SEA-Flyer

Anyone stayed here yet - have a stay booked for early August, wondering what its like?

kenbo

I just completed a stay a few days ago. Had a top floor (8), studio king with Space Needle view. They key cards are all using RF technology and you have to insert your key card into a slot to activate the lights, just like O8. This is also required in the elevators to get to your room.

There are only two elevators here. Both can go up to the rooms, but only one can go down to the parking levels. It seemed fast on the day of arrival, but when I checked out the next morning, I was probably waiting for a good 2-4 minutes to get down to my car.

I liked the layout of the room. The couch and bed were both comfy. While you have a direct view of the Space Needle, you are left having to look up (ie. strain your neck) to view the entire Needle since there are only 8 floors.

The shower was pretty large. Almost too large. The rain shower head had very little pressure. What I appreciated most about the shower was that it did not leak like a couple of the Hotel Sierra conversions. Plenty of water made it on to the door and it kept it in nicely.

The lobby is large, and is combined with the bar and eating area. The breakfast spread had fruit, yogurt, cottage cheese, mini doughnuts and muffins, scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, sausage links, pancakes, oatmeal, and cold cereal. There is also an omelette station. Breakfast was fine. Not outstanding but I think it fit the bill for a Hyatt House.

Parking is $25/night and they require a slip to place on your dashboard. The entrance is kind of tricky to find. With all of the one way streets, you have to drive around the building and look for the entrance in an alley. There is small espresso shop (I think it's espresso) right next to the hotel and the alley is in between. According to Google Maps, it's called Cafe Bee. If you miss it the first time when you go up John St., you can make an immediate right on to Broad St. and then get yourself back into the alley. If you miss it the second time, then you're going to have to navigate yourself back to the hotel because Broad St. only allows left turns. FYI, Google Maps shows a Hyatt House Seattle/Downtown on both sides of 5th Ave. but it is the one on the left. The hotel is right across the street from the Space Needle.

The lot is gated and secure, and there is an intercom to call the front desk and have them open it for you so you can park and then go check-in. There is very limited drop-off space. I think there were only room for 2 or 3 cars at most. There are only two floors of parking. Spaces weren't overly spacious but not too tight either. A compact SUV could fit nicely but a full size SUV is pushing it. Lights in the lot are activated by motion.

Hotel must have been busy (or slow) but when I arrived at 4, I had to wait an hour and a half for the room to be ready. They did quote me that amount of time so I'm glad they were able to stick to it.

I wasn't blown away by anything but it was a solid stay overall.

jpdx

I just completed a two-night stay here, and left rather underwhelmed.

I arrived around 2.30pm, and the lobby scene was reminiscent of a strike day at Charles de Gaulle … groups of people camping out, bodies in every available chair. I approached the desk and was told that they had no rooms available (“our check-in time is 3pm, sir”) and that they’d put my name on the waitlist. Foolishly, I didn’t glance at the list (assuming the reference to 3pm meant that my room would open up soon), and followed the clerk’s invitation to take a seat and grab some coffee. 3pm rolled around with no room; at 3.30pm I inquired, and was told, still no rooms. At this point, I saw the list, which easily had some 20 parties ahead of me. I told them I’d be happy with any room, not just whatever fancy upgrade they had planned for me. No dice. At 4.30pm, I returned to the front desk and repeated my request for the next available room; finally, after some typing, I was given a room, 5th floor, monorail view, ADA with roll-in shower. Utterly annoying that they didn’t simply tell me at 2.30pm that there wasn’t any hope of getting a room for at least 2 hours; I certainly wouldn’t have waited around. I don’t know what causes this massive issue with getting rooms ready (I glanced at the waitlist again on the day of my checkout, and although it was a Sunday -presumably less busy than Friday-, it at 3.30pm again had 20+ names on it).

My room was already slightly banged up, and not cleaned properly (trash cans not emptied, used soaps from prior guest in the shower, mystery stains on one of the chairs, crumbs on the ground). They clearly have housekeeping issues! I liked the room design (this was my first Hyatt House stay), but the construction was very poor (noise from hallway and stomping above; 1in gap under entry door, letting in plenty of hallway light). All these things added up to poor sleep, which was further aggravated by the alarm clock going off at 7.30am (thanks, prior guest), and housekeeping knocking at 8.15am, despite the DND sign being on.

As far as ADA rooms go (I didn’t need one on this trip, but have traveled extensively with a friend in a wheelchair), this one was a huge surprise for a brand new hotel. The bathroom was fine (roll-in shower, grab bars), but the remainder of the room was extremely poorly designed. The dining area/counter would not be useful for a wheelchair user (not for eating anyways, perhaps for resting one’s chin), and it’d be impossible to reach kitchenware, or access the closet. And if you’re used to sleeping on the right side of the bed, forget about it, because there’s no way you could wheel there. The flipside of this shocking failure of the architect and Hyatt (a brand new hotel, hello?!) is, of course, that able-bodied travelers (who without a doubt make up 90% of the occupants of this room) will not find the accessible room particularly bothersome.

On the topic of poor design, the elevator situation brought up by kenbo is worth another mention. The building is under-elevatored, and at 10am, there were 8 people on my floor waiting to go down, and many more on the ground floor waiting to go up. The waits can easily exceed 5 minutes, especially if you want to go to the parking garage. Only one of the two elevators goes to the underground parking levels, so if you’re unlucky to catch the wrong elevator on your floor, you have to go down to the ground floor and join the line to wait for the other elevator. The problem is compounded by the parking elevator also serving as service elevator; several times I took it and found it loaded with laundry carts.

I didn’t eat the breakfast (too many good brunch places), but it looked like standard HP/HIX/etc fare, plus an omelet station. What surprised me here was that anyone could simply walk in and help themselves to food; how come this place doesn’t serve half the early morning Space Needle crowd?

Overall, I wouldn’t hurry back here. For my stay dates, they must have forgotten to close off C&P, and $75 plus 6k points per night (or 2k when factoring the 65k/25 nights promo and 20% Chase discount) is rather stellar value on a weekend when basically all Seattle hotels sold out and this place commanded $300+ rates. Absent such a deal, there’s no reason to stay here for Hyatt loyalists, because -at least until they’ve overcome some of their teething problems- this is a subpar hotel (albeit well located for tourists) in a city that has two of the best domestic Hyatts.

SEA-Flyer

I'm staying at this hotel now. Normally, I'd be tempted to dismiss the problems that this hotel is having as things that are typical of a new hotel that will be sorted out once the hotel has been running a bit longer. However, I think that isn't case here.

This is the fatal flaw of the hotel, and it will be very difficult for them to overcome it - not too easy to add another elevator. Waits for the elevator are excessive - doubly so if you need to get to the parking garage. And the lack of a service elevator causes further problems:

Customers and housekeeping are competing for the same elevator space.
Both Customers and housekeeping has to wait longer for elevators
Housekeeping isn't able to get its work done quickly
Customers need to wait longer to check into their rooms (because Housekeeping wasn't able to get its job done)

Single_Flyer

Yikes! This sounds terrible.

I wonder if they will figure out a way to solve the elevator problem. Having a team of housekeeping that works from 2:00-4:00am to restock each floor with linens? Adding an elevator to the outside of the building?

I'm shocked that they would have built this hotel with that big of a mistake.

jpdx

I would think that adding an elevator is impossible (or at least cost-prohibitive). IMO, their best bet is to do the following:

1) More efficient use of the elevators. The approach used by HR Vancouver (guest selects desired floor on a touch screen located on each floor -no buttons in the elevators- and elevator movements are optimized) could vastly improve efficiency (e.g., guests going to the parking floors are immediately routed to the parking elevator, wasted stops and trips are minimized).

2) Buy extra linens and add nightly housekeeping shifts. As both of you pointed out, the daytime use of the elevator for housekeeping causes vast delays. It'd be a huge improvement if they can stage the bulk of housekeeping supplies on the respective floors at night.

3) Encourage people to walk. This is tricky, because I tried to walk, and there isn't really an easy way to get from the ground floor to the guest or parking floors. I did walk downstairs a couple times, and ended up outside the hotel. IF there is a feasible route to the rooms (I didn't investigate all staircases), the hotel should mount signs and encourage guests to walk (like the signs that abound in the Taipei metro, "Taking the stairs is good for your health and can save time," "Taking the stairs burns 15 calories," etc.)

SEA-Flyer

I'm still at this hotel. I'll write a longer review later - that will have to wait for a time I have better internet access than in this hotel. Of course you could probably find better internet access while you were clinging to a piece of driftwood ten miles offshore of a third world country.

So many problems with this hotel. Zero chance I'll be staying here again.

Forever in Seattle

I thought I would give this (still) new HH a try to see what it was like. I was given a high room with a view, and was quieter to outside noise than I was expecting, and slept pretty well. Unlike if the nearby Hyatt Place and you get a room on the SR-99/Shell Garage, which is so loud I need ear plugs.

The bar has happy hour 5-7, ok prices, and local beers on tap (Manny's, Freemont, Bellevue Brewing) which is good to see. Staff were all friendly and by the look of it most the new hotel blues sorted out. Personally I had no issues with the internet which others had, but the hotel wasn't full.

Parking wise it is pain, and if you have a low slung sports car don't use the car park as you will have a very expensive repair bill after most likely ripping off your font end, so investigate another parking options.

If you are deciding between the HH and nearby HP, same money, I would probably go for the HH, due to if you get a room on the SR-99 side at the Hyatt Place (if you have low/no status a real possibility, even with Diamond status I have get the bad rooms when booking at the last minute on the day), and the omlette bar at HH's (I didn't do breakfast during the stay though). Car parking last year at the HP was $22 so same sort of money.

brp

We just finished a 2-night stay at this location, and were quite happy with the experience.

We were in town to run the Seattle Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon, and this was right at the start line.

As Platinum we were given a 6th floor with a Space Needle view. The room was light, clean and comfortable. The shower was very nice, with good pressure and easily fit 2.

As mentioned, parking can be tricky to get to the first time. We parked in the McDonald's lot across the street, checked in and then got the lowdown. We also needed a separate (from the room key) RFID card for the garage door, and an assigned spot. This key must be returned to avoid a charge. The garage was clean and spacious, but the slope change mentioned above is very real. Didn't impact our rented Toyota Yaris, but a lower car could have had issues.

The little bar/restaurant was nice. I had gotten a $30 gift card from Hyatt for no apparent reason, and this was more than enough for a meal for two. The beer was extra, but at $5 for a pint of good beer...well...it just doesn't get any cheaper where we go...and happy hour (which we did not get a chance to try) is even better.

The breakfast spread was nice. Definitely a cut above the similar-level Hilton properties that we usually frequent (we're Hilton Diamond). Good array of hot items and very good spread on cold.

The staff were great, even if a little green. They meant well, but didn't always have the right answers as yet.

The real plus is what they did on the morning (Saturday) of the race. Weekend breakfast starts at 7AM. Race start time was 7AM. So, they started the coffee/tea and full cold service at 6 so that runners could get a little something before the race.

They have a nice rooftop sitting area with spectacular views. On Sunday we took our breakfast up there to sit and soak in some of the rare Seattle sunshine.

This is a place we would visit again.

Cheers.

creativeguess1

It's ok

IMO

HYATT OLIVE 8
GRAND HYATT
HYATT REG BELLEVUE
HYATT HOUSE REDMOND
HYATT HOUSE SEATTLE
HYATT PLACE SEATTLE

rates are definitely SUMMER RATES, right now

yikes

serpens

Bottom Line Up Front: I would stay here again, if the price was satisfactory and I didn't want a different location, but I would shop around.

There were some good things. The shower pressure was good, and the ceiling in the shower is beyond my reach.

The laundry includes a front-load washer and two top-load washers, and the washers and dryers are $1 each. (On the downside, the in-room hotel information does not mention that the laundry is on the second floor.)

Sunday morning, there were two omelette stations going at breakfast.

There were some not-so-good things. The shower head is one of those oversized jobs, and it is fine until the final rinse. When I want to ensure that all the soap is gone from between my toes, I can get at most three of the many streams of water to hit my toes at once.

The hot water in the kitchen sink started out in an anemic stream and then dwindled to a trickle as it warmed.

I arrived at King Street Station about 15 minutes after some big parade started. The first two taxi drivers said they couldn't get me anywhere near the hotel, and declined to try. I called the hotel; the desk clerk said to take a taxi to the Hyatt Place and the Hyatt House shuttle could pick me up. The next taxi driver dropped me off two blocks from the Hyatt Place because he couldn't get any closer, even after some circuitous routing. Since the Hyatt Place is quite near the Hyatt House, I just walked the rest of the way. The hotel's reminder and welcome email, which it sent after the cancellation deadline, did not mention anything about the parade nor how to get to the hotel.

And then there were some strange things. Keep in mind that this is a fairly new hotel.

The floor squeaks. Actually, the room divider squeaks when someone walks past. Since I don't walk in my sleep, this didn't keep me awake.

The shower door is installed with the hinge away from the shower and the door opening into the shower, so that if one opens it while the shower is running, the water is directed out of the shower. Also, it doesn't latch shut, so it can be slightly open even after being shut. I was careful and no water leaked.

There is only one mirror, and it is in the same room as the toilet. It seems strange that the hotel would require someone using the mirror to invade the privacy of a roommate using the toilet or shower.

The air handler blows directly on the head of the bed.

The hotel's internet kicked me off and required a fresh login after one day, even though I had registered for two days. I believe it would not be hard for the internet router to let me stay connected until my scheduled or actual checkout, whichever comes first. (For what it's worth, I was not browsing the web, but doing actual work in the cloud when I got booted.)

And, as many other people have mentioned, the elevator situation is horrible.

Travelchurner

Staying here 12/22-12/24 in a 2 queen one bedroom suite. Will report back.

RedElmo

How was it? Im staying here end of January because of its location. Close to the space needle and shuttle service to the pike market place. I was debating between here and the Grand Hyatt. I'm using points so both places are fine "price wise"

SEA-Flyer

I've stayed one time for about one week at the Hyatt House Seattle Downtown, and a bunch of times for probably 2+ months total at the Grand Hyatt Seattle. I suggest choosing the Grant Hyatt Seattle everytime - no contest whatsoever between these two.

RedElmo

Really? Now I'm considering changing my reservation to the Grand Hyatt... just concerned about trying to get around to the the nearby attractions from the Grand Hyatt...

I guess I'll go read up on whats so special about the Grand Hyatt... What makes you say GH is that much better? other than it being GH LoL

Im staying in seattle for a family trip to do some sightseeing.