My wife, almost four year old daughter and I just got back from a week at the Pacific Terrace Hotel. We stayed in one of the "Family Suites" because we wanted a bit of a kitchen available so we didn't always have to feed our little girl restaurant food all the time.
Here's what I liked about it:
- If you want a "beach" holiday in San Diego, the hotel is perfectly located for that; its right there on a very nice one
- The local area is great for walking around. Not a lot of high end restaurants, but quite a few mid-range / family friendly ones to choose from, all walking distance
- Reasonable drive to Sea World, the Zoo, Old Town, downtown, etc.
- Excellent front desk staff; always extremely helpful
- Excellent room staff
- Prepare to be surprised by how nice the furniture is.
- LOVED the two 40" flat screen hi-def TVs with DVD's.
Here's what was not so much:
- Bell service... hmm... called for assistance with the inflatable sofa bed. No one ever came. My wife eventually figured it out.
- Gave up on the valet parking by the end of the first day. There was NEVER anyone out front when we were coming and going, so we just got used to parking ourselves.
- Last day wake up call... asked for 8:00am, got it at 8:18am. How hard is it to get that, of all things, right? Good thing we weren't in a hurry to catch our plane... this alone would make it impossible for me to ever consider staying here on a business trip
- Standard collection of all the usual hotel annoyances... cracked wine glasses, sinks that don't drain properly (and the SMELL when they don't...), only tolerably clean carpet, one of the phones didn't work, yada yada yada.
- The pool is definitely on the small side, and some days it was a challenge getting a lounger.
In the end, while we enjoyed our stay there, we wouldn't go back. Or at least if we did, we wouldn't stay in the family suite, which cost us over $600 per night. At $100 - $200 per night sure, I'll put up with the little stuff, its kind of expected. But for $600 a night the whole experience should be top notch from start to finish, not just parts of it. Frankly, take away the super nice furniture and TVs and basically the average Marriott Suites is going to give you virtually the exact same experience... at a third the price.
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