To say I'm disappointed in this hotel would be an understatement. I am a frequent traveler and stay at Hilton properties whenever possible - there is a certain level of quality that you expect when staying at a Hilton hotel, and this one fell far below expectations. We stayed at this location for two nights in a corner suite with one king bed and a sofa bed; the room said it could accommodate 4 people. While it suited our family (2 adults and 2 children), I do not believe the room would have comfortably fit four adults.

I'll start with the pros: this hotel is conveniently located near Universal Studios. It is a 5-10 minute walk to the park and there is a free shuttle available. Hotel parking is easily accessible. Check-in was a breeze and the receptionist gave us free bottles of water which was nice. There is a convenient filtrated water system in the hotel lobby to refill water bottles.

Now for the downsides, of which there were numerous. The room we were given was on the second floor immediately below the lobby. I'm not sure if it was the location of the room or the AC (which barely worked and never got around to completely cooling off the room), but there was a persistant knocking sound coming from the ceiling that never went away. There was obvious mold in the bathroom sink. The pull out sofa bed mattress had an uncomfortable dip in the middle. There was no comforter or pillows for the sofa bed, but I did find a (very scratchy) blanket in the closet and used two of the pillows from the king bed. The pillows felt like they were made of bricks, all of us woke up with sore necks.

The hotel had two restaurants. The dinner buffet was $139 per person which is absurd. We ended up ordering off the menu at the bar area. It was not busy however there were several tables covered in dirty dishes that did not get bussed/cleaned the entire time we sat there. No one acknowledged us when we were looking for a table; we found a table by the window that was cleaned of dishes but hadn't been wiped down. The cloth napkins had large obvious stains. The silverware was dirty. My son was served water in a glass that had not been cleaned, there were obvious food stains inside the cup. The food was subpar, my husband ordered a Caeser salad that did not have dressing on it and I had the Hilton club sandwich with soggy bread and wilted/brown lettuce. The waitress was pleasant and the service was fine. The total bill came to approximately $130 with tip.

Self-parking is convenient but at $40 a day, it is very pricy. You do get in/out access for that price and can keep your car there until 6pm on check-out day without getting charged extra.

They have a large pool area with a hot tub. There are free pool towels which is nice and there was plenty of places to sit. However, the hot tub stairs/ledges were coated in green algae and the pool was similarly dirty.

We were informed that we could not use our Hilton rewards as we booked thru Capital One, which was annoying but not a huge deal. I thought the staff I interacted with was friendly, however I did witness one very rude front staff clerk talking dismissively/down to a man who accidentally used the word room service instead of housekeeping. You have to request cleaning so we did not use the housekeeping services.

Overall, this was a really disappointing experience and I'm surprised considering the reviews I read ahead of time. We'll stay somewhere else when we come back to Universal Studios later this year.