Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City — Hotel in Los Angeles

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...

My family and I stood at this hotel the weekend of Labor Day Sunday-Monday. We were celebrating my son's birthday with another family of ours. We were 2 families staying in 2 different rooms. At first check in was fine. However when we got to our rooms we noticed the air conditioning wasn't working. We were then told there was an a/c issue with the entire hotel. This weekend was particularly hot. 90s to 100s outside. The hotel let us know they were working on it and offered us dining credit. That was nice. The a/c was out for about 6-8 hours. It finally started working in the late night when we returned from the theme park. The next day we asked for a late check out and they accommodated both our families so that was nice too. They told us to go to the front desk and ask for our key to be resigned for the new check out time. So I did that. I spoke with a gentleman at the front, he fixed my key. I asked him about our other families room and he said the person from that room needed to show their ID for their updated key card. I said that was fine and I would let them know because they were in the pool at the time. He said ok and I THOUGHT that was end of it. However (this is the part that has disturbed me the most) about 10 min later the same man from the front desk approached me at the pool and said "Hey where's your little friend that you said needed a key?" I was so caught off guard that my response was confusing. I said "Huh?" He then repeated himself and said something like "Yeah, you said you had a friend here that supposedly needed the key so where is she?" Again very caught off guard I pointed to my family member that was sitting in the pool. I said "she's right there" he said "I need to see her ID" I got out of my chair went to grab her stuff and realized everyone was watching us. This employee made it seem like we were there unlawfully and so everyone was watching us trying to figure out what was going on. When he realized that we were there lawfully, his tone changed when my male family member went to talk to him to show him the ID. I was still irritated, but decided not to speak up. Until he then approached me to my face and said, "do you have a problem you wanna address?" I said "absolutely" and I told him how unprofessional he was to approach me in such a manner when I did nothing wrong. If we were not supposed to be there, why would he hand me a key when he verified my ID. He spoke to me so condescending and so unprofessional I was absolutely shocked. I didn't report this sooner because I didn't think it was a big deal until I started talking to other people I know in the hospitality business and they made me aware that what he was doing was called profiling. Shame on him. If he really wanted to know what was going on, he could've looked at our rooms and seen that both of these families were attached together because we made reservations together and even had our rooms accommodated together. But he didn't bother doing that because he seen a group of minorities and he thought that we had no business being there. We paid over $250 for one night and to be treated in such a manner is disgraceful and disgusting. Especially from an employee who is a minority himself (tall black man with a bald head and glasses). So if you're gonna stay here, beware of this employee because he is very rude and condescending. He is the reason I will never go back...

My family and I stood at this hotel the weekend of Labor day. We were celebrating my son's birthday with another family of ours. We were 2 families staying in 2 different rooms. At first check in was fine. However when we got to our rooms we noticed the air conditioning wasn't working. We were then told there was an a/c issue with the entire hotel. This weekend was particularly hot. 90s to 100s outside. The hotel let us know they were working on it and offered us dining credit. That was nice. The a/c was out for about 6-8 hours. It finally started working in the late night when we returned from the theme park. The next day we asked for a late check out and they accommodated both our families so that was nice too. They told us to go to the front desk and ask for our key to be resigned for the new check out time. So I did that. I spoke with a gentleman at the front, he fixed my key. I asked him about our other families room and he said the person from that room needed to show their ID for their updated key card. I said that was fine and I would let them know because they were in the pool at the time. He said ok and I THOUGHT that was end of it. However (this is the part that has disturbed me the most) about 10 min later the same man from the front desk approached me at the pool and said "Hey where's your little friend that you said needed a key?" I was so caught off guard that my response was confusing. I said "Huh?" He then repeated himself and said something like "Yeah, you said you had a friend here that supposedly needed the key so where is she?" Again very caught off guard I pointed to my family member that was sitting in the pool. I said "she's right there" he said "I need to see her ID" I got out of my chair went to grab her stuff and realized everyone was watching us. This employee made it seem like we were there unlawfully and so everyone was watching us trying to figure out what was going on. When he realized that we were there lawfully, his tone changed when my male family member went to talk to him to show him the ID. I was still irritated, but decided not to speak up. Until he then approached me to my face and said, "do you have a problem you wanna address?" I said "absolutely" and I told him how unprofessional he was to approach me in such a manner when I did nothing wrong. If we were not supposed to be there, why would he hand me a key when he verified my ID. He spoke to me so condescending and so unprofessional I was absolutely shocked. I didn't report this sooner because I didn't think it was a big deal until I started talking to other people I know in the hospitality business and they made me aware that what he was doing was called profiling. Shame on him. If he really wanted to know what was going on, he could've looked at our rooms and seen that both of these families were attached together because we made reservations together and even had our rooms accommodated together. But he didn't bother doing that because he seen a group of minorities and he thought that we had no business being there. We paid over $250 for one night and to be treated in such a manner is disgraceful and disgusting. Especially from an employee who is a minority himself (tall black man with a bald head and glasses). So if you're gonna stay here, beware of this employee because he is very rude and condescending. He is the reason I will never go back...