Windsor Palace Copacabana Hotel — Hotel in Região Geográfica Imediata do Rio de Janeiro

The Windsor Palace is a basic Rio de Janeiro hotel near, but not located directly on, the Copacabana beachfront road, Avenida Atlântica. In that way, it is very reminiscent of the now defunct but beloved Ipanema Plaza hotel.

As was the case at the Ipanema Plaza, the personnel at the Windsor Palace are very helpful. The rooms we had reserved were not immediately available due to the final day of Rio Carnaval but the staff took care of moving us to rooms on the upper floors (Floors 13-18 are considered to be the premium "executive" levels) the following day. When one of us had an issue with ants in the room, the staff had housekeeping take care of the problem.

The "executive" rooms at the Windsor Palace are not large but are adequate in size. The shape of the rooms varies from a more "square" configuration to the one to which I was assigned, a "railroad car" style, meaning long and narrow. The bed was comfortable. The room includes a desk with adequate electrical outlets and a frigobar. Air conditioning worked well, sometimes too well. There is a great view of the ocean from the upper floors but only a partial view of the beach.

The Internet connection in our initial room on lower floors was good but it became unusable in the rooms on our higher floor due to weak signal strength. Fortunately, Google Fi now provides a 4G LTE connection while roaming in most Brazilian cities, so we used that connection instead of the hotel's WiFi.

There is a cocktail bar and a small pool on the rooftop, one level up from Floor 18, with a sweeping view of the Copacabana beach, ranging all the way from Sugarloaf and Leme on one end to the Forte de Copacabana and Arpoador on the other end. The small gym on the pool level was closed for repairs when one of our friends tried to use it.

The café da manhã (breakfast) was good, again with basic offerings very similar to our experience at the late Ipanema Plaza. Like that other hotel, the Windsor Palace's breakfast room transforms into a restaurant for lunch and dinner. However, there is a plethora of restaurants in this part of Copacabana, so we have not yet dined at the hotel for other meals.

The location of the Windsor Palace is superb, being close not only to the beach and restaurants, but also to many stores, supermarkets, shops, and a Portuguese language school, Rio & Learn. The hotel is also just 3 blocks from the Siqueira Campos station of the Rio Metrô, providing easy access to downtown, Botafogo, Ipanema, Leblon, and Barra da Tijuca.

In summary, my friends and I have been satisfied with our stay at the Windsor Palace. It has in its favor a great location and helpful staff at a reasonable price point. We would consider returning here for a...

Had a high floor room with a balcony, which made things more pleasant than they otherwise might be. The balcony only provided a glimpse of the beach through the buildings, but still the spacious higher grade room was nice. ||Mattress was decent -I wouldn't go as far as to say you're sleeping on a cloud, but not a hard bed by any means. And the feather pillows are truly among the best ever in a hotel. ||I liked the complimentary toiletries -soaps and shampoo bottles, just like in the good ol' days before hotels decided to cut costs. Slippers too. ||Breakfast helpfully goes from 6-10:30 and is quite generous. Pao de queijo is among the best I've had in Brazil -proper texture and I don't remember it being stale during my entire stay. That said, I found myself eating less and less at breakfast because it got repetitive. And I didn't want to stuff myself at breakfast so I could enjoy all the amazing restaurants in Copa and Ipanema. ||Water pressure was always superb, and temperature was never a problem. ||I do wish they had coffee and tea-making facilities in the room, but that's minor stuff. ||The one major issue I had was internet. It was absolute hell to hook up my computer to the internet. Phone had no problem, but the computer was not letting me connect, no matter what I did. Front desk staff was no help. They had tech support call me, but they spoke no English. Lucky for me, they did speak Spanish in addition to Portuguese, but they still couldn't solve the problem. I finally solved it myself, but only after googling solutions on my phone and wasting hours of sleep time. And then it kept throwing me off the internet every other day or so. As long as you do all your browsing on your phone and don't need to get any work done,...

Good location but the service is clearly below what you can expect from this type of hotel:

We arrived at noon and were informed that check in is at 2pm (which is ok). When we came back at 2:30pm they started to prepare our room and so we had to wait at the reception until it was ready🙄

We were lucky and got a room in the 16th floor so we had a nice view form our spacious balcony. Rooms below might not have a nice view as the hotel is not directly at the beach.

Wifi in the room did not work properly (signal too weak). I informed the reception but of course they could not fix it during our stay.

The "gym" is a joke. It's a room smaller than the hotel rooms with four treadmills and nothing else. The reception was not able to give me the name of a gym close by where I can buy a day pass (even though the excellence Equipe 1 gym is just a few min away.

If you want to go for breakfast you better go early as the room is tiny and there are people waiting outside of the breakfast room (like in a boarding area at a small airport). The breakfast itself is pretty good but not outstanding.

The pool area is as tiny as the other amenities. There are only 3 beach chairs for the entire hotel (so usually you won't find a spot). There are a few tables but only two of them have umbrellas. The service at the pool bar is the worst. We ordered a salad, a cheeseburger and a filet mignon. They forgot the filet and the cheeseburger came without... cheese! (It was just meat and bread). We ordered the filet again. I explicitly ordered it medium-rare (which was reconfirmed by the waiter. What finally came was a nice piece of meat but cooked to death.

I'm sure you can find a better place...