Bedroom / Door to Bathroom

After my pretty awful stay at the Intercontinental San Juan, I cancelled my second stay there and rebooked the Radisson Ambassador Plaza Hotel & Casino San Juan. This is further away from the airport in San Juan and is about a 20 minute ($18) cab ride from the airport.

The hotel itself is located near the ocean (about 2 blocks away) and the hotel is in a tree lined residential neighbourhood.

Street

Located short-end on to the street the property is divided in to two parts. The main tower and the area reserved for their ‘high rolling’ guests and frequent stayer elites. As a Gold member of Club Carlson I was directed to this area. To access it you go to the back of the property, past the casino and lounge bar to a separate set of lifts.

Lobby

Gothic Lift

Check-in was in the Lounge on the 9th Floor and I was told that I had been upgraded to a suite on the 8th floor as a Gold member. This seemed pretty good to me and I took the stairs down to my room.

Stairs to Lounge

The stairs I late discovered had opening hours, which enabled the staff to control entrance to the lounge.

The Room

The suite consisted of two rooms, the sitting room which was accessed from the hallway and the bedroom which had a balcony and overlooked the car park, but from which you could see the ocean.

The living room was dark as the light had a long way to come from the balcony windows in the bedroom. There was a TV, Microwave, Fridge, desk, chair, sofa bed and coffee table.

Living Room

A small doorway led to the bedroom

Living Room

Although small the bedroom was light and airy with a large bed near the windows:

Bedroom / Door to Bathroom

Plenty of storage space in the room and also another TV:

Storage Space

The bathroom was off the bedroom and bright and airy. Probably it needed some extra cleaning as there were several long black hairs hanging about. I had trouble getting water hot enough to shower, but this may have been a result of the power problem I mention below.

Bathroom

Bathroom

The balcony, whilst not large, was enough to be able to sit on if you did not mind the view of the car park below:

'View' from balcony

To be fair the ocean was visible between the adjacent buildings

Balcony view towards Ocean

I slept well in the room, until about 4am when there was some sort of local power failure where all power was lost after a huge bang from the street. The power came back fairly quickly but burglar alarms were sounding for some time.

The Lounge

The lounge was, to my thinking, slightly odd. Whilst a huge contrast to the pathetic offering at the Intercontinental – they charged even for soft drinks in the evening – $2.25 for a can of coke. There were nibbles, including a warm item. Breakfast was more generous with plenty of cold items available.

The staff were universally friendly and I enjoyed my brief stay at this property.

Corridor

Club Carlson – the frequent stay programme of hotels such as Radisson, has quietly tidied up it’s web site to make the display of information about your stays clearer.

When you access your account you are shown a bar chart showing your stays to date against those needed for each level of status.

Once you then click in to your statement you are presented with details of all accounts you have merged as well as one line per stay in the period selected. You can then click against a stay in order to show the breakdown of points earned for that stay.

All around, a cleaner and nicer presentation.

Some of you may recall that I can easily bought as a hotel guest – offer me a suite and I’m there!

So, after arriving on NZ1 from London I followed the suggestion of the hotels web site and decided to walk from Terminal 2 at LAX to hotel. Described as ‘Three block away’ the walk is a good 10-15 minutes once you allow for having to cross large roads.

Check-In

There were two agents working check-in and no queue. The agent asked for photo ID to go with the credit card (something I hate, but I was not up for an argument). A quick swipe of my credit card and the agent uttered my favourite phrase – ‘We’ve upgraded you to a suite tonight for your Gold Status’. Stunned, as nothing like this had happened in my European Radisson stays, I muttered ‘Thank You’ and went off to find the lifts.

Suite – more like three standard rooms

Huge - that’s the word. I knew there was something I could use to describe how big the suite was. So I shall try to say it with pictures:

Bedroom

Living Room and Desk

Dining Table and Sofas

A large flatscreen TV in the bedroom and another in the Living Room, a dining table for 4, two huge sofas and a desk made up the seating area which seemed as large as two standard rooms. There were two full bathrooms:

Bathtub and toilet

 Welcome Amenity

When I got settled I noticed that the hotel had put in a fruit and cheese plate with a large bottle of water. As there was a fridge behind the desk I stashed these away for the morning.

Welcome Amenity

 Foursquare

When checking in with Foursquare it claims there is a 1,000 point bonus for Club Carlson members. No one knew about this at check-out and the points have not posted yet.

Check-Out

Again, a simple and quick process.

Shuttle to the Airport

The shuttle runs from the hotel to the airport at xx:00 and xx:30 from the rear entrance. It was very full when I caught it with people standing and quite a lot of luggage inside the bus as well as outside so get down to the lobby area early if you want a seat:

Lobby

Rear Motor Lobby

My previous post on the BA flight from LHR to Dublin delivered me to Terminal 1 ready to get the bus to the Radisson in a huge rain storm. The hotel itself is only a five minute walk from the terminal but the rain was so heavy I waited for the bus. The bus stop for the two on-airport hotels is on the other side of the car park, and there is a covered walkway which runs out near the bus stops. I didn’t get too wet. The bus took 2 minutes and it was great to see that the hotel was running two buses to cope with the inclement weather.

View from room on a wet day

Check-in was painless and the status matched Club Carlson Gold membership earned me an upgrade to a Business Room. The room itself was of an average size but was nicely appointed.

The bathroom was pretty standard but clean and had sufficient towels.

After I had been in the room for about 10 minutes, someone from room service appeared with a plate of fruit. A nice touch.

I had booked a Bed-and-Breakfast rate and enjoyed the large buffet they had – of hot and cold food – the usual hot items – eggs, sausage, bacon, two types of black pudding together with cereals, toast, and pastries. Tea and Coffee were delivered by the attentive waiting staff.

At check-out the bill was fine, but I made the mistake of asking to pay in Sterling and incurred the 3.5% currency exchange fee. Silly me.

Overall

The hotel was fine – not wonderful but perfectly acceptable at a EUR96 rate including taxes and breakfast.

Two buses were operating to the airport and mine was quite full with people off on holidays. I alighted at Terminal 2, where the US airlines leave from, as well Air Lingus.

The next post will detail my ‘Day with United’ which started here and finished in San Francisco almost 24 hours later.