cmhsieh54

Figured it out.
On the TV, you click the green 'menu' button, it goes to the Marriott commercial loop, and it says "HOME" in the bottom right corner of the TV, and then you're supposed to click in the center of the directional keypad, whereupon the hotel's informational menu appears.
Looking back now, I suppose that's intuitive, but it's not clear at all. In all my global travels, I've never seen this menu setup.
[Edit: And then after clicking on "HOME" the first time, it no longer goes to the commercial loop and goes straight to the info menu.]

At least, if you were curious what was available for Room Service, now you have it. As far as I could see, this hotel's room service menu is nowhere else online to be found.

As you were.

cmhsieh54

LONG DETAILED REVIEW BELOW. IF YOU JUST WANT MY VERDICT, PLS SKIP TO THE BOTTOM!

BOOKING

Wife and I flew out here to Fukuoka from Seoul. Two-night vacation, checking in on Saturday and checking out on Monday, via two separate 1-night bookings. (Note to Bonvoy members: Burned an 85k FNA and 92k points on those two separate bookings.)

A few nights before check-in date, I chatted via app with the hotel staff. I gave them a heads-up that I had two bookings, and that I hoped that I could stay in one room for those two nights, without being asked to move mid-stay. I also mentioned that we were celebrating a new professional chapter in my wife's worklife.


CHECK-IN

Hotel is an easy metro ride away from the Fukuoka Airport Domestic Terminal. We got off at the Tenjin Station, Exit #4, and walked for a few minutes to the hotel.

Check-in was mostly smooth. We were able to check in at 11am, without problem. While check-in was processing, we were treated to a bit of bartending magic in a small welcome drink. Due to being Bonvoy Platinum, I got a small upgrade from a city view to the Ohori Park view, and also was granted a 4pm checkout. About 45 minutes after I first entered my room, a small cake arrived to help celebrate my wife's new professional start (which was a nice touch).

To get to your room, you have to take one bay of elevators to the 18th-floor lobby, and then change to another bay of elevators. I imagine it can be a bit tedious if you are coming and going a lot during your stay, since you have to traverse the two sets of elevators; if you aren't leaving more than a few times a day, it's not so bad.

The hotel elevators all seem to move very slowly, and my wife and I believe that they move slowly by design. The basic idea, apparently, is to make your travel up the building as peaceful and unnoticeable as possible.


THE HOTEL ROOM

Rooms are only on the 19th-23rd floor of this building. The room is quite big by Japanese standards, and even the basic room gives off junior suite vibes. (My wife and I thought that this room could accommodate even 4 people just hanging out.) As the hotel is barely even 10 months old, everything is still very new and tastefully furnished. The color palette is very typical of RC -- light-colored woods, beiges, browns, and midnight black. Ceramic artpieces attached to the wall. Cloth wallpaper or wooden walls.

The bedroom and bathroom/hallway areas are partitioned off by some very heavy wood panel sliding doors. What I really appreciated about this room was that, by just sliding those doors, you could transform the room from expansive (say, during the day) to cozy (say, in the evening).

I think the most obvious way to tell that this hotel is luxury/uber-luxury is that there is basically no plastic in this room. 4 items: The TV's remote control, the backplate of the 2x2-inch analog alarm clock by the bed, and the Nespresso machine's water tank, and the inner coating of the small wastebaskets, are all made of plastic. Everything else is marble/granite, wood, ceramic, or brushed metal. Even the electrical outlet covers appear to be metal. Nothing else in this room, and I do mean NOTHING, is made out of plastic. You could hunt in your room for 10 minutes and not find any plastic aside from those 4 small items.

The bathroom and 'smart' Toto toilet (it opens up by itself, to greet you!) are very tastefully separated. The tub/shower/powder room area (on its own) is bigger than many hotel rooms in Japan... One small quirk with this room is that there are wooden sliding partitions between the bedroom and bathroom/WC areas. The bedroom and bathroom are separated by glass; and the sliding partition for the tub/shower area is actually on the bedroom side, which means that any person in the bedroom is the one that controls that partition and can get a peep show anytime (haha). The person in the shower/tub has no control over what the bedroom people can see.

The electronic/entertainment setup in the room is a bit mediocre. On one end, the TV is a bit disappointing. Only about 15 channels. For English speakers, only Fox and CNN. (However, you can cast your phone to the smart TV via Chromecast.)... The room has a Beosound A1 speaker (Bang & Olufsen) in the sofa area, for you to pair with a phone/laptop if you wish... The blackout curtains and the shades are electro-mechanically controlled, and it doesn't seem as if the switches allow either to be just partially open. That was a bit frustrating.

(There is no room service hard-copy menu in the room. Accessing the menu on the TV should be easy, but when you first check in, it can be a bit of a challenge. Click the green button on your remote. If it starts the Marriott commercial loop, and "HOME" appears in the bottom right, then click the center button on the arrow keypad and you'll see the hotel's info menu. I struggled to find that menu for a few hours!)

Do notice that the placard next to the mini-bar is titled "Honor Bar", but actually, everything is a la carte, aside from the bottled tap water, the tea bags, and coffee.

All that said, I will say that the most disappointing feature of this hotel room was something you wouldn't really expect: the toilet paper. It was very flimsy toilet paper... the kind of stuff that you'd expect from a supermarket bathroom stall. It appears that the hotel believes that, since the bidet toilet is super-smart, they can get away with using cheap thin toilet paper that won't have a chance of clogging toilets.


THE HOTEL FACILITIES

Unfortunately, we didn't get around to checking out much of the hotel's dining and relaxation facilities/offerings. Besides the breakfast buffet at the restaurant, my wife did visit the pool. It was about USD 30 to go for 2 hours, and we said 'why not'. She said the women's locker room had about 20 lockers, 2 powder/makeup tables, and 2 shower booths. Besides one other gentleman in the pool area, she didn't see anybody else. Very possibly the USD 30 fee does scare a lot of people away!


DINING & SURROUNDING NEIGHBORHOOD

My booking did not include breakfast. However, for my first morning, we went to the hotel breakfast buffet anyways (6500 JPY pp, or USD 40). The breakfast spread is actually fairly simple, and does not include a single large plate of cooked Asian entrees. Instead, on one side of the restaurant, there's a spread of Western breakfast foods, a couple soups, a pastries area, a small congee station, and some fruit. Be sure to open the stainless steel refrigerator doors to find the juices, puddings, and more fresh fruit! On the other side of the restaurant, you'll find the salad bar, miso soup, and an Asian 'rice bowl' station, where you can find 4-5 types of food set out in mini-plates that you can add to your rice (i.e. pork belly, grilled mackerel).

In addition to the buffet, all guests are also offered to order one breakfast entree from the a la carte menu, which IIRC were all egg-based dishes or omelettes. My wife and I also asked for hard-boiled eggs, and for that, you'll need to let your server know, and then the kitchen will boil those up for you exclusively.

Basically, it does feel like a kind of butler service for their breakfast. You won't be standing in lines to operate a coffee machine, and you won't be plunging a huge spoon into a huge bowl of fruit! Not at this hotel! :-) So, in that sense, breakfast is a seemingly elegant affair... But it can also seem a bit pretentious and tedious. For example, I found it a bit tedious to have to pick up a small pre-filled bowl for the only 3 pieces of orange or grapefruit or dragonfruit from the refrigerator. Also, if you want a coffee, you'll need to let your server know, because there is no self-serve coffee machine available.

Now to the neighborhood. Overall, this RC is very well-located for just experiencing Fukuoka, especially if you are in town for just a few days. Nearby the hotel, you'll find many restaurants.

There are some nearby restaurants that are famous with locals, such as 'Shin Shin' ramen. But if you find that queue to be extremely long, you may also consider 'The Ono Market', which has some really good noodles of its own. And then on the other side of the neighborhood, consider 'Sushizanmai', which is definitely a serviceable/decent 24-hour sushi joint for most foreigners to get their sushi fix.

My wife and I had an exceptional dinner, though, on our first full day, at a restaurant called 'Nishimuraya', which is helmed/curated by a 1-star Michelin chef, on the 2nd floor of the Daimyo Garden City complex, basically attached to the Ritz Carlton Fukuoka. Google Maps that name, and then you'll see what the restaurant looks like and its Japanese name ("西村や"; important to know insofar that the restaurant's English name is not on the outside of the restaurant). It was essentially a course menu made up of their noodles, sandwiched by a 9-course tasting menu, all for 5,500 JPY. At that particular price, or around USD 35, it was easily in the Top 3 dinners of my life (at that price point), and possibly at the very top. (Just don't give in to the advice that the restaurant gives, re: pouring in the cheese into your ramen soup at the end... IMO it doesn't work at all!)

All three of the restaurants I mentioned above, can be found on Google Maps. There is also a 7-11 on the same floor of the Daimyo Garden City complex, in case you need some convenience store stuff. Unfortunately, we didn't find any fruit at that 7-11 for our 2nd morning's breakfast.


SERVICE

It's borderline 'obsequious' (i.e. attentive to an excessive degree). The staff really do greet you and follow you during your stay, bowing at every turn. All that bowing and attention from them can get to be a bit much by Day #3.


CHECK-OUT

Check-out was really quite clunky. When we went to the lobby to check-out around 3pm, the two check-in desks were busy and we waited. After waiting for about 15 seconds, a staff member (with the nametag "Trainee") came up to us and asked us whether we were checking out. We said 'yes' and then he asked us for our room number. We said "1918" and he asked us whether we had consumed anything from the minibar. We said "no" and then he told us that our checkout was complete. I mean, this was a trainee, and with no smartphone or device, no pen or paper, he just told us that our checkout was complete and that we would be sent an invoice. It did seem a bit casual or unprofessional to be giving a trainee the job of the last interaction with guests.

My wife and I wanted to go out for a late lunch, and we ending up being served by another trainee, who processed our bag storage. He looked a bit lost in terms of the correct process. Just not a very professional look for check-out, that's all.

By the time we got back from our late lunch, our bags were downstairs on the ground floor, next to the bellhop desk.

To make a long story short, and to spare you the details, we felt that check-out could have been handled by people with more experience.


VERDICT: I mean, it's a new RC hotel. It's elegant. The basic room is very spacious. Location is excellent, especially for Fukuoka first-timers. Staff bowing everywhere. But setting aside holiday season, it already ranges from USD 750-1100 a night for the basic room. My wife says she wants to come back to this hotel with some other relatives, but I could stand staying somewhere else. It's definitely ritzy, but it also felt a bit ostentatious in a way that the staff didn't seem to be able to convincingly pull off. In my own experience, staff has to be servile yet confident to pull off guest relations at the Ritz, and this cohort of the RC Fukuoka staff doesn't really have that flair.

Condition One

Had an excellent two night stay here, where I was upgraded from a base room to a spacious corner "Premium Suite" with expansive views of the bay and city. The room is well furnished with high quality materials, including a super comfy bed. One thing that surprises me is that the rooms aren't sound proofed. During the day you will definitely hear traffic and the occasional plane. I could also hear conversations in the hallway from inside the room. As others have mentioned, the staff was quite attentive and proactive. Breakfast (6500 JPY) was high quality with a selection that exceeded my expectations. I'm still shocked at the rates this hotel is able to command though, especially in Fukuoka.