AC Hotel New York Downtown — Hotel in New York

Recently I decided to stay in Manhattan before a cruise from Brooklyn and decided to try a new to me hotel. The AC by Marriott is a select service property located along the East River, near Pier 11/Wall Street ferry stop, the Financial District and the Brooklyn Bridge.||I arrived around 1PM and was able to check in. My Lifetime Titanium status got me a room with a river view which was nice. All of the Front Desk associates I encountered were super nice and helpful. Most Marriott brands are owned and operated by Franchisees and you can often tell a lot about the ownership based on the associates. I'd venture a guess that this particular owner (I can't recall the company) treats their people well-as nicely as those who work at corporate hotels. I've been a Marriott loyalist for over 30 years with lifetime status for at least half of that, and I'm a former associate so I think I'm a pretty good judge of this stuff.| |The AC brand is European in style, meaning minimalistic. As I was only here for a night, I was comfortable but if you are staying for a long time and travel with lots of "stuff" be warned that storage is at a minimum. My room did have a small fridge, a couple bottles of water, sufficient outlets and USB ports and was comfortable. The room was clean although could have been vacuumed a bit better (a few little bits under the desk, against the wall that not everyone would notice. Ex-housekeeping manager here-I see everything.||AC Hotels use my favorite Korres (a Greek brand) toiletries. I love these, use them at home and stock up on line OR preferably if I happen to find myself in Greece on vacation. ||I did get breakfast in the AM, and I applied my Elite $10 F&B voucher as well. The buffet is European and minimalistic, possibly due to it being a weekend. You can get a hot item, (waffle which was yummy, eggs/egg sandwich). It's overpriced-make that NYC priced-at 30 bucks but the voucher helped and as it had snowed (MAYBE 2 inches of slop) the evening before, I didn't feel like going out though I did venture to Starbucks up the street for a better cup of coffee). Normally AC breakfast buffets feature freshly sliced Iberico ham but this wasn't present when I stayed.||For dinner, I ventured to a lovely Irish pub about a 5 minute walk away, the Full Shilling, and it was fabulous. (I needed some cheering up and the food, drinks and staff there did the job, at least for the hour I was there).||My Uber to the pier in Brooklyn was maybe $60 as expected (I got a bigger vehicle due to the weather) so all in all, this hotel was a great choice pre cruise, in an area of Manhattan allowing easy access to Red Hook, and better quality and pricing than in Brooklyn or elsewhere...

My fiancé and I are big Marriott fans, and when we travel, we almost always stay exclusively in the chain. When we came across the AC brand, it seemed like the perfect combination of the loyalty program we love but young, hip decor aimed at our 20/30-something age group.

Unfortunately, when we got here, things were only great on the surface. Yeah, there's white marble in common areas, sleek decor throughout, and an overall minimalistic vibe to the (very small) rooms. But the AC Hotel Downtown's service and functionality was a disaster. We'd requested an early check-in, extra pillows, extra towels, and a high floor -- only some of which is guaranteed, I get that. But we got absolutely nothing despite booking 4+ months in advance. When we went to check in an hour and a half before the official time, we were told to come back after 3pm and they'd have a room. We came back at 3:45, there were still no rooms. By 4:20, the lobby was a mob scene with 50+ people in a tiny area, all waiting for rooms past the official check-in time. I had somewhere to be at 5pm, so I changed out of my plane clothes in their restrooms located on the second floor. They were filthy and smelled putrid -- an absolutely AWFUL start to the trip.

When we finally got a room, we were offered two free drinks at the bar for the inconvenience. Great! Except when we went to get them, the bar was closed... The hours weren't posted anywhere, and likewise there was zero information on the fitness room or any other kind of amenities. When we requested more towels and shampoo the next day, they never showed up. And the key cards you have to use to select your floor worked maybe 30% of the time. It felt like half our trip was spent trapped in the elevator, praying our key would read or arguing over how to best position it in front of the reader. After check out, I returned to the restrooms on the second floor and there was no toilet paper and no paper towels. Are you for real...?

The area is not ideal, but we knew that going in. The hotel is about a 9 minute walk to the nearest subway station, and there's virtually nothing to do nearby on the weekends. But we thought that would be worth it for a new, sleek hotel at a slightly cheaper price. And hey, it's part of the Marriott family! But man, I wish I'd...

This was the worst hotel experience I have ever had in my life. At this point I WISH that the only issue was that my room wasn't clean and we had to switch rooms but no, my experience was much more inconvenient than that. ||Ive stayed at many Marriotts and this was my first time staying in NYC. When we arrived they couldn't issue hotel keys so we had wait to be escorted in a full elevator to our room every time we needed to access it. ||The parking garage this hotel is in partnership with doesn't have in and out privileges after a certain time and not even attached to the hotel. An AC Hotel needs to have valet parking. There's no excuses. We were told to look at Spot Hero which can be shady and often times the owners try to change the price or rules when you arrive. To our disadvantage, most of the garages in this area didn't allow in and out and were 10-15 min walk away from the hotel which is insane after a long day. This put a damp in our plans for the night as it was my partners birthday and I had many surprises that this hotel ruined. Luckily, we were only ticketed and not towed as NYC is famous for. When we got back from our festivities there was literally no where to put the car. Most of the garages were closed for the night until 6am or too far. Definitely hated getting a $65 ticket.||There was not one microwave in the entire hotel. Seriously. Usually they are in each room or at minimum in the lobby. We were told to try a convenience store in the area. Coming from out of state 8 hours and all we wanted was the food we picked up that we can only get here and ended up wasting money having to throw it away because we couldn't reheat it. ||The room also doesn't have an iron or a real closet. No extra blanket, no soap for the shower. Just a waste and totally inconvenient. |I paid for this hotel in my points and even purchased more points to get a better rate and it wasn't worth it at all. No one cared to make our experience better after realizing every question we had they answered "no" with no real solutions. The customer service was terrible. Give me my money back and work on making the guest...