Hi, everybody! We just got back this weekend from a stay at Hard Rock Hotel, and I wanted to share a review of our experience, and a few words of warning. (My post is wordy, so if you'd rather skip it and cut to the chase, just scroll down and read the last paragraph.)
Disclaimers: This was our fourth stay at HRH, where we've previously stayed in standard, pool view, and deluxe room categories, and all of those prior experiences were terrific. Also, as background, I've spent hundreds of nights in hotels and motels over my 40-something years of life, for business and pleasure, at price points ranging from fleabag to Disney deluxe, with all sorts of issues (malfunctioning plumbing, inconvenient location, abutting a loud stairwell or ice machine, noisy neighbors, etc.), and I have never before found it necessary to complain to the front desk, change rooms, or to check out early, anywhere.
We arrived on Monday, 2/21, for a long-anticipated four-night stay in a Future Rock Star Family Suite, at a "Stay More Save More" rate of $805/night ($900+ after taxes and fees). It was a big splurge, and a surprise for the kids, who had no idea these rooms existed and thought we were staying in a standard room. I'd noted on the reservation that we were celebrating a birthday (mine was 2/21), and requested a higher floor. We checked in around 8:30am and received a room ready text around 5:00pm, assigning us room 3085.
The room was easy enough to find, as it was not only on a lower floor, but was the very first room off of the lobby and the bank of six elevators that serves all 7 floors of the hotel -- literally just steps from both. We went in, and got to savor the oohs and aahs of the kids, who were just as delighted with the room -- which had a separate bedroom just for them -- as we'd hoped. Unfortunately, all delight and enjoyment of the room ended there. It quickly became apparent that every "ding" of the elevators operating 24/7, every "whump" of the elevator doors closing, every song played on the big screen in the lobby or by the live musicians who played until 11pm nightly, every vacuuming of the lobby at 3am, and every heel click and word emitted by any guest heading to or from the lobby or the elevators, bounced off of those travertine floors and straight into our room just a few feet away. The door had a large gap beneath it, the entryway was hard tile, and the curved wall extending toward the master bed turned the master bedroom into a veritable echo chamber.
The rest of our stay was dismal -- a losing battle against the din. We tried to dampen it at night by stuffing rolled towels and sofa cushions around the door, with little success. Every time we'd almost drift off to sleep, dinging and banging from the elevators, or noise from the lobby, would ring out and wake us up. We are not light sleepers and have stayed in noisy rooms before, but this was just on a "whole 'nother level."
After the first sleepless night, we tried to shrug it off, and reasoned that things might improve since the President's Day crowds were departing. We yawned our way through the next day, and I stopped by the front desk in the evening to leave some constructive feedback -- politely, kindly, because God forbid somebody think I'm a Karen -- about the noise problems in the room, and ask if there was any way we could switch to another. I was told we could not, as the hotel was fully booked.
By the end of the second sleepless night, I was desperately texting the manager at 4am, begging for a room change, on the off chance that something else would be opening up that day. I was told this was not possible. As a last-ditch effort, I asked if we could obtain rollaway beds so we could try and sleep on the floor in the kids' portion of the suite, which was quieter because it was further removed from the master bedroom area, with closeable doors between. I was told "absolutely -- we'll take care of that for you, for the added charge of $35+ tax/night/bed. Rock on!" After I meekly protested that we were already paying $900/night for a room that wasn't fit for sleeping, they brought us one twin-sized rollaway bed and grudgingly agreed not to charge us for it. I sacrificed the afternoon we'd planned to spend in the parks to try and get a nap on it, only to be constantly awakened by the hammering and drilling that was going on on the scaffolding that had been installed against all of the suite's windows from outside. (We were informed about the construction before we arrived so I'm not faulting them for that, but it certainly added insult to injury.)
After the third night, my husband and I were shuffling through the events of the day like zombies, and the lack of sleep had transformed me into a mental basket case. When I bumped my coffee cup at breakfast at The Kitchen (which was a lovely meal otherwise, FWIW) and spilled a few drops on the table, I irrationally burst into tears. My husband and I exchanged glances and he said, "we have GOT to get out of here. I don't care where we go or how much it costs, but that room is ruining our vacation, and we're not paying to sleep one more night on the floor."
So, we hopped on our phones, booked the last room available at Sapphire Falls for that night, and went to the front desk to explain the situation and request to be "let out" one night early, which was agreed-to. I was crying when we walked away: there'd been no raised voices, no anger, no resistance, and it all ended (in the words of T.S. Eliot) "not with a bang but a whimper." I was just so disappointed that the Hard Rock had seen fit to put our family -- passholders, repeat guests, and Hard Rock Rewards members, no less -- in such a crappy, inhospitable, unlivable room, and embarrassed that I'd been paying such a high price for the privilege. I felt like they made a total fool out of me.
As a "goodwill gesture," the Hard Rock Hotel initially issued us a $200 "use it or lose it" merchandise credit. A couple of days later, after I completed the review questionnaire that was e-mailed to me at checkout, the manager issued us an additional $300 credit on our bill -- which meant we still ended up paying a total of $2,400, or $800/night, for a room out of which we could get no enjoyment, and which should never have been assigned to any guest.
Hard Rock used to be our favorite Universal hotel. Now (when, concededly, my emotions are still a bit raw), I don't ever want to darken its doors again. I'm angry at Hard Rock for putting us in an untenable position, and at myself for not getting us out of it sooner, and I feel like the hotel's belated efforts toward "guest recovery" were woefully inadequate. (*Sidenote: As it turned out, the situation they put us in was also dangerous. Our flight home ended up being canceled due to weather, and after that one night at Sapphire Falls, we had to undertake an impromptu 20-hour, 1,300-mile road trip in a rental car, with my husband and I still exhausted from having slept only one night out of the previous four.)
So my word of warning is this: if you are assigned an unlivable room at Hard Rock Hotel (or anywhere else, for that matter), don't try to gut it out like we did. Don't be so afraid to be seen as a "Karen" that you're unwilling to insist on a resolution, and instead are simply depending on the kindness of strangers to help you with the problem in the first instance, or compensate you for your troubles later. Speak up, and switch rooms, or even hotels if necessary (as we should have done after that first night), as soon as you realize you can't live with the room: your mental health may depend upon it. This was a painful and very costly mistake that we never anticipated and weren't prepared for, because we evidently thought more highly of the Hard Rock Hotel than it did of us. It's one we hope never to repeat.
UPDATE, March 10th: I posted an honest review of my family's experience on Hard Rock Orlando's Facebook page a few days after this post. In response, a different Hard Rock manager from the one I'd spoken with earlier contacted me, and increased the amount of our partial refund, covering the rack rate for the first night of our 3-night stay. Combined with the small discount we'd already been given (which was roughly the same as taxes and fees for that first night), it added up to a 33% refund overall. While I remain disappointed in our experience and the damper it put on our ability to enjoy our trip, this is a far more palatable conclusion, and I'm genuinely grateful that someone from the hotel reached out to us again. At the time of my initial post, with Hard Rock having made a really picayune attempt to smooth things over, I felt deeply disappointed and devalued as a guest. The fact that the hotel made another and more substantial effort, after-the-fact and unsolicited, makes me feel more like our concerns were at least heard, and has gone a long way toward restoring our relationship.
& because you're staying at a Premier hotel, you also get Express Passes for everyone on your room reservation 
Only the cheaper hotels have the AP discount. I'm hoping that changes.
