My friends and I went over to Philadelphia this last weekend after a 13 hour bus ride to watch a live Deadmau5 concert and enjoy the nightlife or culture of philly. However, it turned out to be a complete disaster for us thanks to this poorly maintained hotel. It was located in a pretty shady looking block right next to Chinatown but it was also conveniently close to a lot of the attractions in Philly so that was the only positive bit going for it. There was no free parking so we had to park off at a separate garage nearby to save some money. The hotel looked nice at first from the outside but however the rooms were complete garbage. The lack of a fridge inside the rooms was understandable since it wasn't really in the room description online; it is however a bit of an annoyance to find rooms in a highly rated hotel in 2010 with no refrigerators.
First sign of trouble: the thermostat in our room was broken and kept blowing out warm air. There was no way to reduce the temperature since it was already at the lowest settings.
Second: We found empty bottles of drinks near the bed, probably from the previous visitors in that room. Lack of cleaning from the staff?
FINALLY the biggest disappointment: Our washroom's shower knob broke off easily after a slight turn and the entire room was steaming hot and it was worse than being in a gym's sauna. There was no way to turn the shower off and there were no maintenance employees working there at nights to attend to these problems. The fire alarms eventually turned on because of the steam but no one was able to shut the hot water off. No one was able to help us resolve the problem, some random employees came in and tried different things but they couldn't accomplish anything since they didn't even have access to a maintenance closet with basic tools.
A big hotel with NO tools or personnel available for emergency situations like this on a Saturday night? All we needed was a wrench or a set of pliers to shut the shower off. We were forced to sit around for 2 hours while missing our concert, which was the main reason why we came to philly in the first place. The front desk staff didn't help much at all while we were completely helpless and stressed out. We had to repack all our belongings from our room and leave because it was getting way too hot inside. They finally gave us 2 new separate rooms as an effort to reimburse us but the damage was already done since we missed our deadmau5 concert and had the worst hotel reception possible. They offered $20 to pay for a cab to catch the remainder of the concert but it was already too late by the time we left and reached the place.
In the two new rooms given to us, one of the thermostats was stuck again and didn't work. One of the rooms had another loose / flimsy shower knob that was just waiting to break again, we decided not to use it after what happened before. The other room's shower door did not keep the water out properly because the rubber and plastic was missing, resulting in a flood in the floor each time the shower was used.
Bottom line: Nice looking hotel with horrible washrooms and terrible staff. Please read up other reviews about this place before booking anything here! It will save you a lot of time and may not ruin your trip like it did to ours.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC