Oh my, you are absolutely correct. A lot of the downtown Manhattan hotels used to be cat 4 (Moxy, Aloft, FF, FP, etc) and I remember hopping between them in 2019, but now it looks like it's just the AC and the CY on Pearl street.
Prices were reasonable for a mini mart. A bottle of water was around $3, bottle of small Chandon (200ML) was $10, beers around $7-8, ice cream sandwich / chips / snacks were around $3-6, espresso was around $3-4... They say that it's $10 a day but doesn't roll over, but the manager has definitely been able to pull some strings.
Regarding upgrades: on paper, there's only a regular room type (king or two double beds) or a river view room type (king or double beds), but there are specific regular double bed rooms that have a couch which adds (I feel like) around 50-60 sqft in space, which is a big deal in NYC. As titanium, they basically let me pick whatever room I want, so I always make sure to request that. The river view is nice (see attached pic), but not as worth it as getting extra space IMO especially when travelling with someone else.
