what did you like about the copacabana, especially regarding its location across the streets?
I was upgraded to a small corner suite overlooking the beach on a FHR rate. I like the hotel's pool. I considered it tacky to provide a Nespresso machine but charge three Euro per coffee pod.
July is low season for Rio and the locals consider it to be too cold to go to the beach much. Unheated pools can be very cold too.
I also stayed at the GH which was opened shortly before the Olympics.I liked it very much and in some ways would consider it a "better" or more luxurious hotel than Copacabana Palace, where the advantages seem to be the iconic historic building and good security, including for the ATM that IIRC is hidden back in the business center behind the front desk. However, the GH is located between beach and lagoon in Barra, so it's in the suburbs (much safer, but it's about an hour drive to the tourist spots, depending of course on traffic). The GH had some amazing (and multilingual) employees, some of whom told me that they had been recruited away from the Palace while others had experience in other Hyatts, including a woman from Japan responsible for elite guest relations. The lounge manager was a real gem.