lovestotravel1
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2005
- Messages
- 2
We (me, 39 and dd, 7) arrived in Florida from Japan March 25 and spent time with family in the Tampa area until March 30. Rented a car and drove up to Orlando...took about 3 hours from Palm Harbor...traffic on route 4 was horrendous due to construction - thing is, I didn't see one worker, not one...just a mess of orange cones and construction signs. Frustrating.
Found the Portofino Bay Hotel easily with directions printed off from Mapquest. First impression of the place was quite good...we hadn't expected it to so well done in terms of decorating and landscaping. Checked in quickly and were shown to our room. We had reserved a garden view, just the basic, for the two of us. The room had a king bed, chair and ottoman in desperate need of reupholstering (torn cover and burn marks from cigarettes, as well as badly faded from sun). Carpet in need of a good cleaning - it's stained in places, worn in others. A small table and chair that could be used as a desk I suppose was also in the room. The bathroom was large, and the shampoo, conditioner, lotion and soaps were nice. The room itself was like one in your average Hilton or Marriott, nothing special but not bad. Bed was comfy.
The hotel grounds were very nice. Dd enjoyed the slide and beach pool one day, and the hill pool another day. We could see the fireworks from the harbor area just in front of the hotel.
Dinner one night at Trattoria...average food, nice wine, inadequate service...slow, slow, slow. Buffet breakfast in Trattoria the next morning was not as good as expected based on what others have reported. The fruit selection was poor...green melon, orange melon, watermelon, pineapple...cut up into chunks and put in big bowls for people to serve themselves from. By the time the bowl was half empty (after maybe 10 people) the remaining fruit was squished up and a mess. Have to time fruit selection carefully to be first to the fresh bowl. Average offerings of cold cereals. Hot selections in steam tables and run of the mill omelet station with a long wait. The table next to us ordered breakfast from the menu and waited 40 minutes for it...they were irate. I got the feeling that this restaurant staff lacked training and experience to deal with the number of seats it had...I saw plenty of staff around but at both dinner and breakfast, most tables were not being properly attended to.
Room service breakfast the next morning was much nicer. We'll get room service breakfast again should we ever stay at PBH again.
The parks...the first afternoon we went to IOA. FOTL is the best thing ever. We were able to ride everything we wanted without waiting more than 5 minutes, while the regular line waits were between 45 and 75 minutes. Favorites were the Bilge Rat Rafts (3 times in a row), Spiderman and Jurassic Park.
Day 2 we spent the morning by the pool then had spa after lunch...a massage for me and a manicure/pedicure for dd. The Mandara Spa staff is highly professional yet it's still a comfortable place. They took great care of dd in the salon while I had my massage. It wasn't the best massage I've ever had, but it was good...I've found the first massage with anyone isn't always the best anyway so I was happy with what I got. DD's manicure/pedicure looked cute when she was finished, but she was very upset to find that the polish all peeled off each nail in a single sheet the following morning...something must have been done wrong...upset me a bit since we paid $75 for it and it didn't even last 24 hours...we went to CVS on the way home and bought a bottle of polish, polished her nails that night with it (April 1) and she's still got it on now (April 8). Oh well, she enjoyed the pampering, and I enjoyed the massage and could relax knowing she was being taken care of too.
After the spa, we went to Universal Studios park, arriving there around 4:00. FOTL was perfect for us again...we went at a leisurely pace, did every attraction we wanted 2 -3 times. Dd also tried climbing, got a hair wrap, and we had a quick dinner. Back to PBH by 9:30, sat in the harbor and watched the fireworks. All in all, a brilliant 2 days.
Day 3, room service breakfast...nice. Hill pool, also nice. Check out took time since I wanted to pay the balance with money rather than a credit card...seems nobody pays with money these days and the clerk had no idea how to handle it. I'm guessing she didn't handle it quite right, since I got a call that night from Citibank asking if I had my card in my possession and if I had stayed in a Loew's hotel recently...yes and yes. Citibank informed me that they had on file two seperate holds for $500.00 each, one on 3/30 - check in day, OK, I understand that one, one on 3/31 for $490.00...don't understand that one, and one on 4/1 check out day, for $500.00 that they declined because they thought the pattern seemed suspicious. I did use the card at check in and knew they would put a hold on some money on it for incidentals. But...I prepaid the room and tickets with another card in January, and I paid the balance at check out with cash. Seems their accounting/front desk departments need a bit of training too.
What we loved: FOTL, the parks, the water taxi and garden path, the pools, the weather.
What we didn't love: restaurant service (or lack of), credit card problem as described above, the room price (what you get isn't really what you pay for in terms of room quality - but the FOTL access balanced that out for us)
Would we go back to Universal Studios/IOA: Absolutely
Would we stay at an on-site hotel: Absolutely...FOTL made all the difference in the world to us.
Would we stay at PBH again: Maybe...but we might try the RPR or HRH since they are less expensive. At this point, we know for sure that we would stay in one of the 3 and never stay off site.
Found the Portofino Bay Hotel easily with directions printed off from Mapquest. First impression of the place was quite good...we hadn't expected it to so well done in terms of decorating and landscaping. Checked in quickly and were shown to our room. We had reserved a garden view, just the basic, for the two of us. The room had a king bed, chair and ottoman in desperate need of reupholstering (torn cover and burn marks from cigarettes, as well as badly faded from sun). Carpet in need of a good cleaning - it's stained in places, worn in others. A small table and chair that could be used as a desk I suppose was also in the room. The bathroom was large, and the shampoo, conditioner, lotion and soaps were nice. The room itself was like one in your average Hilton or Marriott, nothing special but not bad. Bed was comfy.
The hotel grounds were very nice. Dd enjoyed the slide and beach pool one day, and the hill pool another day. We could see the fireworks from the harbor area just in front of the hotel.
Dinner one night at Trattoria...average food, nice wine, inadequate service...slow, slow, slow. Buffet breakfast in Trattoria the next morning was not as good as expected based on what others have reported. The fruit selection was poor...green melon, orange melon, watermelon, pineapple...cut up into chunks and put in big bowls for people to serve themselves from. By the time the bowl was half empty (after maybe 10 people) the remaining fruit was squished up and a mess. Have to time fruit selection carefully to be first to the fresh bowl. Average offerings of cold cereals. Hot selections in steam tables and run of the mill omelet station with a long wait. The table next to us ordered breakfast from the menu and waited 40 minutes for it...they were irate. I got the feeling that this restaurant staff lacked training and experience to deal with the number of seats it had...I saw plenty of staff around but at both dinner and breakfast, most tables were not being properly attended to.
Room service breakfast the next morning was much nicer. We'll get room service breakfast again should we ever stay at PBH again.
The parks...the first afternoon we went to IOA. FOTL is the best thing ever. We were able to ride everything we wanted without waiting more than 5 minutes, while the regular line waits were between 45 and 75 minutes. Favorites were the Bilge Rat Rafts (3 times in a row), Spiderman and Jurassic Park.
Day 2 we spent the morning by the pool then had spa after lunch...a massage for me and a manicure/pedicure for dd. The Mandara Spa staff is highly professional yet it's still a comfortable place. They took great care of dd in the salon while I had my massage. It wasn't the best massage I've ever had, but it was good...I've found the first massage with anyone isn't always the best anyway so I was happy with what I got. DD's manicure/pedicure looked cute when she was finished, but she was very upset to find that the polish all peeled off each nail in a single sheet the following morning...something must have been done wrong...upset me a bit since we paid $75 for it and it didn't even last 24 hours...we went to CVS on the way home and bought a bottle of polish, polished her nails that night with it (April 1) and she's still got it on now (April 8). Oh well, she enjoyed the pampering, and I enjoyed the massage and could relax knowing she was being taken care of too.
After the spa, we went to Universal Studios park, arriving there around 4:00. FOTL was perfect for us again...we went at a leisurely pace, did every attraction we wanted 2 -3 times. Dd also tried climbing, got a hair wrap, and we had a quick dinner. Back to PBH by 9:30, sat in the harbor and watched the fireworks. All in all, a brilliant 2 days.
Day 3, room service breakfast...nice. Hill pool, also nice. Check out took time since I wanted to pay the balance with money rather than a credit card...seems nobody pays with money these days and the clerk had no idea how to handle it. I'm guessing she didn't handle it quite right, since I got a call that night from Citibank asking if I had my card in my possession and if I had stayed in a Loew's hotel recently...yes and yes. Citibank informed me that they had on file two seperate holds for $500.00 each, one on 3/30 - check in day, OK, I understand that one, one on 3/31 for $490.00...don't understand that one, and one on 4/1 check out day, for $500.00 that they declined because they thought the pattern seemed suspicious. I did use the card at check in and knew they would put a hold on some money on it for incidentals. But...I prepaid the room and tickets with another card in January, and I paid the balance at check out with cash. Seems their accounting/front desk departments need a bit of training too.
What we loved: FOTL, the parks, the water taxi and garden path, the pools, the weather.
What we didn't love: restaurant service (or lack of), credit card problem as described above, the room price (what you get isn't really what you pay for in terms of room quality - but the FOTL access balanced that out for us)
Would we go back to Universal Studios/IOA: Absolutely
Would we stay at an on-site hotel: Absolutely...FOTL made all the difference in the world to us.
Would we stay at PBH again: Maybe...but we might try the RPR or HRH since they are less expensive. At this point, we know for sure that we would stay in one of the 3 and never stay off site.
