ksucats

What can anybody tell me about this property? I have several award nights booked there for a vacation this summer. I will have kids (4 & 6). Is the neighborhood safe?

Thanks in advance.

jehu

I drive past it daily on my way to work. It used to be a Hilton, large, modern, set on a busy highway in the front, but in the rear is the Cooper River Park (see http://www.co.camden.nj.us/governmen...pk_cooper.html)

njfan07

Very safe. I used to go jogging there when I lived in Cherry Hill a couple of years ago. But a vacation stay? Not a lot to do if you're not visiting relatives. Maybe you can spend a day in Philly and maybe another day at the aquarium, but in the summer, everyone heads to the NJ/DE/MD/NC beaches.

ksucats

We just got back from Waikiki, so we are looking for something a little different. We figure a day to see the historical stuff, a Phillies game one day, Sesame Place, & then jump over to Lancaster for Dutch Wonderland again. Plus, I get to try the cheesesteaks. I think we will find plenty to do. I guess if we run out of stuff to do, we can always run over and spend a few hours on a beach.

Tripodxxl

I stayed there when it was a Hilton. The hotel is fine, but not that special. Ask for a room with a Center City View and you will have a view of the park and lake and the city in the background.

You will have a great time as there is a lot of historical attractions in Philly.

For Cheesesteaks try Tony Lukes on Oregon Ave under 95.

You will enjoy your stay.

pranu

Anybody have any Platinum Experiences to share at this location?

ksucats

I just got back from my stay & it was OK. It was definitely worth the 5000 points per night that I spent, but I would've been very disappointed had I spent 25000. The view was pretty good - especially with the fireworks going on. I am just glad that I had a room with the view because they didn't open the lounge on the evening of the 4th. I know that some other guests were upset about that. As far as the lounge goes, it was OK, but the girl working there was terrible. She was very grouchy all 4 times that we entered. She didn't greet anyone & spent most of her time in her yahoo email account on the computer. The hostess at the restaurant was just as bad. She rarely looked up from her duty of wrapping silverware. Other than those two, the rest of the staff was fine. The room was fine & I was pleased with the location.

DrRodneyMcKay

(rather lengthy trip report, scroll down for just the "basics" and answered questions)

Edit: I'm having some trouble with the photos, or rather with getting flickr to give me a URL that will work with this forum. Hopefully I'll have it resolved shortly.

This is one of the most confusing and bizarre hotel stays I have ever had, in terms of the utter discrepancy between what they were pretending to treat me like (a Platinum Elite) and what I was actually getting (the bare minimum of service in an old, unrenovated, downtrodden hotel in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey).

And yes, Crowne Plaza hotels in the middle of nowhere (Cherry Hill, New Jersey) probably don’t have an incentive to go out of their way, as the people staying there are probably either traveling or attending a conference/convention (due to the hotel’s large meeting spaces) – and in both cases, it’s not really a matter of choice, but more of the fact that there aren’t any other options.

Still, as this is a popular hotel for Philadelphia area conventions (being just across the river in New Jersey, and thus affordable and yet close to Philadelphia), I feel the need to, well, complain about how utterly bizarre my stay in this hotel was. They’re probably going to keep getting business from conventions, businesses, and organizations who need meeting space, but maybe one day those clients will decide they’ve had enough and this hotel will actually renovate.

So, where do I begin? I stayed at this hotel last year for a conference I attend yearly; I had a number of problems at the hotel at the time, which I wrote about in another review: the window was broken and wouldn’t close, letting in both cold air and lots of noise, they wouldn’t fix it once I requested it, the entire hotel was freezing cold while the heating was extremely loud, the front desk was constantly unreachable and unresponsive, and the bathroom of my room had an actual hole in the wall. After I reviewed it last year, I was contacted by IHG, who apologized for the inconvenience (not that they offered any compensation) and suggested that at my next stay for the yearly conference, I e-mail them ahead of time to make sure I get a room without any of the problems I described above (which is very nice for me, but the hotel is usually at full occupancy during the conference, so somebody would have had to stay in my crappy room and have the same problems I did).

Come this year, I had a choice between staying at this hotel or commuting for about an hour from Philadelphia. I chose the hotel, thinking that it couldn’t be that bad the second time around if I took the necessary steps, so I e-mailed the hotel ahead of time, as they suggested, to ensure that I get a room facing south (away from the noisy highway) and without a broken window. I received no response though I had e-mail two days before my check-in date, and their in-room hotel guide insists that they respond within a day whatever the problem is (I wish I’d taken a picture of that promise!)

So, I arrive at the hotel to check-in. Thankfully they have a dedicated line for Platinum members, and since I acquired Platinum status between last year and this year, I got in the Platinum line and was immediately assisted by a nice staff member in training. Since I’d received no response to my e-mail, I requested a room facing south, as that was the less noisy side. They informed me that they didn’t have any left facing that side of the hotel of the type of room I had booked (a standard double), but because I was a Platinum member, they could “upgrade” me at no charge. I, of course, agreed. That put me on the “executive” floor – the top floor – which had rooms facing south, as I’d requested. I couldn’t tell what made it special, as the room looked exactly the same as a standard room:



In fact, the only special thing about the room was the lovely view of Philadelphia in the distance and the Cooper river:



But, I was here for a conference, so I wasn’t planning to do much more than just sleep in my room, so the room fanciness or lack thereof didn’t really bother me, aside from being entertained by the fact that they sell this as an “upgrade” on their website. In fact, here is what they insist is included in the upgrade:

• A spa/rejuvenation package – which is really a few sample-sized bottles/packets of facial cream, etc that are supposed to be ‘relaxing.’
• A bonus of 600 points or a “welcome gift.” I asked what was in the welcome gift, and upon being informed that it’s just a couple of bottles of water and a snack bar, went with the points. They gave me the welcome gift anyway, which was a paper bag with the IHG logo and two bottles of water in it. Not even the snack bar. Which, again, is not something I care that much about – it’s not like I can’t afford a dinner – but I was entertained by the fact that this was their idea of a “welcome gift” for Platinum members (which is their second highest elite status). If 2 bottles of water = 600 points, and a room at the hotel is 20,000 points, then can I pay for my room with 68 bottles of water + taxes and fees?
• Being on the “executive” floor, which looks and feels like every other floor and just takes longer to get to in the elevator.
• Free wifi. This wifi was utterly non-existent. That is, I “connected” to the network, but the connection was either ‘limited’ or, when it was a full connection, whenever I opened my browser it could not reach the internet. Even after I’d clicked through the hotel’s internet portal page and entered the password given at check-in, I could not reach the internet. I tried this on both devices, my computer and my phone. My roommate also attempted to connect to the internet via her computer. No dice.

So much for an upgrade. Again, I personally didn’t mind that much because I didn’t have to pay for it, but they do sell these upgrades on their website. People are paying somewhere around $20 for two bottles of water and a few spa samples.

When we got to the room, the temperature was set at 72, which was a bit chilly for me, so I changed it to 74 and the heating kicked in, or so it seemed. We then left the room to register for the conference and have dinner, and when we returned, we walked into what felt like Antarctica. No joke. Though I had pressed the red “up” key to increase the temperature, the cold air was blowing at full blast. I tried to phone the front desk to get them to fix it, but after two minutes of the phone ringing and no response, I gave up. We left the room to attend conference events, and somewhere in between panels I stopped by the front desk to ask the heating to be fixed. I’m not sure how long it took them to do so, but I do know that by the time I returned to the room again, past midnight, it was comfortably warm again. The difficulty of reaching the front desk, as well as the fact that last year, they’d promised to fix something but didn’t, of course added a whole level of discomfort.

I slept well, mostly due to the sleep medication I had brought, because I wans’t taking chances with this hotel’s broken windows, noise, terrible heating/cooling system, etc…

The next morning, I rolled out of bed to get into the shower, only to find freezing cold water pouring out. No matter which direction I twisted the nob, the water alternated between “melted snow” and “room temperature water.” I seriously spent about ten minutes trying to figure out if I was just completely incompetent at using the shower before washing my hair in lukewarm water. Upon going downstairs to the front desk, I encountered a number of other people asking about/complaining about the water. It turns out that the hot water had gone out in the entire hotel. The weekend of a conference. At a hotel that advertises itself as a good conference hotel because of its meeting spaces. They did eventually fix it, but this was just another confirmation that this hotel really, really needs to be shut down for a year and completely renovated.

The rest of the stay, while it had no more bizarre occurences of the sort, was nonetheless lackluster because of everything else that had happened. After I returned home from the stay, I discovered a number of suspicious red spots on my skin – I thought they looked like bed bug bites. After consulting with my SO, who is a nursing assistant, he confirmed that they look like either spider or bed bug bites. Neither were anything to worry about, but this was just the icing on the cake: on top of the lack of hot water, hole in the wall, and laughable upgrade, there are now insect bites all over my skin.
All of which tells me that this hotel just really, really needs to renovate, which of course they’re not going to do because they’re too successful getting conventions and conferences low on money to stay there.

The shorter version:
I’ve stayed at this hotel twice. This is a summary of all the problems I encountered:
• Hot water going out in the entire hotel. Yes, the entire hotel. Cold showers are not pleasant in November.
• Heating not working/air conditioning kicking in instead of heating
• A literal hole in the wall into the insides of the hotel.
• Non-existent wifi that just really, actually doesn’t exist even though it’s advertised for Rewards Members and upgrade rooms.
• Upgrades that are an actual joke, as they entail two bottles of water, a couple spa samples, wifi that doesn’t work, and literally nothing else.
• Bed bugs/insect problems
• Broken windows that are not fixed despite multiple requests, letting in cold and noise.
• Unreachable front desk. I probably sat there on the phone for five minutes trying to call the front desk.
• Unresponsive management – I e-mailed ahead of time, received no response.
• Freezing lobby due to automatic doors constantly opening, cold meeting rooms.
• One restaurant in the entire hotel that closes at midnight, and no other places to eat that are reachable without a car.

factory81

I've noticed in hotel brands across the board, the rooms are set to Air Conditioned, not heat. And I too, have turned the "heat up", only to find it not turned on to heat.

DrRodneyMcKay

well, the thermostat tells you the temperature the room is at, so presumably if you press the "up" button to increase the temperature, and it shows a higher number, then the temperature should go up. I mean, you'd think they'd have either some kind of in-room censor (so that the thermostat can actually tell you what the temperature is) or that it would be programmed so that when you try to increase the temperature, it doesn't blow out the temperature-decreasing (cold) air. I don't see why this is difficult to do in this day and age.

factory81

Furnaces, for better or worse, in many rooms including brands such as; Sheraton, Hyatt, Crowne Plaza, Marriott - you can see thermostats with heat/off/cold.

It sucks, but I eventually figured it out. I was freezing too

HadesNL

First of all: thanks for posting your trials and tribulations at that Crowne Plaza. You are a more patient person then i am and i would have screamed the first 10minutes and then laughed it off as bad luck. But my goodness you really had a "fawlty towers" experience!

Second: i fully understand your view of "ahhh an upgrade but if you compare the upgraded room with the standard room, there is no real visible/intagible difference" . It has happened to me several times, then i scratch my head and think am i an idiot or missing out on something? Usually i am to settled/lazy to complain so i forgo going to the front desk and ask what is the difference?

Third: AC/heating
Although my marriage is good, we have one thing we can argue about: fixing the heat/cold in a hotel room. Sometimes the thermostat is quite user friendly/intuative but more often totally broken/needs advanced physics degree/housekeeping fumbles with it.
Tips:
- if you are shown to your room ask the assiciate to show how the thermostat works
-if you see somemone of houskeeping ask them to set it up for you
-put a post-it paper on it asking houskeeping to not touch it all if the desired temperature has been found

DrRodneyMcKay

I think my patience partly has to do with the fact that I knew what to expect. This is the second time I've attended a conference here (it's an annual conference) and having spoken to the conference organizers, I know that they cannot afford to move to a nicer hotel in the city. The conference itself is wonderful, so I'm willing to put up with the hotel to support it, and didn't have very high expectations to begin with. Also, I was going through this with the mindset of "I"m really, really going to enjoy lambasting them online." After reading my review, they actually refunded me one of the nights at the hotel, so in the end, for essentially a free stay it's not *that* bad. Maybe I'm being generous.

I mean, I didn't pay for the upgrade and in my case, I really needed a room facing away from the noisy highway side so I could sleep, so to me it was an upgrade because it was one of the few rooms left facing the side of the hotel that would actually let me sleep. But for someone who doesn't have my sleep/noise issues, there is objectively no difference between this and a regular room. I, like you, was also too lazy to ask what the difference was; also, asking the front desk anything required waiting for, like, 10 minutes and since the only thing I was doing in my room was sleeping I didn't much want to bother.

I honestly think that it was just broken to the point where it blows cold air when you ask for hot. This is a very old building, and given that the hot water went out in the entire hotel, I'm inclined to think that they have problems with their furnace/heating system that is responsible for the lack of warmth in both the air in the water. I wish I'd been in the room when they came up to "fix" it so that I could see what they did.

markis10

This hotel has been around for a long time, having originally opened as a Centra in the days of Bass Hotels. On my last stay, I found it old and in need of a refurb, it seems my prayers have been answered.

I booked a entry level city view room and was upgraded to a high floor river view, what a view:



It seems the room I had was refurbished, a nice new LG TV, new bathroom and new aircon controls:







As a Spire RA, I was given a lovely fruit plate and a bottle of wine, a first for me at the property. The bed was comfortable and room quiet, despite an adjacent demolition going on.

Overall I found this stay has changed my feelings about this hotel, Melbourne now has three very competitive IHG properties, choosing which one to stay at could well come down to location.

On a final note, the aircon hack works with the new control units, love VIP mode.

DrRodneyMcKay

It seems every time I stay at this hotel, I have a ridiculous experience. I didn’t think it was possible for one hotel to screw up in so many different ways, but apparently it is. Most hotels would actually have to exert effort in order to be this bad, but Crowne Plaza cherry hill manages on its own.

As a side note, most Philadelphia area conferences and conventions that aren’t big enough to afford renting out the entire convention center are held at this hotel, because it has the space for it; I’m pretty sure it stays in business through this monopoly, because no one else wants to compete with the convention center. This pretty much means that I’m stuck either staying at this hotel or commuting each morning (and since I don’t keep a car in the city, it’s either an hour by public transit or 25 minutes by Lyft/Uber). I usually opt to stay at the hotel for the “convenience,” though most of the time it’s barely any more convenient than commuting.

So, the latest in my adventures at Crowne Plaza Cherry Hill (seriously staying at this hotel is like one of those scifi movies that are so bad they’re entertaining. I find myself laughing hysterically on the inside at just how incompetent this place is).

The Crowne Plaza’s check-in time is 4pm, and I arrived at about 3:55. I was here for the convention, and had already missed some of it due to prior commitments earlier in the day; I hoped to check in immediately, drop off my things, and then go attend the convention events. I walk up to the front desk and they find my booking, only to tell me my room isn’t ready. Well, okay, so technically there’s five minutes before check-in time starts, so I ask how long it would take. They tell me half an hour. So, 4:20. There aren’t any rooms available right now (not sure how behind housekeeping is, but given that they accidentally skipped my room on Saturday, who knows?) so I can’t exactly argue with it, especially since the room is booked with my dad’s points and he doesn’t have gold or platinum status anymore. I ask “could you call or text or e-mail me when a room is available so I don’t miss convention events?” The lady at the desk looks at me skeptically and says “if you want to write your phone number down, I could call you on my own time.” The implication being that since they don’t have a room ready at their on-paper check-in time, they’re doing me a favor by calling me when it’s ready. So, I’m forced to miss some convention events as I have them hold my bags (and I have to wait for the bellman, who isn’t at his stand). I go to the convention and come back thirty minutes later, at around 4:25, only to have them tell me my room still isn’t ready. “Well, how long is it going to be?” “oh, about 30 minutes.” ……. That’s what they said last time.

Okay, so I go back to the convention, dragging half my stuff with me (because with a place as incompetent as this, I’m not going to let them hold on to my work computer). I attend some panels, go to the vendors room, but let me tell you, it’s pretty inconvenient to walk around and take pictures and participate in things when you’re bogged down with stuff.

By the way, they never call. I finally walk to the front desk at about 5:30 to ask if my room is ready yet, and low and behold, it is. When I booked the room, I had asked for a room on a high floor facing away from the highway, because I’m ridiculously noise sensitive, so of course I ask what side of the hotel the room is on.

“Facing the highway,” they tell me.

I explain that I’m noise-sensitive (to the point where it’s essentially a medical condition) and I need a room facing the other way.
“Well, we can’t just change rooms just like that. But don’t worry, I stayed on that side, it wasn’t noisy at all.”

Well, that’s great, but do you also have my noise sensitivity? The damn air conditioner has to be off for me to sleep. Thanks for your valuable input, though.

At this point, I haven’t had a room for an hour and a half, I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m angry. I explain, patiently, that unless I get a room facing the quiet side of the hotel, I literally will not sleep.

So she goes into the back for about 5 seconds, ostensibly to check with her manager, and gives me a room facing the way I want on the 10th floor. Then, as I’m grabbing my key and heading out, she says something like “Sorry for the inconvenience, I hope you’ll give us a good review.”

Well, first of all, I’m not going to go out of my way to give you a good review on principle, because if you have to solicit it from me instead of actually providing good service, that’s already a red flag. Second of all, making me miss the event I was here for and giving me a room an hour and a half late? Well, here’s your “good review.”

So, I get up to the room. This time it doesn’t have a hole in the wall (as the first time) or a broken window (as last time). It does have a “spa rejuvenation package” which is a couple sample sized cosmetics in a cardboard package, and which are advertised as part of a “club room.” (I did not book a club room, and this is definitely not a club room). Which just tells me that the last time I got “upgraded” to a club room, where said spa rejuvenation package was one of the perks, I would have been paying for nothing if it was a paid upgrade.

So I hoped that would be the end of my mishaps, but far from it. Apparently, facing the quiet side of the hotel does not actually allow you any piece and quiet. At about midnight on a Sunday night, I start hearing an argument next door. This hotel has no soundproofing, so I can hear it pretty clearly. It’s an obviously abusive argument. The man is yelling at the woman for not texting him back about where she was that day. The woman is crying. The man threatens to walk out on her. It goes on for some time. I call the front desk. They say they’ll send security. I stay up for another 45 minutes, attempting to work. No security comes (given the absolute lack of soundproofing anywhere and the yelling in the halls I would absolutely have heard it). Eventually they quiet down, and I take my “conk out” sleep medication because I am not going to attempt actually sleeping in this hotel on my own.
It's at this point that I have pretty much had it, and I message IHG on twitter (as that seems to be the only way to actually get them to respond). They go through their channels and contact the hotel, saying they’ll get back to me the next morning.

They don’t get back to me the next morning; in fact, I hear nothing through any channel.

The next day, housekeeping also outright skips my room, and I have to call down at 6pm. They ask me “do you still want it?” Well, no, obviously I’m calling to let them know housekeeping skipped my room without asking for it. That makes all the sense.

But I think the final straw is when their ATM breaks. Just to be clear: there are two ATMs in the hotel. One is off, and only started out as functional. This is a 1000 person convention, and the hotel is sold out. This convention has been planned for months. They knew this many people would be coming, and they knew this convention would have a vendors area. Their ATM either runs out of money or breaks; they get a guy in to fix it, but he fails to, so they start running shuttles to the nearest ATM, which is half a mile away. The shuttle has no schedule, by the way, it’s just “every fifteen minutes” with no way to tell when the last one left.

At this point, I contact IHG on twitter again and explicitly say that I would like a response from the manager or person in charge of the hotel, and give my e-mail and phone number. Lo and behold, when I check my phone next, I have a message from the front desk manager, who offers to meet with me to discuss my issues and says she’ll be there until 11pm, so I head downstairs and ask to see her.

We meet with her, and I explain (some of) my grievances; honestly, the list is so long that I only go for the “I literally paid for a hotel room so that I could attend the convention and I did not receive the hotel room and could not attend the convention” spiel. Essentially, I point out that I literally did not receive what I was paying for.

She apologizes and says she’s very sorry for the inconvenience and all that.
I point out that I literally did not receive what I was paying for, and she finally asks “what would you like?”

I say that I would like some of the points used to book the room back. She says that has to go through the general manager, who isn’t in right now, but she’ll contact him directly and he’ll contact me the next morning.
This was on Saturday night. It is currently Friday. I haven’t heard anything. I messaged IHG on twitter again yesterday, and they “couldn’t give me the contact information” of the manager but said they got in touch with him. I still haven’t heard anything.

It seems clear to me that this Crowne Plaza is so incompetently managed that the only way it stays in business is by being the only hotel to have convention space in the Philadelphia area. I’m tempted to write to IHG and point out that this hotel is far below their standards and is embarrassing them as a chain, but I doubt that would do anything. Any suggestions for other avenues I could take? (other than not staying there, but that’s already done, so at this point compensation – and a whole lot of it – would be nice).
Some other charming tidbits that suggest you should run far, far away:
• The food in their café isn’t labelled (have fun, people with allergies!)
• When I ask what’s in the food, the employee opens the plastic boxes, looks at it (that’s super hygienic) and then says “I think that’s chicken/ham.” Well, great to know.
• In addition to conventions, the hotel hosts weddings; one of them was in their outside pavilion, where the music was so loud I could hear it across the parking lot and ten floors up until 11pm.
• This one’s a pet peeve of mine, but there isn’t a single recycling bin anywhere in the hotel.
• The point-of-sale system for their bar/restaurant went down on Friday night; they could only do cash or putting the charge on the room (they literally had me write my room number down on the back of a receipt. I’m surprised they remembered to charge me).
• They also set up some food for the convention in the lobby, but took cash only. Which was super convenient, since they had a working ATM where you could withdraw cash to pay for your food (not).
In short, if it wasn’t all so sad and frustrating, it would probably be hysterically funny.

(I would also welcome thoughts on how to proceed further with this mess).