We had a fantastic stay here. Used my 2 CC free nights for the Sun-Mon of Easter weekend. We arrived at 12:30pm hoping for an early check-in. The young cheerful gentleman pulled up our reservation info and promptly acknowledged my Diamond Status. Then he noticed my address from my ID and mentions how he is very familiar with SoCal as he studied there. So we start chatting all SoCal and college and...Then, he mentions that the hotel had been very busy the Fri-Sat because of Easter and therefore our room was not yet ready. A high-floor room (but no view) was assigned to us (as a Diamond) but I ask him if there was a room overlooking the library available rather. He assures me he will have something nice for us in a couple of hours. So we went off to enjoy the colors of the Easter Parade just uptown on 5th Ave.
We get back to the hotel by about 5 pm to find my friendly associate attending to another guest, so he tells another associate to walk us up to our room. To our surprise he's taking us to the top floor. The associate leads us into the large living room of a corner suite. I quickly check out the window to see if it overlooks the library as well and sure enough, it does. At that moment, with ear-to-ear smile, I'm thinking - Oh yeah
, Diamond status AND the luck to make acquaintance of a "familiar" guy at check-in (who, it turns out, is an Asst Manager). The associate leaves us after explaining a few things as he sees we're a bit tired (and inattentive probably because we were admiring the view). After a minute or two my wife decides to explore the rest of the suite. Nice bedroom she says and then goes across to the other side of the living room, to find...another bedroom!
But the joy is short-lived. My wife notices the luggage is not ours.
I phone guest relations and they confirm apologetically that we've been shown the wrong room. We weren't really disappointed because it was too good to be true that we'd be upgraded to the Top floor Two Bedroom corner suite on our free-nights stay. The same associate who had shown us to the top floor came back and walked us to a 4th floor room overlooking the library. I was fine with that - good view and a "Large King Room" I think. A few minutes later, the friend(ly) Asst Manager comes to the room and apologizes profusely for the confusion. I tell him "No harm, No foul". Lucky that we had not walked in on someone in the corner suite. Now that would've been embarrassing and annoying. So the friend(ly) Asst. Manager insists that he make up for the confusion by upgrading us to a suite on the 13th floor. We take his offer and he helps us with our luggage to our 3rd room of the day - a corner suite on the 13th floor. A very nice room indeed. Views of the offices on 42nd St but not of the library. Oh well.
Quite the check-in experience, but pleasantly adventurous and memorable one. The rest of the stay was great as well - great breakfast (removed from the bill because of Diamond) and friendly faces in the lobby and the restaurant. So, a fantastic stay all around. A very nice hotel in a very nice location. The staff and friend(ly) Asst Manager were amazing. Oh and he had sent a bottle of wine the first night (I had taken the points as the amenity at check-in), and he was around to say goodbye the night before at 10:30pm. Now I realize, reading from the reviews here and on tripadvisor, that the staff go way beyond the normal level of service for everyone, but it made for fond/unique memories for us. Awesome job Hyatt. ^