I haven’t written a hotel review in awhile, so here’s one for you.
The Sheraton New Orleans hotel has fascinating elevators with no floor buttons, but air conditioners that don’t condition and all-flat-sheet bed construction. Overall, that makes for a sad matt. Don’t read any further unless you really want to read a hotel review. Seriously.
The bed thing is something that Drew pointed out years ago that may have bothered me before that, but since I didn’t have a name for it, it was no big deal. Now, though, I notice. And name or not, this Sheraton is particularly bad. There’s a blanket that went onto the mattress, then a flat sheet atop that. then you, then another sheet, then a comforter thing, then a spread that was more of another sheet. The upshot is that, even one guy who sleeps relatively calmly managed to really fuck up his sleeping arrangement in two short nights. If you’re reading this, hotel owners, you absolutely have to have bottom sheets that attach to the friggin’ mattress. I don’t want to be sleeping on the bare mattress, no matter how much money this saves you.
That is all.
Also, the elevator thing is dumb because you typed in what floor you want and then the voice tells you what elevator to take (A through E). It managed to confuse everyone, which was nice, but otherwise was absolutely no improvement over regular, press-when-you-enter elevators. They certainly weren’t faster. I mean, the Chicago place had slower elevators, and New York is extra-guilty of shitty elevator action, but for a joint with ten elevators (2-25 and 26+), the waits were still pretty damn long.
And air conditioning should work. It wasn’t that hot *and* the room had a set minimum temperature of 65 degrees, so this should have been a no-brainer. No such luck. I always turn the A/C down when i get into a room because, jesus, people are always living in 90+ degree rooms, but I try to be responsible and turn the temp back up when I leave or when it actually cools down too much (can there be such a camelot-of-hotels??). In places like this with digital thermostats and set minimums, I expect that the room will at least cool to that minimum, but I can tell you that we got nowhere near our 65-degree promise. I’ve learned, however, that there’s no “fixing” these situations, because the system ain’t broke. It’s just lying.
So, overall, Sheraton New Orleans, you didn’t fare that well for this reluctant roadie. Maybe wherever we stay in Ottawa will be better.
