tubular stainless steel. The towels were nicely thick, but not particularly extraordinary. Also supplied were a wall phone and a small Conair hair dryer. The shower curtain rod was bowed out giving a much more spacious feel inside the shower, a great design feature I’d like to have in my own bath. All in all, the bath was one of the best features of the suite because it was spacious, accessible, and in very new condition.
The Concierge
Louise the Concierge handled my requests with aplomb and efficiency during our two phone calls. She gave us telephone numbers and the low-down on a Maxwell's in NJ. She contacted her broker for premium theater tickets since we had not reserved well in advance but could only provide a general idea of where the seats would be located in the theater. The price she quoted was $25 higher than the one we were able to receive over the phone ourselves with Telecharge. Nevertheless, I was impressed with her good attitude especially after I noticed she juggled phone calls and handled guests standing in line at the same time. When I met her in person, she was energetic and pleasant, and was typical of the staff at the hotel.
The Conference Room
Right down the hall from us was one of the Conference Rooms and we checked it out while it was being cleaned on New Year’s Day after a party the night before. It was a mess, but it had a wrap-around picture window its entire length that would make a pretty nice party venue for a group of 25-35. Again, the only drawback would be the bland commercial style of the room.
The Business Center
The BC has three Dell computers and two printers. You insert your credit card and are charged $.50 per minute with a minimum of $4.00. Printing black and white costs $1.00 per page. My only beef was that none of these charges was stated up front, either on the wall or as you completed the billing process online. Admittedly I was in a hurry and might have missed the signs or the page online. Still, no one else using the machines could find the information either. I was miffed to have paid $8.00 for printing, when I could have had the boarding passes faxed to the hotel at no charge.
The Fitness Center
We used the Fitness Center once and found it to be pretty well equipped and functioning, but not in the best of shape. No pun intended! The tip of the seat of the stationary bicycle had lost its vinyl covering altogether, and a rubber handle was missing on one of the machines. There was a Roman Chair, a set of free weights ranging in 5 lb. increments from 5 to 50 lbs., a Universal Machine, 2 treadmills, 2 elliptical cross trainers, a stationery bicycle, and a recumbent bicycle.
The Restaurant
We did not eat here but did jot down some of the prices: Continental Breakfast: $13.95; Omelet:$9.95; Two Eggs Any Style: $7.25. We preferred to shop at Whole Foods and eat breakfast from the contents of our stocked fridge.
Getting There From Newark Airport
It is cheaper for four to take a taxi than a train or bus from the airport to the hotel, but on our arrival at the airport we were approached by a chauffeur with a Lincoln Town Car who asked a flat price of $55 plus tip, no tolls. For the return trip, a taxi charged us the meter amount, plus $15, plus tolls, standard pricing to Newark since NYC taxis are not allowed to pick up return customers from there. We paid a total of $63.10 plus tip when we returned to the airport at the end of our trip.
Conclusion
Although we were glad to have stayed near Times Square, by the end of the trip we had had enough crowds, lines, and noise to last a lifetime. For our next visit we will seek out a smaller hotel on a quieter street somewhere in midtown. However, I suspect it may be hard to find a hotel with the spaciousness and amenities of the Doubletree for a similar price.
You may be interested in reading my review of Embassy Suites NYC (Wall Street area), another Hilton Honors affiliate:
http://www.epinions.com/content_192718409348
Thank you for reading my review!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
MamaMiaEtc
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Location: NC, USA
Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 9 members
About Me:
Mother, gardener, twitterer (miaha), serial home renovator, MBA. Appreciate fine art and all things French.
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