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| - I'm writing this review as I sit in the Hilton Garden Inn at Charlotte.
The rooms are adequate, with most coming with a flat screen television or two, comfortable beds, and ample showers or hot tub jacuzzis. There is also a full service restaurant and bar in the Lounge area of the Hotel.
I will also give them a nod for their complimentary shuttle which will travel you anywhere in a three mile radius of the hotel. The dude driving the shuttle was very polite and curtious ... I'm guessing because he didn't have to stay or work in the Hotel itself.
Unfortunately, that's where the good stuff ends.
The gym facilities are atrocious. 2 Treadmills, a recumbant bike, and an Elliptical machine with maybe 4 medicine balls littered around a room that measures 6 ft x 20ft, if that. A grotesque pool with a grimey bottom that on more than one occasion I considered drowning myself in to free myself from my mortal shackles and break free from this prison of a hotel.
Concierge wasn't helpful at all -- when I arrived at the front desk and asked if I could score a bottle of water to use the gym, because I didn't feel like paying the $4.00 fee for drinking the Fiji water they had in my room, the guy at the front desk stuck up his nose and snootily informed me "You can purchase water from the gift shop." Sorry buddy, at over $150 bucks per night, you can *give* me a water for the cost of... free. Also, what kind of idiot buys bottled water as a gift?
The in House internet is the slowest you will find. I'm a computer / IT guy myself and it is flagrantly apparent that this place throttles their bandwidth usage. Online Games of any type slow to a crawl, and streaming video sites such as Hulu or YouTube take forever and a day to load. This is the year 2010 -- we should have hover cars by now, but apparently its too much to ask for a sad excuse for a Hilton to manage their Internet Connection enough to let me watch the Keyboard Cat before dying of boredom.
The location is also horrible. Right next to the Nascar Hall of Fame ... and thats about it. Everywhere you'd want to go is located 1/2 mile or so into the city, so you have to take the shuttle to get anywhere. Without the shuttle, this place would be unstayable.
Alright / Mediocre Rooms + Satisfactory Shuttle Service + Snooty Concierge + Horrible Gym Facilities + Atrocious Location = Don't waste your time. I saw a park bench a few blocks away that I will be living under during my next stay in Charlotte. Do yourself a favor and visit the aLoft at the Epicenter -- it beats this place in every measurable way.
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