Review by avril nanton on 14th November, 2006

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I stayed in this hotel for 2 nights, a Friday and a Saturday over a November weekend. I found the room to be very nice, big and comfy. However, the problems I came across were many and varied. 1. The room was not very well hoovered, but passable 2. There was no toilet brush with which to clean the toilet if it got badly soiled 3. If you used the towels there was nowhere to place the wet towel other than over the dry towels. 4. The choice of TV channels was not very good. They didn't have the usual E4, BBC3 etc, they had some strange channel called "reality zone" which consisted only of reality TV programmes which were very dull. They did, however, have BBC news 24 but it would have been nice to offer a music channel for kids and teenagers. 5. We were on the ground floor but there were no nets (or anything similiar like a frosting on the glass) which meant that we couldn't open the heavy curtains until we were fully dressed. This meant that the beautiful morning sunshine was missed as people walking past the bedroom could see straight into the room (embarrassing if you've just come out of the bathroom!). The other problem with that is if you have anything valuable in your room then anyone passing can have a good look into your room (well on the ground floor anyway1). 6.The map they provided of the city was badly photocopied and not very informative. We were provided with a much better map from the Cardiff Visitor Centre. 7. The sink plug hole was unbelievably disgusting. There was hair, spit and all manner of things on it which made me want to vomit. 8.The plunger on the toilet was so stiff that you had to use 2 hands just to press it down. It's a very modern toilet with push button plungers but they only looked good - they were almost useless due to their stiffness. 9. The disabled toilet had no hook for your coat. 10. There was no air in the room, though the heating worked just fine (in fact brilliantly) you couldn't open the windows or let any sort of fresh air into the room. 11. Due to the name of the hotel, most cab drivers kept asking us if we wanted to go to McDonald's burgers! Another problem was that most cab drivers didn't know where the hotel was and we had to sometimes try 2 cabs just to find a driver who knew where it was. The entrance was confusing and not clearly signed for anyone to find. Despite all of the above, the hotel was very nice, the staff were friendly, the breakfast was good and the general ambience of the hotel was nice. It was also good value for money. There is tea and coffee in the room with a kettle. There is apparently free interent (though I never used this facility). As the hotel is very new everything still looks clean and sparkling which is nice. I would recommend it to anyone who was looking for somewhere to stay in Cardiff and I would also go back there.

Date visited: 10 nov 06