We were in town for the conclusion of our fraud case in Federal Court (on the good side of the suit). We have stayed at the Bayfront Omni several times during this lawsuit ordeal and have had positive stays that I have written about on TA. This time was nothing short of a disaster. It started with the booking process at the 800 line. We could not get a room online at the Bayfront and knew it was a better property than the Marina. Giving up I called Omni, the woman on the phone told me there were no rooms available at the Bayfront and we would have to book into the Marina. She said there were 6 weddings and many flight crews that were booked into the hotel and it was sold out. I got off the phone and wondered why so many people would be getting married in January on weekdays, didn't make sense. I didn't question Sue as to why this was so but she sounded pretty sure of why I couldn't book a room. I decided to call the hotel directly, the woman, Annie, almost transferred me back to reservations but I stopped her and she told me they had plenty of space but that Monday they were doing maintenance of some kind and we couldn't get a room that day only. That sounded more like the real story and we booked in for two nights. Our first night at the Marina wasn't good and I wrote a separate review on that. When we moved over after our hearing, the valet guys were fine and a bellman took our things up. At the front desk Annie checked us in, I tried to reserve a room for a friend of ours but the rate had mysteriously gone up another 20.00 dollars overnight. Annie said it was due to occupancy so I passed on paying 169.00 a night for another room, now I am even more thankful I didn't book that extra room. We got into the room and discovered pretty quick that the bathroom had a bad smell, the bathtub faucet was dripping, the A/C was shutting off on it's own and the room was staying warm. On our way out we asked Annie to change rooms and she obliged, Annie was very helpful the entire time but it's too bad this hotel doesn't allow more latitude for the staff to make guests happy.
When we got back to our hotel from visiting friends the stay got rapidly worse. I dialed zero and asked where I could get water in the hotel, the woman told me there were vending machines on the 3rd floor. I thought this was interesting since the vending in the Marina Tower was also on third floor. I went down to the third floor and walked all over for 5 or 10 minutes not finding anything. I returned to the room and called again, this time another woman told me they were on 2nd. BINGO, this time, they were where I was told. In hindsight I think the two properties share an operator or at least that is the only way I can think of for someone telling me vending is on three at the Bayfront when it's on two. Anyway, I went down there and swiped my credit card only to find the machine was out of water. Mind you there are two soda dispensing machines and only one slot for water. I returned to the room and called the operator again, no help at all, he said I could call room service. After some prodding he also said that the bellmen have water. I asked him if he could have the bell stand send up a couple of waters and he agreed. After 20 minutes and our food arriving from room service, I walked down and the bell stand gratefully gave me 4 small waters. Those guys are great and we took care of those guys well. We started to get into our food and discovered that there was only one setting so I called room service, they said they were sending another "right away". We waited another ten minutes and finally I clawed into my food without utensils. We finished our food (which was good) and were settling in watching TV and we got a knock on the door, it was a lady with three large bottled waters. Now mind you this was at least 30 minutes after I walked down and got some already. 20 minutes later another knock at the door and Voila our place setting appeared, I nicely told the woman that we had eaten an hour before and I didn't even take the tray with water and the setting. 20 minutes later there was another knock on the door and it was a fruit plate from room service for messing up our meal. Nice thought but we were full from eating, I put that in the refrigerator where it stayed. Mind you I had to get up each time and get dressed to answer the door. After another 30 minutes I got a call from Room Service asking how our meal was and had to go into the whole story. She assured me they would credit something off the meal total but didn't specify how much which I thought was weird. Again, no power to the employees to fix wrongs. We finally got to sleep and the sleep was good, no complaints there. When we left the room the next morning to go down to breakfast I noticed that the woman who brought the place setting chose to leave the setting and water in the hallway by our room rather than take it back where she came from. Never have seen that before. We stopped at the front desk to ask to have the cockroach that appeared in our tub overnight evicted. We had to walk up a stopped escalator to the second floor. I looked and both up escalators were stopped. Not a big deal to me but I bet it is to older people. If you have escalators run them in both directions or tell us why they are stopped.
After breakfast my fiancé went down to the gift shop and got a coffee and bought a hat, she wanted to put it on the room. The lady asked her if she "had a room here". WTH ? Why would she ask if she had a room there if she wants to put it on the room ? Maybe it came out wrong but it sounded insulting to my fiancé. So, from the booking process all the way through to the gift shop things aren't like they used to be. Not sure what is going on with this hotel but I am going to guess there is new management involved. The employees don't seem happy anymore and our stay certainly reflected problems. We were laughing that the Wynn in Vegas was going for 139.00 last night. Trust me this property is no Wynn and certainly not worth 149.00 at least not this time. I stayed over 325 nights in hotels last year and can speak from experience that this was not a good stay. Next time we will probably look around for a better hotel and a better value.
Room Tip: Maybe we were the exception to the rule here but I didn't get that impression. I would check ar...
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
