We stayed at The Magic Castle Hotel the first time in April 2010. Back then we had a superior queen room. The room was OKish but quite small.
However, service was awesome! Everyone who worked there, was incredibly nice and helpful.
Location was perfect, very close to graumann's. Also a nice distance to Universal studios and TV show taping locations. It also had "Cheap" parking in a closed garage.
So we returned to the hotel in May 2012 but booked a one bedroom suite, because of the bigger size and the "full kitchen" and the length of our stay.
The superior queen room would have been a bit small for a longer stay.
The one bedroom suite is really big, no question about that. We had room 118 on the ground floor with bedroom to the side of the hotel which is good because you don't have the noise from people at the pool or having breakfast outside.
However the room was in a bad need of remodeling. Kitchen cabinet doors were crooked and the whole kitchen very dated. There were almost no pots and pans to cook, not a lot of kitchen utensils at all. Basically not even enough to cook a some pasta and make a sauce at the same time.
The bathroom looked somewhat dirty, even though it was most certainly cleaned. Drains in bathroom must be very small or close to be clogged because when we took a shower, water would need a few minutes to completely go down the drain. So we just stood in the water up to over the ankles.
The faucet on sink in bathroom was leaking: whenever you open the faucet, water runs from the side of the faucet.
Dining area table is made of metal and glass but is not sturdy at all. It would move and squeak a lot when just touching it. So basically it was impossible to eat at the table because it moved too much.
The room keys wouldn't work very often and had to get changed several times.
The room opposite ours was the cleaning staff's room. So it was very noisy during the day.
Wi-Fi quality was good in living room, but very bad in bedroom. Wi-Fi was not secured with a password. So basically you just had to click on a "connect" button and you would be connected to the Internet.This made very easy for people outside the hotel to access it. And my laptop got actually hacked while I was at the hotel. Someone hacked into it and registered a website (infoteam-2012.info) with my name using my data from my laptop. Luckily whoever hacked into it didn't do anything worse.
When we checked out, we are asked how we liked it and we told them about all of the above. And the front desk guy seemed very concerned about that and gave us a reduction on the bill. He said he would talk to his manager so he could contact us.
On our way from the lobby to the garage, the manager actually intercepted us and apologized for the inconveniences. He offered to take off a further night from our bill and the parking costs and offered us a free night for a future stay if we wanted to give them a second chance. That was great of course.
So in October 2012 we returned for two nights (one of which was the free night). When we arrived the front desk guy mentioned the problems we had had before. As always he and his colleague were unbelievably nice.
We got the same room (118).
When entering the room, we were very disappointed, because nothing had changed really. The kitchen still looked dated. The bathroom still looked dirty.
The table still was squeaky and unstable. Water was still running down the drain in the bathroom very slowly, the faucet was still leaking and Wi-Fi was still not protected by a password.
At that point we decided not to return to the Hotel, since even though they promised us to solve the problems, we had had a few months earlier, they hadn't done so.
We didn't even feel like complaining since obviously it wouldn't change a thing really.
The first evening we had Chinese delivery, and after finishing we used the insinkerator to get rid of the rests. At some stage water wouldn't go down the drain anymore. They drain was clogged even though we used a big amount of water while using the insinkerator. So we went to lobby to tell them and they told us a maintenance guy would come by to fix it.
A few minutes later, the guy arrived and started to fix it. He was there for almost an hour and
at some stage he was told by someone on the phone to stop because of the noise at late hours. He told us someone would come in the morning to continue.
So next afternoon when we got back someone else was in the room still fixing it. Eventually they had fixed it. I think they hat to change some piping because they were rusty as far as I understood.
So all in all, it was unfortunately a very disappointing experience.
We won't return to the hotel, which is a shame because as I said before, location is superb and staff is incredibly nice and helpful. But all of that doesn't really count if the room is as bad as it is.
The Hotel would need a complete remodeling. A coat of paint is not enough!
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