Rosen Plaza Hotel - Orlando, USA     

I stayed here in early June 2008 while attending a conference. My impressions were: Pros: 1. The beds were fairly comfy, which is a huge plus. They didn't have that gross stiff comforter you sometimes find in hotels. Instead, relatively nice sheets and pillows, and a supportive mattress. 2. The walls were reasonably thick (though you could definitely hear people in the hallway) 3. Some reviews say the curtains don't close. They do. They are nice thick blackout curtains behind the decorative curtains. 4. ATM in the lobby is convenient -- though you pay $3 for the privilege. 5. There is a 'convenience store' type thing in the lobby, which actually had good pizza/soup/etc for lunch. You could also buy all sorts of breakfast-y things there for not much $ at all. Cons: 1. The Matisse restaurant in the hotel had bad food -- the buffet is mediocre at best, and the menu is not much better. I was stuck eating there b/c of the conference around 5 times and each time it was really substandard fare. (Pro: There's a good Japanese place down the road though -- instead of turning left outside of the hotel to the chains, turn right and go down ~1-2 miles. It is in kind of a strip mall on your left hand side and has a red awning -- really, it's inexpensive and good!) 2. The internet was $5 per day and incredibly flaky and slow. I believe it's $10 per day w/o a conference rate. However, you can get free wireless internet down by the restaurants in the lobby. 3. This made me mad -- the restaurants in the hotel *automatically add a 15% tip to every meal.* Which is fine, except that 4 out of the 5 times I ate there, the servers did not stamp the receipt with "15% gratuity included", and went to lengths to hide this fact, including putting the non-itemized receipt out and hiding or not giving me the receipt with the 15% gratuity itemized. It's hard to see that this is included, and if you don't, you will end up paying a 40-50% tip to a dishonest waiter. This is a bad system. 4. For conferences: They *blast* the A/C in the conference rooms. We ended up going downstairs and buying coffee just to wrap our hands around it. Bring a sweater / jacket to the Salon area (Floor 2), particularly Salons 1-8. Overall: This hotel was fairly comfortable, but had a definite '[---] the tourist' attitude to it. You could find better.

Overall, this is a decent hotel. The location is good and it is across the street from Pointe Orlando, I caught a movie at the nice Regal theater there. The food was ok (the buffet at Matisse was really good). However, the pillows were so cheap! The feather quills literally poked out of the pillow. Very annoying. The alarm clock didn't work, but it was replaced. My biggest beef is the "security" there. I left my glove compartment light on and my battery died, but security refused to give me a jump or find someone who could. I had to pay $50 for someone to come out. I have some other minor complaints, but nothing major. I probably wouldn't stay here again though.