Bill C.'s Profile

Wow.  All I can say is: 8pm on a Thursday, and only one other table is in the place.  The garden salad was so tarted up with dressing, blackberries, sunflower seeds, blueberries, and the odd onion and sundried tomato that I couldn't finish it.  The pepper encrusted steak was absolutely slathered in a mystery brown sauce and contained so many fatty pieces I had to spit out.  The waiter was gorgeous but that doesn't make up for this truly awful meal.  Andy Portico says two thumbs down!!!  Thanks for watching.

The biggest thing to note about the Aloft is that EVERYTHING FEELS CHEAP.  Let me give you some examples:

- This is the only hotel I've stayed, IN MY WHOLE LIFE, that does not give out free mini soaps.  Not for the shower and even for the sink!  In the shower, there is a dispenser which gives out shampoo/conditioner on one side and gel soap on the other.  For the sink, you actually have to squeeze soap out of a little tiny tube every time you want to wash your hands.
- Towels: two bath towels, two hand towels, two washcloths.  That's it.
- There are no glasses, only two cardboard cups replete with plastic to-go lids.  And there was no real caffeinated coffee, only decaf (this may have been a housekeeping oversight, but a mistake all the same).
- The shower -- there is no tub at all -- has a swinging door that can't seal shut and naturally leaks all over the floor by the toilet.  There is no tile in the shower, it is square, flat bricks that feel like they are from a corporate office park, circa 1979.
- The ironing board comes only up to mid-thigh.  Perfect if you are having your clothes pressed by Oompa-Loompas.  Otherwise, dashed inconvenient.  
- The standard room is very small (they do have larger rooms, which as a Starwood Gold member I should have been offered, but didn't get).  It is divided, as the other reviewer says, by a less-than-full-height wall that has plenty of storage (which you won't use).  I am telling you now: this place absolutely screams "dorm room."  There's no privacy between the toilet and the bedroom because the sliding door doesn't close at the side, or the top.  Because the bed is square in the middle of the room and butts against this flimsy little half-wall, the whole time I'm sleeping I'm thinking I'm exposed and naked to the world.  What a difference putting your bed against one or two walls makes!  The dividing wall, by the way, is made of cheap plastic that just felt chintzy.
- The lamp on the desk was cheap.  The toilet paper was cheap.  The iron was cheap.  The clock radio was cheap.  The chair was cheap.  Even the cordless phones are cheap.  (Local calls are free.)

This is supposed to be a business hotel.  About the only plus in its favor on that score is that you get strong, free Wi-Fi, a necessity, and it works at the restaurant across the parking lot and without any hassle.  We used the conference facility -- they have exactly one room -- and the lighting and electricity were inadequate, and it's located right outside the bar and fun lobby area, so it was way noisy.

Finally, I was annoyed by the service.  Housekeeping came at 8:30 and, despite my having arranged a late check-out and put the do-not-disturb sign on the door, came and banged again at 11:30 while I was on an important call.  

Plus signs: the check-in boy who told me to have a bubble-gum-infused vodka was cute and so was the van driver.  The van does go anywhere in a 5-mile radius.  CALL AHEAD if you are expecting the airport shuttle, it either runs only on demand or hourly (I never got a clear answer).

I had high hopes for this place, but the "W's little brother" concept needs to be scrapped.  This hotel is trying too hard and the kind of people who appreciate a good W hotel -- no in-room wall-mounted wine bottles here -- are just going to be annoyed with the chintzy, ersatz feel of everything in the hotel.  (Example: there are flat plastic panels in the elevators that have blue water and air bubbles in them.  When you step, they mysteriously move around.  These are cheap too.)  And the hotel is not going to hold up well because the plastic everything is going to flake off or break off.  I went walking and found the plastic exterior panels were already peeling away; time will not be kind to this hotel.  The whole time I was staying there, I kept thinking, "Damn, I wish I were staying at an ACTUAL W, or even just a hotel that's less pretentious and actually gives out real soap."

I'm being tough on this place and giving it only 2 stars because I feel I should have gotten better.  For all the hype and pretension, it should have been a knockout experience, but it wasn't, and this "Vision of W Hotels" (as they call themselves) really isn't much cheaper than staying at the W.  So don't believe the hype.

Ehhh.  It was OK.  The food was pretty fresh.  The service was not completely up to par.  I was annoyed with the host from the get-go; he would not let me have a booth because I was dining alone, and he then tried to offer me the crummiest table in the house (the one right by the door, which is the one with the most traffic).  I'll note that there was always at least one booth open right next to the little table I was forced to sit at.

Waiter Anthony, if you are out there, you did an OK job.

Service took FOREVER and was rude... until I ordered $60 worth of sushi for myself.  The atmosphere was minimal.  On the way back to the hotel I felt like I was going to burp up most of what I'd just eaten.  Not a fan.

Eww, this was not a fun experience.  I had a reasonable amount of dinner and one cosmopolitan.  It was $77.  For that kind of money, you expect to have good food.  The fish was just so-so -- as the old joke goes, the portions were small, too.

Ay ay ay, muy delicioso!  The soothing feeling of chicken snappers sliding down my throat reminds me of happier, gentler times growing up in the cornfields of Ohio.  The service was really good.  What can you say... it's Chili's and you're in Utah.

Let me get this out of the way: the food was very good.  We ordered things at a measured pace and they arrived that way.  We constructed a meal out of three appetizers, an entree, and two desserts.  It was all delicious.

Now with the service.  I had to ask three different people where our waiter was.  I'd say that we waited longer than 20 minutes to see the waiter, which almost prompted me to walk out.  However, she did come, and apologized profusely, and then the manager sent over a free appetizer, and when our entree came, FOUR people delivered it in sort of an attack force, and everything was extremely good.  I would give five stars for this kind of service, except that I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten it if I hadn't made my displeasure known early.

So, great food; service questionable; manager more than able to make it right.

Great service and good food.  A fun place to be.

A small restaurant tucked away in the back of a strip mall near the Pensacola Beach bridge. The style is Greek, although sometimes it's hard to tell: for example, the free appetizer seems to be two hamburger buns, feta cheese, and olive oil. Still it does offer a number of excellent seafood and lamb dishes and the service is OK. Try the hummus.

You're in Pensacola: it's about seafood and not so much about lamb.

Ehhh.  Nothing awesome... nothing terrible.  Good service, but the food was not really memorable.  What do you expect from a restaurant in a mall.