I preferred the xx09 (sw view) over xx02 (nw view) rooms, but you won't be dissappointed either way. On a clear day, if you are high enough in the high 30s and 40s floor, you can see Statue of Liberty from the xx09s. You can see the Carrier in Hudson River. Room sizes are all the same.

Since you are with kids, you will probably be needing double beds. Corner room with double beds are very hard to come by, so keep that in mind.

With kids, food in the club lounge isn't bad and is a good way to start the day off without needing to go to the hectic city outside with them. (I wouldn't say so if it's an adult only trip since culinary diversity is what I personally love most about the city). However, gold will need to pay for it. A bit warning, on weekends, the lounge fills up often with lots of leisure travelling families, and can get a bit zooish, but most folks are polite and staff are very accomendating.

Club rooms have two bottles of water while the non-club rooms don't. I'm not sure what other amenities the other posters were talking about that you mentioned. (I stayed at Westin TS for 4.5 months weekly earlier this year and 90% of time I was in corner rooms.)

If the hotel's booking trend is anything like earlier this year, being a gold, you upgrade chances aren't great since it's littered with Plats, but you do have the "Sunday" night working for you since most biz folks like myself check in on Monday evening.

I've stayed in all three room types. I would definitely recommend the jr suite.

The corner room is more spacious than a regular room, but most of that space is unusable (there's a long narrow foyer). The jr suite has a larger bathroom and separate sitting area with 2 sofas, a coffee table and a second TV -- none of which you get in a corner room. The bedroom is divided by a large wall unit and there is no door separating the two rooms, so privacy is compromised.

Good grief -- I have my first stay as a Plat here coming up in 2 weeks and I didn't even know they had a club floor nor a club lounge. What's up with that??!?! I've never stayed at a W that had a club lounge.....

I'd be curious to know if other plats typically receive a standard upgrade to the Club Floors at this hotel or is it possible to snag a jr suite without pulling teeth at the front desk?

thanks!

It's the Westin, not the W.

I believe this thread is about the Westin Times Square. Not the W Times Square.

Thanks for setting me straight. Working too long and too fast today. Desparately need to relocate my brain. :rolleyes:

This hotel is often heavily booked so your upgrade luck depends on day of your booking. Corner room is moderately difficult but offered graciously, suite is very difficult -- they have few and they are usually sold out at high prices. At many NY hotels the most expensive rooms sell out first.

stayed here for the past three nights...one more to go.

while the hotel has many things going for it, there are a few strikes that are kisses of death for me. i am going to move rooms today to see if they can be lessened.

first, i am in a junior suite xx10. for some reason, the hotel was furnished without blackout shades. and, the junior suites have huge windows. my room has the thin see-through shade closest to the window and then a thicker shade in front of it. but, both shades are just long vertical strips that are sieves for copious amounts of light. there is no solid blackout shade. facing south and east, my room was bright each morning by 5 am (and, hence, i am in the club room on a weekend at 7 am eastern). :rolleyes: i am going to try to move to a darker room today.

second, the toilet flush is loud enough to wake the dead. it is impossible to flush without waking a roommate. with a push of a button, the toilet makes one of the loudest "woosh"es i have ever heard. it's almost scary.

plusses for the hotel include the incredible location, awesome view, and nice club room (great bagels). being a native new yorker, i use the subway intensively. this property is close to the 8th avenue (ACE), the 7th avenue (123) and 6th avenue lines. moreover, it is super easy to get to and from newark airport ($13 one-way) via the port authority bus. this saves about $40 (net) on taxi expenses. plus, the bus has its its own lane from port authority into the lincoln tunnel (gold on a weekend friday night).

miscellany: 1) my club room had two very nice bottles of panna water replenished each day. ^

2) on my first morning, the carbon monoxide detector went off for about a minute at 10:30 am. while this is pretty late, i had just flown in from tokyo on the red eye the day before and was dead to the world. the detector scared the **ck out of me. when i called the manager on duty, i was told that the hotel was working on a way to inform guests of the testing. <<thoughts to self: the hotel has been opened for a couple of years, no? they must not be working that hard.>>

3) local calls are $1.75 each. :rolleyes:

Agree with your comments, but the things you hated about the room (blinds and toilet) are the things that I found to be reasons to pick this hotel instead of another one -- in other words they are pluses and not minuses in my book. Just shows the differences in perspective peope have. The blinds are quite nice and work well except for blackout; but a pillow or sleep mask solves that problem, without losing the other benefits of the blind. Similarly the noise is a small price to pay for having high quality plumbing. These tradeoffs must make hotel designers crazy (whatever they do, someone will hate it). Overall the Westin TS is remarkably good, surprisingly so.

update: moved to xx41. this room has blackout shades...and a great view. why couldn't there be blackout shades in xx10?

the toilet in this room would also wake the dead. it's fine to not flush in the middle of the night with a "number 1." but, i guess the roomie is waking up if a "number two" is necessary. :td:

sorry to be so graphic.

Another potty problem is the frosted glass sliding bathroom doors. If you get up in the middle of the night and want to turn on the bathroom light...it illuminates the room and can wake up your roommate. And if that doesn't...the exploding toilet, will.

;)

Agreed. I'll take the quality plumbing and deal with the noise. But I'm primarily a business traveller who has the room to himself. And the blackout shades are quite dangerous for me. The Heavenly/Signature bed is sooooo comfortable and I'm often so tired that I'd never wake up if it weren't for natural light.

You can never please all of the people all of the time...

sometimes i see some of these "obvious" design issues and just shake my head. the above situation is just confusing/perplexing to me. who would design a hotel with a frosted glass door on the bathroom when it faces the bedroom?

i am not necessarily blaming starwood. maybe the hotel was built before starwood was involved. but, it does seem a bit odd, no?

Not if you're designing your room for the kind of customer that wears their sunglasses to bed.

;)

fly c o to see the yanks,
curious if the "W" has done anything about that shower that lets water literally pour out the shower basin onto the bathroom floor ? That was also a novel (nouveau ??) feature of this property when I stayed there. Trendy is one thing - this seemed like very poor engineering to me.

Bellboy showed us how to fix it when he brought the bags up - lay a large towel across the threshold.