Shae Fischer

Review of The Sebel Hawksbury

From the outside the Crown Plaza seems like a very...

From the outside the Crown Plaza seems like a very fancy and respectable establishment... but don't be fooled! At nearly $200/night for the cheapest room the best way I can describe it is a polished turd. I'll start with the positive: the beds are ok, the breakfast buffet is decent, and the room service is the same price as the bar with no extra delivery fee.

Now the many reasons this place very much isn't worth the price tag. To start, budget drinking water into your stay as the tap water smells like manure and tastes even worse. They seem to know this as they charge $10 for a bottle of water, or you could walk 10 minutes and get some at 7-eleven. The water issue doesn t stop there as the shower heads are so weak its a slow dribble like someone is ringing out a damp cloth over your head. Nearly impossible to wash soap off your body, and if you have long thick hair like me, plan for an extra 20 minutes trying to wash it. Better off washing in the sink with a jug of stinky water. Also pretty sure the water gave me dandruff for the first time in my life, but I digress. For some reason the bathroom door is right in front of your face in bed with an opaque glass door... so if you or your partner gets up to pee in the middle of the night you have a choice of either doing it in the dark or waking them up with the bright light and VERY loud fan that comes on automatically. Also the towels are terrible.
If you need to do laundry, DO NOT USE ON EVEN REMOTELY DELICATE CLOTHES. The water is literally boiling hot no matter what setting you use, nearly untouchable to take out or change over to the dryer with bare hands. I have a couple of ruined shirts to prove it. It's also $3 wash and $3 dry and one washer for the whole wing.
They charge to make local calls on the in room phone... first time I have ever heard of that. I had to leave the hotel to get cell service to order a pizza.
The room was clean enough, but as soon as you open the shutters its pure spider webs like it hasnt been cleaned in decades... I genuinely like spiders and even I was disgusted, I would have liked to be able to open the windows to smell the beautiful gardens outside or hear the birds without a million bugs getting in.
One of the rooms we were in had a broken AC unit and it took 2 days of repeated calling and hounding the front desk to have it dealt with. I kept being told someone will be right up and noone would come or they would come and try the exact same thing as the last person (changing settings because apparently I'm too stupid to have tried that already and told them I did that each time to no avail.) The 4th employee to come look at it came with two other maintenance guys and decided to move me rooms. I have to say they were very nice and offered to help me carry everything to the other room.
It feels a bit pretentious as well, as a non VIP in an expensive room I felt snubbed a few times with breakfast and bar service.
There is about a 2 inch gap under the suite door as well so the bright hall light shines right into your room, not an issue for most but that combined with the paper-thin walls means you can hear people whispering in the rooms around you. ZERO privacy sound wise. And forget about sleeping if someone is watching tv as its attached to the thinnest wall with the sound pointed towards to door so it travels out.
The maids are also not very good at making sure you have toilet paper when they do your room. One little inconvenience in the modern age is no plugs anywhere near the bed to charge your phone over night and use as an alarm.

All in all I would have been happy enough if the place was $100/night, but that's just not the case.