Hotel Syracuse: Hotel Hell
Written: Jun 08 '03 (Updated Jun 08 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: can't get much closer to OnCenter
Cons: need WAY more than 15 words
The Bottom Line: Please note that I suggested this hotel was best suited for "adventure travel." That's the best I could recommend, because it certainly is an adventure.
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| pippadaisy's Full Review: Syracuse Hotel |
I have to remember that the next time my gut tells me to change my reservations, I need to change my reservations!
Before the Stay
Before actually going to Syracuse this past weekend for a convention, I did a bit of research to determine where the best place to stay in Syracuse was going to be for us. Seeing that I'm seven months pregnant, we were looking for a hotel that was close to Syracuse's convention center (OnCenter), had decent accommodations, and had an in-house restaurant. After calling the two hotels arranged for by the convention organizers and a few others in the Syracuse area, I made the decision to book our rooms (one for my husband and me, and one for my father) at the Hotel Syracuse.
Approximately a week before our trip, I received a mail from a web group that I'm on with reviews of the hotel from a travel site. None were good. Changing reservations was discussed on the group, but I decided to stick with it, as it was by far the closest hotel, and one of the evening events was actually being held there. In addition, the price for the convention was considerably more than the other hotel they'd arranged for, and for some unknown reason I assumed it was the nicer hotel.
First Impressions
My first impression of the hotel was admittedly colored by my father's and husband's perceptions, as they had checked in while I stayed with the car. (For the record, there is no decent area to leave your car to check-in. There was a 10-minute zone that fit MAYBE two cars, and all the rest of the street in front of the entrance was a "no stopping zone.") The hotel does offer free parking at a parking garage across the street, but this is very inconvenient when checking in and out, as odds are there won't be enough parking in front of the building, so you end up carting luggage to the garage.
As I entered through the doors, I was confronted by a set of stairs and two hallways to get to the guest elevators. I headed back to the elevators, and was a bit alarmed at the overall poor lighting and grimy atmosphere.
Our room was on the ninth floor, in what is referred to as the "old section" of the hotel. There is another, newer section, called "The Tower" that I did not get to see. Both our room and my father's room were confirmed as non-smoking rooms with king-sized beds. I went to our room first.
For a bit of history, the hotel was built in 1924, and still looks very reminiscent of that time period. The wooden doors on most of the rooms have an inset "valet" door that was apparently used for valet service. You'll find no such luxuries now. The Hotel Syracuse is also a "corner" building, and due to its unique shape, has some quirky little hallway features. Our room was down one one of the "points."
From first observation, it appeared that our room was actually one of three converted from what was once a larger suite. The doorways hadn't even been converted, and you could see where the old door to the suite was. In addition, the doors to the three rooms in our "former suite" looked as if they had been pillaged from another area of the hotel, at best, or a scrap pile, at worst.
Upon entering the room, our first reaction was to its size: tiny. The closet door opened right into the room door. The king-sized bed took up the entire room with the exception of enough room on either side for a very small night-table and enough room to scoot alongside to get into the bed. A small armoire contained the television, and there was a luggage rack, but nowhere in the room where you could actually OPEN your luggage on it. The bathroom was small and cramped, with a VERY low-sitting toilet (if you are older, have arthritis, or are very pregnant, good luck getting on and off, as it's about 6 inches off the ground). The glaze on the tub was cracked, and in the case of the soap dish, almost entirely gone. The bathtubs are old and VERY deep. I had a hard time getting in and out.
Room amenities included cable tv (with the channel labels incorrect and no local channel guide), an ironing board, iron, and blow dryer. There was no "Guide to Hotel Services" to be found, and to be honest, I was too frightened to open any of the drawers in the armoire to go looking. I did open the top drawer and found several hairs in there, and that was the end of my search.
My next experience was my father's room. His was also in a corner, and the dust at the top of the door frame was enough to have formed large "bunnies." His door opened directly into his bed, and his room appeared even smaller than ours, if that could be possible. He was also confirmed for a non-smoking room, but you could smell musty cigarette smoke.
The Rumors
Not long after we arrived, we spoke with some convention attendees we had met at last year's convention. They were in the process of changing rooms after allegedly finding a cockroach in one of their rooms. We took this as a warning, and kept all bags closed, and shoes off the floor.
Another group of convention attendees had also called down to the front desk after finding several mouse traps in their room. They were assured that there "were no mice in that room or we wouldn't have taken it off the maintenance list."
The rumors were enough to concern us, but at that point, we had a convention to attend, so we headed off to OnCenter.
The Service
Most of the hotel staff that I came in contact with were friendly and polite. One staff member taking laundry down in an elevator was even kind enough to hold the elevator for at least a minute or so while I waddled down the hall to the elevators.
The first night of the convention included a social get-together in one of the hotel's ballrooms. The ballroom was tiny and cramped, and they soon ran out of seating. The large ballroom was being used for a high school prom. We went into the event, and concessions were made available by the hotel for purchase outside the ballroom. Prices were, to say the least, astronomical. They offered "fruit" by which you could purchase an apple or a banana for a mere $1.00 each. My husband and I split a $1.50 can of soda.
The next morning, we went down to breakfast at 6:00 AM, which was the advertised start time for the buffet. The staff was not completely ready to start serving (it must have been around 6:05 AM by the time we actually met up and got there. In addition, while staff stood around talking to each other, tables from other buffet patrons were left uncleared, and no buffet plates were cleared from tables as customers went up for seconds.
I should also add in that some friends of ours from our local group were in one of the larger double rooms. They were also confirmed for a non-smoking room, and not only did their room smell of smoke, but there were also cigarette butts on the window sill that had been left by housekeeping.
The "Companions" and Other Horrors
I will admit that I'm a bit germ-phobic. Pulling back the covers of the bed to discover that the beds had no mattress covers was a bit of a shock, and I pulled the sheet up as far as I could, tucked it into the top as best I could, and hoped for the best. From what we could ascertain, NONE of the king beds had mattress covers, while those in rooms with two full-sized beds did have covers (they also had much larger rooms for the same price point as the king rooms).
After the rumors of the roaches and mice, I slept with the light on in the room that night. Our first "horror" was when we went looking for ice. The signs pointed to "Ice/Vending" and I assumed that there must be ice AND a vending machine set-up. In fact, the was no vending (the only vending I ever found was on the lobby level tucked next to a game room and the snack machine didn't work), and the ice machine was in a dirty little room. We had other people coming to our floor for ice and asking if our ice was "clean" because the ice on their floor was not. Signs alerted us on the ice machine that "Due to maintenance, ice is only available on the following floors" and listed which floors actually had working ice machines.
We kept looking behind doors for a vending machine, and found a couple of filthy hallways with junk furniture piled in them, chunks eaten out of the ceiling, and peeling paint. I should note at this point that the wallpaper was peeling just about everywhere I looked, and the hallway carpeting looks like it was gorgeous once, possibly around the time of the building of the hotel. It's that old and that dirty.
After breakfast in the morning, my husband went down to the gym to work out. He viewed the pool area, which he said looked clean and well-maintained. The gym contained some Nautilus equipment, an exercise bicycle, and two stair-steppers. Some of the equipment was broken. On his way to the gym, he saw a mouse in the hallway dart in front of him and run into a vacant room. He wasn't going to let me know until after we left, but as I was heading down the hall later, I ran into some of our fellow convention attendees screaming in the hallway, as a mouse had entered their room. I'm not sure if it was the same mouse.
The Restaurants
The Hotel Syracuse web site (http://www.hotelsyracuse.com/main.html) boasts 456 guest rooms. The restaurants are nowhere near ready to accommodate enough guests; there were two conventions in the OnCenter and the first night we went to get dinner and the "Sports Bar and Grill" appeared closed, the "Bistro" was filled to overflowing, and "The Orchid" closed at 6:00 PM.
The overpriced snacks provided at the Friday night event consisted mainly of small slices of pizza, pre-packaged snack food, and some rather smallish plastic-wrapped cookies. The breakfast buffet was decent, and mostly typical (eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausage, pancakes in addition to a continental breakfast), but the cereal selection was geared toward elementary school students, the juice was pre-packaged in small cups, and milk selection consisted of 2% with no other options.
The Sum Total
The room rate was $109 (special convention rate... the lowest I found on travel sites was $129) and my husband and joked that they must pocket every cent of that, because they certainly didn't put any of it toward improving the hotel. We actually were relieved that there wasn't another evening event on Saturday as we had originally thought, as it meant that we could check out a day earlier than we'd planned and head home.
We heard another rumor before we left that the convention organizers had tried to cancel the block of rooms at the hotel, but were told that they would not be let out of their contract.
The location was excellent, however, as we were barely a block from OnCenter.
Recommended:
No
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pippadaisy
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