A review of my stay at the hotel Millennium in St. Louis.
ST. LOUIS — If you like over priced hotel rooms then the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, Mo. is for you.
For the second time in two years I have had a bad experience with hotels in downtown St. Louis.
Last year, friends and I were forced to change rooms four times in a 20 minute span at the St. Louis Grand Renaissance Hotel.
(see story)
This year five us decided to take in the Atlanta Braves-St. Louis Cardinals series and in the beginning I booked the Grand Reniassance Hotel again.
But after being questioned about why I would return to a hotel that moved us from room to room and after some prodding by co-workers, I decided to change the reservations to the Millennium Hotel St. Louis.
I had always wanted to stay there but figured it was out of the budget. But this year we went for it.
We booked two rooms for the five of us and even reserved one guaranteed arch view room. The hotel is located near the St. Louis Arch is nearly as tall as the Arch.
One room was for three people and with the guaranteed view it was $209 a night.
The second room was for two people and did not have the guaranteed view. Its cost was $169 a night.
The package included free parking at a parking garage and $10 a day in Cardinal bucks. We couldn't complain about that and the location of the hotel in regards to Busch Stadium is a winner.
But the rooms were not.
First of all our room for three contained two towels and was identical to the room booked for two.
There were issues with the heating and air in both rooms and we were learn later that the hotel, which has close to 30 floors only has two ice machines in the entire building. They are located on the fourth and 27th floors I believe. We never made our way to the ice machines because we were told both were broke.
Another problem space.
My hotel mates and I spent most of our time stubbing our toes and banging our knees on the beds.
And if you are somewhat overweight you will not have room to take a bath in the what seems like 2X2 bathroom.
I do not consider myself a professional traveler and most of the hotels I have stayed at in my life have been along the lines of Motel 6, Red Roof Inns and an occasional Holiday Inn.
I found the contents and the decor of this room no better than those and definitely not worth $200 or more a night.
Just to make sure that I have not turned into one of those people that can find something wrong with anything. I asked one of my hotel mates to share her thoughts on the room.
Here is what Cynthia Blevins had to say.
"For the price of the hotel room, several amenities were not included that are included at much cheaper hotels such as Super 8 and Motel 6 or even more upscale hotels such as the Hyatt or Hilton hotels.
"For over $200 a night, there should have been an in-room refrigerator and microwave, ice machines on every floor instead of only two in the entire "upper scale" tower (note there were ice machines on every floor of the "more reasonably priced" tower of the Millennium), and telephones that actually work in the room."
Yes I forgot to add our room had two phones but only one worked. So in case of emergency be sure and pick the working phone.
"There should have also been free Internet service. Even McDonald's Barnes & Noble, and coffee houses offer free WiFi,” said Blevins.
I'm glad Cynthia touched on this as well. My hometown provides free Internet to the entire city which I understand is actually rare but for a hotel now days to charge $9.95 a day I think is outrageous. But they also dressed a bottle of Aquafina water up as a fine wine and at a cost of $5.
Come on, its bad enough to pay $5 for water at a Major League Baseball game.
“There should also have been adequate walking space in the hotel room and bathroom, and a complimentary breakfast that included more than bread and juice,” said Blevins.
Sorry I have to chime in again. For $4 you could add to the free bread and water breakfast. So we did this. My assessment of this was not well either.
The eggs were okay, the potatoes could have been good if they were hot, as it was I could taste the frozen residue. All in all I missed the crepes from the St.Louis Grand Renaissance and I even journeyed over to the Hilton the next day for a muffin from Starbucks which I might add was delicious.
"The $5 bottle of water did not sit well either on our never ending challenge of trying to find something nice about the room/hotel,” said Blevins. “Daily newspapers were outside our hotel room door every morning, however. I'm sure we paid for those, though. And the famous "Arch" view...oh, yeah...we had to stand right at the window and peer as far as we could to the left to get our glimpse of that famous piece of architecture. Enjoyed that!”
"Continuing on the list of very few things that were good about the hotel was the bathroom counter space. It was very nice and spacious, however, the toilet and tub were in a "closet" and was so small you could not even turn around and could barely get the door closed while you were in there.
"Could have used more towels for three people, as they only provided for two...the hotel, however, did bill us for three people in the room.”
"Oh, the spacious desk! Could not ask for a tighter squeeze between the desk and the bed. Could barely get into the chair at the desk. And you have to love the $9.95 for 24 hours of Internet service.
"The highlight of the trip was Larry, our bell hop. He made us feel so welcome, laughing, having such a great time chatting with us. He eagerly brought our bags to our room and when we were ready to leave, he took our bags to the parking garage although he did say he normally did not provide that service. He was very nicely tipped. Larry made the stay very welcoming, providing excellent customer service, and he would be the only reason we would every stay at the Millennium in the future."
Cynthia is right Larry was awesome, he even helped me unload an extra ticket we had to the game. In the end I like the location of the hotel, the parking garage and Larry.
As for the small room with the paper thin sheets on the bed and the weird light show performing nightly on the ceiling, even with the curtains tightly pulled shut, I have to rank it low on my hotels to visited again list.
A return trip to St.Louis may or may not happen again next year but one thing is for sure a return trip to the St. Louis Reniassance would occur before a return trip to the Millennium.
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