djsteve

Hi,
I have an upcoming london trip for sightseeing and catching up with friends. We are a family of four with two young children (both under 7).
I am trying to determine which park plaza to book. both are within £5 of each other per night for a two night mon-wed stay.
We would be booking a studio room for us and including breakfast.

Is there any conclusion on which is better? We want to be located here to allow us to drop off bags quickly from waterloo and meet up with friends by the london eye.

I understand that westminster is bigger - as a gold elite member would this mean more chance of an upgrade? The county hall seems to have a larger range of rooms above the standard studio however....

Any thoughts on the quality of breakfasts or service or generally the rooms in size and quality?

Any thoughts / direction appreciated!

Cheers
dj

loyaltypointsuk

County Hall (have stayed in both, CH just personal preference)

rwoman

I've stayed at the Westminster Park Plaza...while it was a room facing the inside of the hotel, I even had a view of Big Ben through the atrium from my window.

djsteve

I took the plunge and had booked county hall.
Last night I did another search and noted that the room rate for a studio had fallen by around 80pounds for the two nights we are staying next week.
As I had a flexible rate I cancelled and rebooked at the cheaper rate and added a kids package still for less! Rate is still flexible so happy days....
Dj
PS - hope to clear around 30k of points for the stay so happy with that...

LHRFlyer

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.2.2; en-gb; SAMSUNG GT-I9505 Build/JDQ39) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/1.0 Chrome/18.0.1025.308 Mobile Safari/535.19)

Stayed at County Hall a couple of months ago and found it very good.

pantanal

plaza on the river has large rooms, actually suites

FinlandGuy

I stayed at the Westminster Bridge 4 nights last May and had an atrium view but could still see Big Ben. Really liked the room with a separate living room and well equipped bathroom + mini kitchen. The staff was just ok, nothing exceptional.

niehaubs

So this is 1 of 2 threads with basically the same name. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/carls...er-london.html being the other

Anyway, I am going to book both of these hotels due to the availability of "family" rooms on points. I am doing 2 nights at the County Hall and then walking next door to the Westminster in July for a 4 night stay. Works out really well for the 4 nights, plus accommodates 2 people and a teenager much better than having to pay for a roll-away bed or an extra room.

I have not been to either of these, so is there anything I need to know about them not already mentioned? Anything specific about the family sized room? Did it work well for anyone who had more than 2 people who stayed in either place in this size room? I am not worried about no breakfast for my gold status. I am not overly concerned about an upgraded room either, although my eStandby was like 80GBP to stay in the Penthouse Suite at the County Hall. It is tempting, but defeats the "free-ness" of the stay. Plus even that doesn't include breakfast. We will be coming down from Luton airport.

farnorthtrader

We (8 of us) stayed in two family rooms for two nights in each of these last June. Westminster Bridge has a swimming pool, which is very rare in London, but no recognition for Gold member. County Hall room was somewhat smaller and had some candy and juice for gold member. Neither offered any upgrade. There was sufficient room for 4 in each room, but no room really for anything other than sleeping, especially in County Hall. My kids were 14, 11, 10, and 8 and the restaurant at County Hall gave us free breakfast for all of them, with us purchasing breakfast for all 4 adults. Don't know for sure if this is policy or a one off or a temporary deal while we were there, but it seemed like it was standard.

CoweyB

If breakfast charges are an issue then don't forget the proximity of St Thomas's hospital which is right beside the Westminster Bridge hotel . There are some nice cafés (one a Marks and Spencer one) and another that sells gourmet pies if you want a quick lunch. There is also Tom's Restaurant a self service canteen style restaurant that is open weekdays and members of the public can use it too. Eggs bacon and toast here costs a few pounds and a fraction of the cost of the hotel.

Westminster Bridge used to police its breakfasts very strictly with continental breakfast diners being separated from full cooked breakfast diners in the overflow breakfast room on level minus 3 (always the better location to take breakfast because of the extra space) but on my last stay that seemed to have disappeared so I had a nice omelette from the omelette station there. Previously you were offered the opportunity to upgrade to a full breakfast with the breakfast receptionist.

Exec_Plat

Ive stayed here 5 or 6 times. When they are super busy (ie summer) they seem to be much more strict about breakfast policing. Sometimes I get charged, sometimes not.

I will add that I was upgraded to a one bedroom suite facing big ben directly, which was quite nice. Separate dining/living room and a bedroom.

Also was upgraded to a large suite with living room, dining room, kitchen (cooktop, dishes, utencils), bathroom, powder room and an outdoor deck of a few hundred sq ft with views to the city. Wow

SFOPhD

I'm considering staying at County Hall on the tail end of an Africa/Europe trip, and I was hoping to find a convenient way to do laundry. Some old reviews on the internet (2011/2013) mention a free guest laundry room with self-service machines. Does anyone know if this still exists?

aapee

Was there at least in the spring. The usage was free, you just pay for the detergent. Seemed to be pretty popular, so limited availability.

Another option would be Plaza on the River, the rooms/suites have a washing machine.

Notenut

I had accumulated a bunch of CC points via credit card spend, so decided to cash them in at County Hall for 4 nights a couple of weeks ago. We needed a Family Room. We arrived from the US early in the morning and the upgraded room they had set aside for us was not ready so we accepted the non upgraded room when I found out there was no difference in the size of the rooms, just a few extra amenities like bathrobes. Room was decent enough.
Complementary breakfast was not offered but there are a slew of options right in Waterloo Station, including an M & S where we usually picked up breakfast the night before.
Free use of the washers and dryers is still available. We brought a couple of those self-contained capsules with detergent and fabric softener from home
and we were glad we did, the cost of a small box of detergent from the vending machine was a little steep.

The whole area around Waterloo reminds me of Long Island City in New York. It is becoming a very popular area for lower priced hotels and yet is very convenient for getting to tourist destinations. Besides the Underground, several bus routes begin from different areas around Waterloo and made it easy to get to the British Museum, Harrod's, Borough Market, Museum of London, etc above ground so we could see part of the city at the same time, sacrificing some time, to be sure, but a good option for us.

travelexpert

Lat year stayed in the Park Plaza Riverbank Residences using Club Carlson points--and upgraded to river view over Thames towards Houses of Parliament for just $50 per night. But is was end-January--so not high season.

One of my most awesome stays EVER.