SpringHill Suites by Marriott The Dunes On Monterey Bay — Hotel in Marina

I have stayed at different Marriotts and this one I would consider average compared to many of the others. Here is why: Pros: ample free outdoor parking, heated (but small) indoor pool, gym, self service washer and dryer, free hot breakfast, a full bar with happy hour special drinks and appetizers ($5 Bloody Mary!), Mini fridge and small microwave in each room. Staff are very attentive to replenishing food in the mornings. There is free coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate and water all day. Fireside outdoor patio seating. Rooftop access to watch the sunset. Staff onsite 24 hours. Also, the beds were comfortable! Cons: when there are a large amount of guests the common areas, including the lobby where you eat breakfast is very full of people. The hallway where the elevators are located in the lobby is narrow making it difficult to walk past people waiting for the elevator. The breakfast isn't bad, but the same items are served every morning except there are fresh waffles on Saturday and Sundays. Other Marriotts I have stayed at tend to serve different items every day. I stayed in a 2 queen with sofa bed room. The room is narrow. As other reviews mentioned, there is one television and it is difficult to view if you have people sitting on the beds and the sofa. The door to the bathroom is privacy glass, and at night if people are trying to sleep and the light is on in the bathroom it shines onto the beds. It's not horrible, but can keep people awake. The bathroom is narrow and shower is on the smaller side. The narrowness of the bathroom and location of the shower makes it difficult to enter and exit the shower especially if you are not a small human. Overall, this is a nice hotel. You can see the ocean from the Oceanside rooms. I highly recommend you watch the sunset from the roof. Also, if you need to grab a few items there is a Target and some other stores across the street that you can easily walk to or drive to. I highly recommend going to the Fort Ord state beach which is literally a quarter mile down the road. Gorgeous beach. Easy enough to spend a whole day there. Also about 40 minutes down the road is San Juan Bautista, a very historic town with a large mission. The historic downtown is still operating. Also, we spent a full day at the Santa Cruz Beach boardwalk. I think when we visit next time we will reserve the Marriott in Santa Cruz as there is so much to do there. Also, there is a century theater directly across from the hotel. We saw a movie there and it...

We were really excited about how beautiful the hotel was, the room looked great, the fire pits were lovely, and the option of the indoor heated pool was exciting for my kids.

Things started to get frustrating when there was a repetitive clicking noise that woke us up at night. The first night I didn't notice it until early in the morning, but my husband said it had been irritating him all night. It wasn't there during the day, so we brushed it off. The second night it woke us both up multiple times and was really loud. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but it would stop long enough for us to start to fall back to sleep, then start again, no rhythm to it, but frustratingly persistent. It sounded like it was maybe in the wall above our head or in the ceiling. Since we didn't get good sleep, it left us cranky so the next issue likely seemed like a bigger deal than it was. We reserved a pool time because our kids were very excited by the prospect of an indoor heated pool. There were no open slots on the day we checked in or the second day, so we had to reserve one for our checkout day, which was fine since 9am was available and we had to check out at 11am. We watched the front desk clerk write our info down and thought we were set. We were told to check in at the front desk a few mins before our scheduled time, so my husband did and was told we were good to go. We got the whole family in swim suits and went downstairs and saw there was another family in the pool. We went to double check at the desk and was told they didn't have any reservations for us, eventhough we were just told 10 mins before that everything was fine, and we had watched our reservation be written into the schedule. It was very frustrating. A pool time of 1pm was offered, but we declined since check out was 11am and we didn't want to spend the day hanging around the hotel. We were then offered a late check out at 3pm and told that we could go explore monterey for a few hours, come back, swim at 1pm, and then check out at 3pm. Since the kids were so excited about the pool we decided to do it. That was fine until we got back from the pool and was asked by housekeeping when we were leaving. We told her about our 3pm check out and she took down some notes, said okay. Then as we were all half naked changing out of our swim suits a man from house keeping opens our door without knocking, trying to clean our room. There was no communication, it was very frustrating...

We stay as a family of 6 at hotels approximately 5 to 6 times per year. This hotel was our least favorite. There was enough dust in the room to start a fire - they make sure things in immediate view are clean but behind mirrors, on top of shelves etc were horrifically dirty. I did appreciate the tissues and utensils in the room although they only provided one for our family of 6. Minimal toilet paper, requested more from the front desk twice before we received any. Theres only one TV to share for three beds and its not easily seen or heard from all sleeping areas. The soap in the shower irritated our skin and we were given the tinest bar of soap at the sink for all 6 of us. Plugs and chargers provided in the room were all outdated and useless. Lightbulbs were out and not usable. There was no water pressure. A/C unit was nice and easy to use. View was okay - can see what business were around. There are no extras at this hotel. No game room, no activities, nothing. The top floor wasn't disclosed to us but as we explored ourselves, we found an area on the roof that had great potential but nothing was being done with it. Chairs thrown around and covered, not a useable space. The firepits outside were never turned on. The breakfast was HORRID - I miss my breakfast at the Hamptons. I did not hardly eat breakfast for two days here because it was so gross, dry, flavorless and was the same options every single day. There was also absolutely nowhere for us to sit. Its not easy trecking six people back up to eat in the room when our kids are constantly needing refills and other things. Don't get me started on the pool - the pool screams lawsuit. The bleach/chlorine levels are so horrific, Im surprised no one has been killed. All of us were struggling to breathe and experiencing lung issues. The pool gave me a double ear infection due to the strength of the chemicals in the water. All of our clothing was completely bleached. My hair is permanently damaged until it regrows out over the next two years. It was completely unsafe! Other than the chemical levels, it was just gross and disgustingly dirty. No towels either. This truly was the worst hotel experience I've ever had, and I will never recommend a Marriot...