Another bad PBH check in experience...

[wegs3000]

I hate to say it because we absolutely love love love the hotel but the front office check in was the absolute worst. We arrived at 5:30pm (4pm check is their stated check in time!) and everyone including us is being told rooms are not ready and they will call when they are. At 6pm I get a call that room is almost ready. At 7:30 still no phone call so show up in person to get room but not room we wanted. Told we will get better room next day so leave packed bags by door in the morning and come back to better room all moved in for us. This is not what we wanted to do on day 1 of a week long vacation. Next day go enjoy park and come back. New room not ready. They give us a "day room" but tell us not to unpack, better room will be ready soon. At 5pm finally get call that better room is ready. Go back to day room and keys have been unprogrammed. Had to call security and call front desk for the zillionth time. This is a huge hotel so going back and forth to lobby and rooms was no small task. Finally got into room at 6pm on second day (3 rooms in 24 hours). We were totally fried. We were told that VIP/certain AmEx card holders can check out at 4pm. Check in is at 4pm so they are banking on people showing up much later. Inexcusible especially for the kind of money paid for the room. We would have been completely happy with the original room we booked available when we arrived for the entire stay and not had the better room.

We enjoyed every bit of the hotel and facilities after we finally got settled in. Club level was worth it for us as we used it a lot. Staff was terrific. Distance to park was absolutely no big deal and we enjoyed the beautiful grounds and peace and quiet. I just wish check in had been better. Not sure right now if we would go back again because of it. I will say this - we watched people yelling and screaming at the front desk manager and they did not get any further along than we did. We kept our cool and eventually did get a better room than we expected.

 

[damo]

Ugh...that is awful. What an annoying way to start a vacation! They must have had a shortage of housekeepers for some reason. We've never had an issue checking in.

 

[Bluer101]

I can understand you being upset due to the room not being ready until way later. On the other hand you said "not the room you wanted". They make every effort to make everyone happy and sometimes it does not work out. They went ahead and got you moved the next day to a better location. You can request rooms but they are not promised. Now if you paid for an upgraded room and got a standard then I would be double upset.

We had an problem like yours also at RPR. We arrived at about noon and did not expect the room to be ready since it was summer months. We then go to the parks for the afternoon expecting a call around 4pm. Well 4 came around and no call. We waited until 6:30 pm to go back and see. I get to the front desk and they said about 15 more minutes since they were backed up on cleaning, no problem. 15 minutes later phone call, got our room.

We get our stuff from the car (we don't use bellhop much)and take them up to our room. When we get in our room the room had a very strong odor of bleach and cleaning supplies. We waited about 10 minutes and we were getting a headache. So since we were spending a week, I went back to the front desk to get a room change. By that time more rooms were ready and she moved us down the hall. When we go back to our old room to get our stuff, the key was deactivated and could not get in. So back to the front desk and they had someone meet us there to open it.

After all that our new room was great with no problems. I try not to let things like this get me mad since they are out of our control and stuff like this happens. It could have been a lot worse.

My folks joined us on another trip and were up most of the night with a loud neighbor and about 4 am they went to the lobby to complain. In the middle of the night they got moved. So in the am we went to the room only to find out they are not there. I called them on their cell phone and found out what happened. But they were happy since they got comped breakfast buffet for the two of them the rest of the trip.

 

[Bethenny]

I agree. That's unacceptable. We had the exact opposite at the HRH. I decided to add a day onto our trip, but had to book a separate reservation and a different type room. When we arrived at 5pm I was so surprised to find out that we were able to keep the same room the whole time. They even upgraded us to a pool view (booked standard). Though not much of a pool view, but I'm not complaining.

They were also running a "raffle" if you checked out early. You got so many tickets if you checked out by a certain time. The winner got a free night during a future stay. I don't know if it was just because of spring break, or if they do this all the time. But I thought that was a nice way to get people to check out early.

I do have to say it's a nice perk to allow people a late checkout. But they shouldn't make it so late. You're not going to make people mad by not giving them a very late check out. But you will make people mad by not allowing them to check in on time.

 

[wegs3000]

I have to say that the other bad check in experiences and/or negative reviews of PBH I thought were due to people whose expectations were so high that no hotel could ever meet it nor make them happy. So it came as a total shock when the situation went bad and then took way too long to get better.

To be clear, the room we got on night one was not the room we booked and paid for so they did try to make it up for the remainder of the stay. So we did feel justified in being totally ticked that it took so much effort on our parts to get the wrong righted.

I felt genuinely bad for the front end staff who knew they were telling people news that would make them unhappy. I'm just hoping someone at Loews is reading these reports and gets the situation fixed as the hotel and staff are too nice to lose good customers. Every other aspect of the hotel was top notch.

 

[macraven]

wegs, you didn't get comped for what you went through?

i am shocked if you weren't.

Loews/PBH doesn't want anyone to be miserable or put out when they are on vacation with them.

 

[natebenma]

We enjoyed every bit of the hotel and facilities after we finally got settled in. Club level was worth it for us as we used it a lot. Staff was terrific. Distance to park was absolutely no big deal and we enjoyed the beautiful grounds and peace and quiet. I just wish check in had been better. .

Sorry to hear about the difficulties you had at the start of your trip with the multiple rooms!

This is not really related to the original thread, but any chance you would share some info about the PBH Club Level, either here or on another recent thread started on this board by another poster?

What are the Club hours?

What are some of the offerings throughout the day?

We are looking forward to our first family trip to Universal/IOA and have a 4 night stay at PBH Club Level.

TIA!