OK, after an enjoyable week at this hotel, it's time for some comments...

Room

The rooms as stated above are great. I was upgraded into a deluxe city room thanks to Centurion's "at time of booking" benefit. As the hotel is sold out I wouldn't have otherwise gotten an upgrade.

One of my favorite little features (which I haven't seen at any other hotel) is the hidden valet door. You can place your laundry in the cubbyhole, push the valet pickup button and they will come and retrieve it without bothering you. There is another door from the outside where they can pick it up. And then they can return your laundry by the same method while not disturbing you or entering the room. They can place notes there and leave the morning papers too. No longer having the paper disappear because you didn't pick it up early enough. More hotels should have this feature.

The Denon entertainment center is the most advanced I have seen anywhere. It takes what they did at the MO SIN and advanced it quite a bit. You have all sorts of media and power jacks at the desk, then you have the main Ipod jack at the Denon. This thing has it's own Ipod software and controls your music or video Ipod. This way you can sit in bed and control your Ipod through the remote. It is a very sophisticated system that uses a PC controller. You can hear the disk whirring as you make selections. The TV is a large flat screen Sharp. The only knock I could make is that at the IC SIN they have wall mounted Bose speakers whereas here they use the speakers from the TV in the main room. Not quite as good, but they can go very loud. The walls must be quite thick.

In the room we had a nice gift box tin of Darjeeling tea and another tin of candy. Fresh fruit and lots of water was placed in the room each day. There was a different fruit type each day.

Bathroom

The bathroom is very nice with a two headed shower on a pivot stick. There is a large separate toilet room with a heavy but quiet door. You can close this door gently and silently so as to not interrupt your sleeping partner. There is a TV built into the wall at the sink and speakers for the entertainment system from the main room. They can be very loud if you want to really enjoy the music.

Gym

The fitness center is very nice and modern, but too small in some ways. Thankfully the hotel is only about half full with the rest of the rooms still being renovated. I would hate to see what the gym was like with the hotel truly full. While there are plenty of modern treadmills and bikes (with TV's in all of them), the weight and ab room is tiny. They have some really cool machines that I have never seen before. They are like a cross between normal machines and Pilates and they use them for martial arts. Thankfully they have some dumb bells, but they only go up to 50 lbs. Unlike most of the other MO's in Asia, they do not have Yoga classes here.

Spa

The Spa isn't open yet and no one could tell me when it would be open. They do in room massages though. The Amex FHR $100 spa credit is, for the time being, a $100 F&B credit. They are still building out the sauna and vitality pool, etc in the mens and womens changing rooms. The steam rooms are working though. They are very nice with Frankincense, cinnamon and some other fragrance. However it only goes up to 45 degrees. The Sauna will go up to 90 they say. There is a false wall in place now during construction so everything looks nice, but small. The lockers are nice as are the showers. The staff is way over the top helpful. There is one of those 10 second spin dryers for your swimsuit. So I decided to wash my gym clothes each day in the sink and use the dryer. The staff wouldn't let me do anything on my own and washed, dried and individually wrapped my gym clothes in plastic while I showered. Now that is luxury service!

Dining

Probably one of the biggest losses with the renovation is the breakfast. It is nowhere near as nice as it used to be. The buffet at the Clipper lounge feels like you are at a mid-level European hotel. This seems to be where the worst or least experienced staff work. That plus the undesirable location means that almost no locals eat there. Just tourists for the most part. The buzz that the MO used to have at breakfast is gone. The food quality is good, but the service, if you order anything rather than grabbing from the buffet, is VERY slow.

Man Wah was also disappointing. I am a big Peking Duck fan and when I saw it on the menu I had to try it. However this was the worst example of Peking Duck I have ever seen. You couldn't even really call it Peking Duck and I'm not even sure what I was eventually served was duck. The service was great and perhaps the other dishes were fine, but I probably won't eat there again. At those prices I expect a lot more. I walked into the M bar which is next to Man Wah but I couldn't see any reason to stay. It's just another high end Hong Kong bar and when you already have such classics as the Chinnery and the Captains bar, not to mention the new bar at the Grill room, well...

I can't say that the Mandarin Grill is disappointing as it is still one of the top restaurants in town, but it seemed to be lacking something. The food and service was excellent, but it just doesn't seem the same with windows and the new layout. I used to think the Grill was my favorite high-end restaurant in Asia. But now I would place it down a few notches. That's just my subjective opinion. Perhaps the days of smoky dark private dinner meetings that the elite of Hong Kong enjoyed have moved elsewhere.

The Captains bar is just as good as ever. There is an excellent jazz trio playing each night and the service and clientle were top notch. We got to the Chinnery bar only once, at around 7:30 Saturday night. It was just starting to get busy with people arriving at their tables with reservations. Everything seemed the same there too, but without the Wiltons Oyster and seafood layout like they had the last time I was there.

Checkout

Checkout was handled perfectly. I didn't have to worry about the free breakfasts and the $100US F&B credit as it was all taken care of in advance. The limo to the airport is HKD790, but a taxi is fine for me and on Sunday it was only $330.

Overall

With all the changes, both good and bad, I still love this hotel and will surely return. However I may check out the LMO next time to compare.