aloft Minneapolis [Master Thread]
I stayed at the aloft Minneapolis on Saturday night; this is a quick summary of the stay.
Parking: No attached parking or valet. Ramp across 9th street is the only semi secure facility around, and is a pay on foot facility. Ramp is also new, and had an issue (perhaps only Saturday night) with letting cars into the ramp....as in, it was reporting 'Ramp Full' with 7/8 (or more) of the ramp visibly empty. A quick call to security had the gate opened.
Check-In: Two staffers were very perky, and welcomed me quickly. However, they were very surprised that someone actually had a reservation, as they had just officially opened Friday night. Tried to confirm a late checkout, and was told 'We don't offer that'. Really? Oh well. Not like I needed it anyway!
Lobby: Two computers were for guest use up front, but didn't appear to be functioning, with the Windows Blue Screen of Death visible on one.
w xyz bar: Didn't go, but looked VERY busy on a Saturday night, and kind of cool looking, too. Too bad they close at 12am, when every other bar in Minneapolis closes at 2am.
Room: We were assigned Room 416 (2 Queen beds). Room was very clean; however, the bathroom still had construction 'grit' all over the floor. Only one pillow per bed was also unexpected.
Grab & Go: I had chips and a chicken breast; my friend had cheesecake and yogurt. It was fairly priced and was edible. Not great, but then again, it was prepackaged and tasted fine.
Elevator the next morning: The hotel has two elevators. One was completely out of service, and the other was, shall we say, interesting. We pushed the down button, hit '1' for the lobby, and the elevator went up to '5'....and stayed there, doors open, for about 2 minutes. The cleaning crew got on, and rode down with us. The supervisor in charge said they also have had problems with this elevator.
Disconcerting Overheard Remark: The cleaning supervisor asked us our room number in the elevator, and then asked the other 4 cleaning people in the elevator who had our room to clean. None of the 4 did, so he said 'Don't worry...it can wait until Monday.' Gross.
Check-out: Went to go check out, only to find that, to my extreme bemusement, I couldn't check out because someone already HAD checked me out! No bill under the door, and the staff member could not figure out how to reprint an invoice. I'm glad I didn't need a receipt!
SPG Points: The SPG points posted, but I didn't get my quadruple-zillion bonus points with the aloft promo I had signed up for from SPG. *sigh*
I honestly think they should've pushed back the opening for another couple weeks...there were too many small kinks left.
Overall, this has the potential to be pretty great (the location is awesome), but they need to fix the service and services....STAT.