Prince Hotel Appreciation Thread
 

I honestly can't think of a single category...rooms, service, food, value, etc...where I could rate the Prince Hotel chain above all others. I'd hesitate to recommend it to anybody making their first stay in Japan. But still, the places do have some intangible quality to them that I find to enjoy more than even the finest luxuries of the Peninsula or MO.

Is it the result of the power of Yasujiro Tsutsumi to secure (by hook or by crook) the most primo locations that Japan has to offer? Or the ridiculous amounts of money spent on these places with borrowed money, that ultimately proved to be the parent company's undoing? (I really miss the Yokohama Prince...the Sakura-lined road up the hill, the indoor Botanical Gardens, the overpriced buffet overlooking the industrial complex...all that remains now is the Kihinkan.) Whatever it is, the feeling I get when staying at or visiting these places is unlike any I can get anywhere else.

The best way that I can think of to express it is that, for me, the Prince Hotels seem to embody the romanticized ideal of the Showa era. Even new places like the Prince Park Tower feel like a living monument to one of the greatest rises to bubbles of all time, when hope for the future was abundant and everything seemed within the realm of possibility.

Is it just me?

As a blanket statement I might agree with you, but within the Prince Hotel empire there is a room category at a hotel where the value for money offered and the quality of the rooms is nearly unbeatable.

At around (or, as is often the case, below) the 13-15,000yen mark the Superior Floor rooms at the Grand Prince New Takanawa are, in my opinion, best in class - certainly at that price.

And at around 12,000yen or below the superior rooms at the Grand Prince Takanawa, located next door, also offer an exceptionally good deal (only downside is that direct sunlight, particularly on the higher floors, can make these rooms stuffy in the warmer months, but by the evening they're fine).

I personally love staying at these properties for many of the reasons described and a memorial lunch I once had as a visitor to the Takanawa complex, thanks to some breathtaking sakura fubuki at the most perfect times, was an experience I'll always treasure.

I doubt I'd feel the same way at the Shinagawa or Shinjuku Prince Hotels.

My parents loved the Sunshine City Prince. No accounting for taste I guess.

I dunno, I bet some of the view rooms at the Shinjuku Prince have an excellent view of kabuki-cho. If you get lucky, you might even see the baseball batting cage that is on top of one of the kabuki-cho buildings.

Wow. Really?

Well, here's my datapoint. Upon my first arrival into Japan in the summer of 2008, eager to explore this great country, I stayed at the request of the company at the Prince Hotel in Akasaka. I still rather vividly remember checking in to what seemed like a lobby with more marble than was possible. A million little boxes behind the front desk were apparently mailslots or some such for each room. I remember waiting nearly 30 minutes to check in due to lines and then finally getting up to the room only to feel like I'd stepped into a time machine.

The room looked and felt like a 1960's movie about the future. Space travel to be specific. The room immediately pulled me back to being younger going to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where they had mockups of the ISS and shuttles. This room felt like an architect's rendition of what space travel should be like from decades ago. Complete with sliding doors, bubble windows, etc.

Now, I'm actually kind of a space buff, so you might think I thought it was cool. Well, that lasted for all of 5 minutes. I couldn't stand it. The bed was horrible. Everything was horrible.

Checked out the next morning and switched to the Hilton in Shinjuku. It was about 2X the price, I think around $350/night if I remember right. Of course the exchange rate was a lot different then too. Anyhow, the Hilton was, well a normal Hilton, and far superior.

So.... I can appreciate what some of you say must be quite some charm of some of their other hotels, but this one was horrific. I heard it was no longer in operation, but never returned to check...

Well, I'm not sure why you felt the need to post that sentiment in the Prince Hotel Appreciation Thread, but all of those things that you listed as negatives are things that I liked about the place, so thanks for that. :p

You liked the fact that the "bed was horrible" and "Everything was horrible"?

Those things are "facts"?

Well, since you wrote that "all of those things" the OP listed as negatives are things that you liked about the place, I inferred that you're not disputing the reality of those things. Perhaps it's wrong for me to assume that they're facts.

Do you believe that they're illusions? Desirable illusions?

It may seem OT, but I think it's valuable to understand the lens through which we should appreciate Prince Hotels.

I wonder how Philip Larkin would have appreciated Prince Hotels. Perhaps he'd have given us a gem like this.

This is what I'm talking about. I don't really care about the bed. There are umpteen thousands of comfortable beds in the world. That atmosphere above that cannot be duplicated in any other country in the world was what I enjoyed experiencing.

I'd sleep on the floor if I could spend another night at the Akasaka Prince Hotel. But that's just my quirkiness, and I acknowledge that. Still, if I disliked the Hilton, I wouldn't post my hatred for it on a Hilton Appreciation Thread.

If you're not interested in opinions that run counter to yours, perhaps you should revise your first post, which invites them:
Having said that, though, even if you don't invite Flyertalkers to disagree with an eccentric opinion, it would probably still happen.

I've been to a few different lunch and dinner buffets at Prince Hotels around Japan.

What I like most about them is that they've given me a greater appreciation of the quality and value for money of buffets in places that aren't Prince Hotels.

A long time ago, I went with my then girlfriend to Hakone. I can't remember where, but during our walk we came across this really long roller-slide thing. I'd never seen anything like it, and I really want to give it a ride. But there was a light rain falling all day, and as I didn't see anybody else riding it, I thought that it might be closed for the day. But there was a woman in the ticket booth, so I went up and asked if I could ride. Her demure response was "Well, I don't think it's a good idea to ride today, but..." (あのぅ、今日はちょっと乗らないほうがいいと思うんですけど.…) I took that to mean that I had a choice in the matter, so I said "OK, if that means I have a choice, then I really want to ride!" She looked quite uncomfortable, but she took my money and let me ride. Sure enough, the slide was way slicker than normal, and even though I cut my hands up trying to stop at the end, I still slide completely passed the landing pad and bruised my coccyx something good. After my girlfriend finished laughing her butt off, I asked her "If it was so dangerous, why didn't she tell me not to ride!?" And the girlfriend goes, "You baka! That is what she told you!" And that's when I learned that polite Japanese understate their protestations in order to avoid offending others. Japanese would have understood the ticket lady to be saying "No, you can't ride today."

The point of that long-winded aside is that, in the years since then, it seems that some of that Japaneseness has seeped into my English. So when I say this:

What I mean is "Yes, I know Prince Hotels can have small dingy rooms with poor service, lousy food, bad beds, etc., and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that didn't know what they were getting into." Having admitted that those things are not great, I still find enjoyment in the Prince Hotels anyway as a monument to a bygone era in Japan.

So I probably could have stated that part a bit stronger. I don't deny anyone the right to say that the rooms and the service of the Prince Hotels are/were horrible, but I already intended to concede that point.

(The closest thing to the best of both worlds is the Odawara Hilton. All the trappings of Japanese bubble-era hedonism with Hilton quality rooms and amenities.)

I've enjoyed ainternational's description of the "intangible qualities" described in the very first paragraph in this thread (the one where the OP admits that s/he would hesitate to recommend a Prince Hotel).

If the stay had been one night in Akasaka it might have been a memorable experience (just like it is for the many thousands who visit Sweden's Ice Hotel) but I can see why the decision was made to hop over to the Hilton.
I once had a stay lined up at this Hotel but realised in time I'd feel the same way as ainternational did and chose somewhere else.

There were articles in the press about a year ago (some mentioned in this forum) about how this hotel, which had only just closed/or was just about to, would be used as a temporary shelter for evacuees from further North. I've no idea what the outcome was.

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To maintain the "appreciation" level of this thread it might be worth noting that a former head of the RIBA really rated the (now closed) Roppongi Prince. It was his favourite hotel.
I personally regret never staying there but I think I would have had the proper appreciation for this Prince Hotel if the stay had been a very short one.