Magnolia Review of Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay
Lots of ground to cover. We booked a stay here for...
Lots of ground to cover. We booked a stay here for a two night short weekend getaway this past weekend. The resort has all the makings to present a magnificent experience and we ve been to Hyatt Regency s before so I ll admit past experience expectations definitely existed. I ll highlight the positives first - the pool, movie night and game room for children (thought we did not have ours with us) were fantastic. The Spa - also fantastic. The grounds look like they d be lovely in season and the concierge I spoke with was an absolute asset as she truly offered the experience I expect from a resort like this. The valet service was appreciated and not overly priced - also nice.
Our check in process seemed smooth and easy until we arrived in our room and this is where, sadly, a downhill spiral began. We were double charged for our stay and to date - this remains unresolved (2 days now since checkout). We had made our reservation online and naturally a hold was put on our card for the stay. We arrived to check in and another identical hold was placed on our card by the registration staff. We called the front desk - they apologized and said, with little concern but very fast explanation, that one hold would drop off eventually. Mind you this erroneously locked up approximately $800 of our otherwise available funds while we were at this resort. For some, that error could be financially debilitating - not an acceptable accidental overcharge / hold; especially because no effort to correct it was made. I went to use the bathroom in our room, the toilet had not been cleaned. I ll not detail how that was obvious. The hotel carpet had not been vacuumed so I stepped barefoot on a plastic price tag attachment and crumbs left in our room from the previous patron. So very Frustrating as this of course leaves you wondering what else wasn t properly cleaned? The sheets??? Fortunately it did appear we had clean linens. The front desk offered apologies and a change of rooms for these discoveries though. Not convenient, but at least a solution.
On to the hotel amenities - The full service hotel restaurant had a lovely menu (the Brussels sprouts were awesome and I mean this!) but the ambiance looks like an 80 s cafeteria which absolutely didn t match the menu cuisine or price point. Table cloths draped to the floor would go a long way to making the space more upscale to match its menu and replacement of the cracked vinyl chairs would help too. We spent slightly more than $200 on 2 people for mid tier, casual dining. 2 seafood Appetizers, Steak, Rockfish and wine were our selections. The food was good. The service matched the cafeteria ambiance but tried hard to be more and that counts for something. Our server was friendly and knowledgeable and provided a good experience.
We ordered breakfast delivered to our room the first morning & actually laughed when it arrived in to go containers in a brown paper shopping bag. We laughed because at this point - we had made a choice to have a great weekend and not expect this to be a nice resort experience but rather a budget based weekend getaway. But we did ponder, why wouldn t the Hyatt deliver the room service on plates with real utensils? Again - we laughed out loud. The breakfast was on par with McDonalds but that was ok, we are absolutely comfortable in admitting we are fans of McDonald s breakfast sandwiches and coffee and it was nice to be able to enjoy something like it via room service in the comfort of our Hyatt Regency Resort room. Ha ha
Overall we d say this resort needs updating but where they really need to focus is on what we are choosing to assume was their off season foot forward presentation, as it seemed to be quite below par.
We realize we may have just landed on fluke scenarios this weekend but we happened upon other guests (2 other couples) who were experiencing a number of frustrations as well and that collective added up to the hotel not earning the best reviews this weekend.
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