Crown Plaza Hotel in Seattle, Washington

In June (2012), my family and I took a cruise out of the port of Seattle, WA. Instead of flying in and directly getting on the cruise ship, we stayed at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Seattle and got on the ship the next day. We also stayed at the Crown Plaza on our return as we flew home the day after we disembarked the cruise ship. The Crown Plaza was expensive (maybe overly so in my opinion), but it was a nice hotel. I thought the staff was friendly but I felt like the hotel failed a little on the customer service end especially considering the cost of the hotel.

Price: My father paid for the hotel, but I know it was around $200 per night and the hotel is currently listed at $199 per night on Expedia (without taxes and fees). I thought this was a little expensive considering the services provided and the quality of the hotel room. There was a fee for all the amenities $10 for wireless Internet per day, $16.95 for the breakfast buffet per person, there was a charge for parking (not sure on the fee there since we didn’t park but valet parking was $34 per day). This is a pet friendly hotel (dog and cats only 100 pound limit and $50 for pets). And there was even a rollaway bed fee of $25 per night. That’s a lot of fees for things I think should come standard with a room. I don’t think you should have to pay for parking or for Internet at a hotel. They do have transfer from the airport but there is a fee for that of course as well. They will recommend you take shuttle express but I would pass on that company because for a family of four they are more expensive and less reliable than a cab.

Location: The location for this hotel is great. It is right in the middle of downtown. It is within walking distance of all kinds of shopping (Coach, Macy’s, Ross) and all kinds of upscale restaurants like Ruth Chris steakhouse, but there is also a subway around the corner. It is also walking distance to the famous farmer’s market Pike’s Place Market. The market features fresh produce, flowers, fish and all kinds of other items. It is really a site to see if you are in town. The hotel is 30 minutes to an hour away from the airport depending on traffic, and 15 to 30 minutes away depending on traffic from the pier where all the cruise ships are docked.

The Room: The room was nice. I have been in nicer places. It was a large room with plenty of space for two people. My sister and I shared a room with two full size beds. It had a nice picture window with a view of the city. The room had nice size desk with a comfortable office chair, a flat screen television, a refrigerator (enclosed in a cabinet), and a chair with a floor lamp and end table. The beds had white sheets and comforters and short kind of dumpy pillows (they were hard to sleep on) and low kind of plain headboards. There was a nightstand with clock radio, a safe, and a lamp on it. Walls were wallpapered with a neutral color and the carpet was yellow beige. The room had unremarkable abstract paintings on the wall. It also had a nice size closet and a full size mirror. The bathroom was an okays size, not overly large but not overly small. It has faux marble floor covering and white tile. The bathroom looked very clean. The bathroom had plenty of counter space and a bath/shower combo. The bathtub portion was large, and the showerhead was tall enough a tall person would not have to duck to take a shower. There was good water pressure and temperature. The bathtub also featured a clothesline you could stretch out in order to dry clothes if you washed them in the sink. However, the toilet in the bathroom was very low and could be hard for some people to get on and off of. The air conditioning in the room looked like the old units but was digital so you could set it to a specific temperature.

Hotel Amenities: The hotel features Internet Access (surcharge), Airport Transportation (surcharge which they failed to mention on the phone when we called them), 24 hour front desk and business center, a conference room, Valet parking (surcharge), and they have a restaurant and a bar lounge which serves pretty good food. We ate there three times. Their burgers are outstanding. At lunchtime, you have to eat in the bar and they may make you show your ID (no one under 21 allowed) even if you are not ordering drinks. They have laundry services, and fitness facilities (which we didn’t use). The hotel also has a gift shop with sodas, postcards, trinkets and other items you might have forgot at home. They have luggage storage, and great porters/bellhops who were very nice and helped us a lot. It is also a smoke free property.

Other Information: Compared to some of the other hotels I have stayed in, this didn’t seem like a $200/night property to me. I think the Hyatt Regency I stayed at in Tulsa was nicer and cheaper. There were other cheaper hotels in the area that were probably the same quality of hotel, but I suppose we paid for the location and the view. They did help us get to the cruise. They transported our luggage to the ship and had a bus waiting for all the passengers traveling to the cruise ships leaving that day. That was extremely helpful. However, on our return from the cruise, the hotel sent a bus for us but did not retrieve our luggage. We were given a special tag on the ship like the hotel was going to come for our luggage but they didn’t. We had to claim it ourselves, and take it all to the curb. We waited a significant amount of time for a bus to pick us up, and it stopped at three different hotels. That wasn’t as quite as helpful, but it may have been run by the cruise line. Also the Crown Plaza has a very late check in time of 4pm, which is very inconvenient if you are a tired, cruise goer who had to leave the ship at 9:30am. While most of the staff was very friendly and helpful, especially the porters who had to carry around our entire luggage from the cruise, I found their general customer service lacking. Now the whole bus/luggage thing could be a miscommunication from hotel to cruise line. We booked our hotel rooms as part of our cruise package and evidently they didn’t convey to the hotel that we needed double beds in one room (we booked two rooms) and it seemed to take an act of congress to get that changed. A manager had to change it in the system in order for us to change rooms. Also, my father booked two rooms in his name and they wouldn’t even put us on the same floor. My parents were in one room several floors up from the room my sister and I was in. This was pretty inconvenient since we were traveling together. Also, the ice machines in the hotel were few and far between and not marked well you would have to know they were there.

Overall for the price, I wasn’t terribly impressed with this hotel. It wasn’t a bad hotel and nothing went really wrong, but I wasn’t wowed either. I would probably check out other options if I ever find myself in Seattle, WA again.