Read in the Wall Street Journal about this new hotel. Found a good rate on Travelzoo and decided to give it a try. To sum it up, if I hadn't been paying the Travelzoo promo rate, I'd be royally upset.
But let me clarify an important point. The staff are VERY nice and friendly. The front desk person who checked us in was courteous and efficient, but so evidently overworked. Everyone else we met was friendly.
A second good thing about the Chelsea is its location, right on the boardwalk.
OK, so they say it's still a somewhat "soft" opening, after a year. Indeed, the Chelsea "Lite" part of the hotel, including its coffee shop, aren't open yet. So perhaps some things will fall through the cracks and are acceptable. There are just too many of them.
Where do I begin? First, the walls are paper thin. I could hear the person in the next room snoring the whole night. As well as someone sneezing. And someone talking in the hallway. Someone going to the bathroom.... The only time these noises could not be heard through the thin walls was when the A/C came on. It's so loud it drowned out everything else.
Highspeed internet is free. But it's so slow I thought I was using a dialup. Often times it wasn't even working.
No safe in the room. For guests going to the beach, or to the casinos, I'd think a safe is a nice touch,
No iron or ironing board.
No coffeemaker.
The slowest elevators ever.
Not even a guest service directory in the room.
Room is ok in size. Bathroom decent size.
We arrived at the hotel around 3:40 pm and were told check-in was at 4. Front desk person was nice, but I got a bit ticked off when he kept referring someone checking in at 3:40 as an early check-in. Anyway, he said the room probably wouldn't be ready for 45 minutes to an hour. Now, the way I see it, even if check-in was 4 pm, the room should be ready by 4? And not 4:30.
In any event, we were able to get into our room around 4:30. But our luggage was with the bellmen, and they didn't show up till half an hour later. Main reason? The elevators were so slow it took forever to go anywhere.
Check out was a chore too. No video checkout. No apparent way to do any express checkout. Line up and get processed. But there was only one front desk person on duty.
And we couldn't call down for the car. We had to take the ticket to the front desk, who processed it (charged it to our room, when we check out, not when we check in) and stamped it, and we then take it to the valet to get our car. By the way, no clear signage as to where we were supposed to wait for the car either.
All in all rather disappointing. Maybe when they fix all the bugs it will be nice. But right now it's just not there.

My buddies and I booked several rooms at the Chelsea for a bachelor party. The hotel itself was fine (probably on par with a Sheraton, but with a 50s hotel theme), however we had many service issues.

Some of our issues included: losing our dinner reservations, not being able to make room keys, no food service at the pool, slow elevators, inability to bill a single room, and a general lack of understanding for how a hotel should operate efficiently. For three hundo a night, this was clearly not acceptable.

On the bright side, they did give me a complementary stamp for a postcard.

My husband and I just got back from a Tuesday night stay at the Clesea and were very disappointed. We arrived around 7 PM and had to wait 15 minutes to check in because there was only one person working at the front desk. We had partial ocean view on the 10th floor and I would describe the decor as Shabby Chic. The room was in blue and brown tones with a leopard print chair and glossy white cockatoo lamps. I felt like I walked into an HGTV set. The beds and bedding were very comfortable, and the towels and amenities good quality. The water pressure in the shower was borderline acceptable. There was no iron, ironing board, refrigerator, safe or coffee makers in the room. The rooms didn't even have a brochure about the hotel or a map showing you where the spa, pools and other facilities were. The workmanship in the room was also borderline-crooked wallpaper seams, and sloppy caulking around the bathroom sink. The restaurant - Chelsea prime was a huge disappointment. We did not have reservations. When we got there, there were a lot of empty tables and were told we would be seated in less than 15 minutes. 45 minutes and 2 drinks later - and watching almost everybody who walked in get seated -no table. When we asked, they "lost" our name. 10 minutes later we were seated and waited for 10 more minutes. No one even brought us water. We looked around the dining room, and no one had food on the table and there was a lot of negative body language - crossed arms, people slouched in chairs, so we got up and walked out. No one asked us why we were leaving. So much for the much anticipated new S Starr restaurant!. We then thought we would hang out on the 5th floor - advertised as being a great hang out for the over 21 crowd. I'm not sure what the advertisements were referring to, because the place was over run with pre-teen kids. We couldn't get near the pool table. On the positive side, the valet service was exceptional, they did everything they could to be helpful. The beach service was also great, though there were no waiters taking food and drink orders as advertised. The advertisements also advertise it is on the board walk. Well, it is if you walk around the building that is sitting in front of the Chelsea. There is no direct boardwalk frontage. The Chelsea was a Holiday Inn that was renovated. One of my fellow travelers summed it up correctly, once a Holiday Inn, always a Holiday Inn.

We just returned from a one night stay at the Chelsea. The hotel is beautiful and in a great location. We had a great experience from valet parking to check out, the service far exceeded our expectations. I can't say enough of the service, everyone went out of their way to say hello, good morning, and to see if we needed anything. The 5th floor was great and the pool bar had one of the best mojito's I've ever had. We will definitely return to the Chelsea!