DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel at the Entrance to Universal Orlando — Hotel in Orlando

Spent a week at this hotel. Starting with the good bits, the hotel is in a great location for Universal and facilities are good. Room was clean and tidy. ||Here is the issue we encountered as I would hate for it to happen to anyone else. On arriving for check-in, we were surprised that we were queuing for an hour and they had only checked in four people in front of us. We even commented wondering why the people were taking so long. That was until we stepped up to the desk.||We booked a package holiday with British Airways and the first person we met was delightful and full of smiles but unable to find our booking. I didn’t worry as we had a printed confirmation and were able to log into our account and show the booking live on my phone and I was told not to worry, it would be sorted. Searching for the booking went on for quite some time via lots of different methods and finally we were passed over to Kayla to resolve the issue.||We were then told that they hadn’t received any confirmation or payment and we either needed to contact British Airways to email them to arrange payment before we could check in or pay directly (a second payment for the same room) and claim the money back from British Airways. ||I understand that communication issues happen but this is where it became really stressful. I stepped away from the desk to try and contact BA but by this time it was past 10pm in the UK so I was unable to use live chat or any type of messaging service. My phone refused to connect to the US network to call the local emergency contact we had been given so after half an hour of trying to prove we had a booking I returned to the desk, once again showed Kayla the confirmation, explained the network connection issue and asked if I could borrow the hotel phone to call the emergency contact and resolve the issue. The response was a flat “no”and a request to either pay or step away from the desk until BA sent confirmation. There were no smiles, no kindness, no empathy that I was stuck miles away from home outside normal UK working hours. I really feel that Kayla could learn a lot from the Holiday Inn reception team, where kindness and going over and above to support guests seemed second nature. ||I explained to Kayla that I had emailed the previous week to request a room type and queried why the team hadn’t replied to let me know there was no booking at this point when I could resolved any issues prior to travelling. The response was there was nothing she could do to resolve the lack of response now and I still needed to pay or get BA to contact them.||At this point I was at a loss at what to do. Thankfully after searching the internet my daughter was able find an BA emergency email contact and after reaching out I was able to return to the desk to ask if BA had been in touch. At this point, Kayla went into a back room and shut the door. I had no idea if she was looking into my booking or something else. Around 20 minutes later she came back to update our booking had been confirmed and handed over my room key. In total the whole process of booking in took over 3 hours. This is the point we were also offered a cookie. As lovely as the cookies were, they struggled to take the bad taste from my mouth. ||I never found out where the communication breakdown occurred but given that my email to the Hilton prior to visit was never responded to and also on check out there was a charge for $60 for a restaurant we hadn’t visited (watch out for this too, don’t just drop your card in the box) I didn’t have much faith in the Hilton administration. ||The reason I am writing this review is to raise awareness that if you are staying at this hotel as part of a package deal and have not booked direct I would suggest confirming your booking before you arrive. Particularly if it is likely to be out of hours UK time and you are not prepared to pay twice. ||Once booked in the stay was fine. I can highly recommend Millers Ale House, next door to the hotel, for a tasty value meal. Especially if you...

We stayed here for a weekend and have very mixed feelings. The location is great, obviously. We were walking distance to several things, which was great, especially for dining (Tabla Indo-Chinese restaurant was great!!).

The parking is absurd—$33 to self park!!

The check-in process was slow but the staff were nice and helpful.

We were most shocked that literally everything is a la carte. Most Hiltons we stay at have free coffee in the lobby during certain hours (and continental breakfast). Nope, not here. Starbucks only—which makes the lines long and annoying just to get coffee. There is coffee in the room, but they give you two creamer pods. Yes, two! Really?? Breakfast is the same—have to dine out.

The elevators were a huge annoyance. There are only 3, and one of them was down the entire weekend. The wait times got really annoying. They should have chairs in the elevator lobbies on every floor.

They need better signage in some places. We were in the tower near the ice cream shop. We were looking for the fitness center. Instead of having signs in that area, we had to go over past the check in desk, only to do a loop back around to the same side of the property and hunt for the fitness center. There aren’t any signs indicating its location, other than arrows pointing in a direction in a couple of places.

On to the rooms. The view from our room was beautiful! We had the sunset every night (we paid extra for the Universal view) and it was gorgeous to watch. The view of Universal was nice, too. There is one towel hook. Yes, ONE. We only had two people, but were in a double queen, so imagine four people and one towel hook in the whole place!! It was annoying with just two of us because obviously you have to use the bathroom door to hang the other one (I won’t use the shower rod, the door is gross enough), and then you have to move it to be able to close the door.

The blackout curtains work well, thankfully.

I was afraid I’d be woken up by the frequent EMS sirens as even on the 10th floor, they were loud. It wasn’t an issue overnight, thankfully.

The beds. I absolutely hated the beds. They’re so uncomfortable. I’m athletic, 125 pounds at 5’6”—not heavy or even overweight in the slightest. You sink into the bed, and think it’s cushioned, but it’s not. You sink down and then it’s hard. I’m a side sleeper so this bothered my hips all night long. So much tossing and turning! My man didn’t think the beds were bad. Not great not terrible. He doesn’t have the hips of a woman… The featherbed/faux featherbed. My man and I both HATE these with a passion. And all hiltons use these. For the life of us, we cannot figure out WHY. WHY use something that is SO UNCOMFORTABLY HOT, especially in Florida?!?! You have to turn the A/C way down (hello horrible use of power!), and you’re still constantly battling being too hot under the winter blanket and putting body parts out from under the covers, to those body parts getting too cold from being exposed. Worst hotel bedding choice ever. And there aren’t even other blanket options. Sleeping here was horrible for me because of how uncomfortable the beds were along with the winter blanket baking you underneath it. Oh, and what happened to hotels having a pen and paper in the room? We needed this and didn’t have it. Finally, the room entry door. It doesn’t sit on/fit the frame properly, so it doesn’t close itself. We had to be fastidious to make sure we closed the room door all the way, every single time we passed through it. It never closed all the way on its own, not even once.

We are not hotel “buffs” by any means, but this property needs a lot of tweaking for us to ever want to stay here again. The value and comfort isn’t there, at...

Extremely Disappointed. 😕

As loyal Hilton Honors Members, we chose the DoubleTree by Hilton at the Entrance to Universal Orlando expecting a clean, restful stay. What we experienced instead was a severe and ongoing pest infestation across two different rooms, poor responsiveness from hotel staff, and an alarming lack of accountability from both the property and its affiliated management teams. We reported a pest issue found in our room to a hotel front desk staff employee. She was very apologetic indicating this is was a regular occurrence. Siting their policy as a pet friendly hotel. She courteously offered a room change but to our dismay, no rooms were avaliable and no offers to transfer hotels. This left us another full day & night of pest exposure. We raised concerned for our luggage and belongings being exposed. Worried about transferring the pest back to our home. Incurring significant costs of home pest control tretments. Unfortunately our concerns would soon come true. We checked into the second room and by 3am we were awakened to pest nuisance. The second room was also infested, likely due to the insects transferring with our luggage. We reported the issue to the frint desk. Being dismayed, and tired from sleep loss, we decided to end our vacation early. We began packing up and making plans to visit a laundry mat before returning home. A hotel security officer knocked on the door and was invited in the room to see the bugs. He refused to enter or even inspect the room to validate the issue. He indicated this was a common frquency. Stating, “I don’t want to take bugs home with me,” while handing me a form requesting a written incident statement. We were visibly distressed and his lack of empathy or support spoke volumes of how we would be treated from this point on. This was proven every two minutes by his constant pressure to immediately fill out the incident statement. His behavior opened our tired, blood shot eyes, alerting us to document our experience. We documented everything, photos, video, all timestamped. We met the hotel manager at the front desk. I provided my documented videos and pictures for his review. He acknowledged the documented proof with embarrassed glances, then offered the hotels laundry facilities and reimbursenent cleaning cost of belongings. Our contact information was requested for a claims adjuster contact. For three months, no follow-up support or compensation for our ruined vacation, health concerns, or contaminated belongings was provided. We then received a cold, one page dismissive letter in our mailbox informing us to the results of their post-incident review from Aimbridge Hospitality and their risk claims administrator, Gallagher Bassett Services, Inc, denying all responsibility. Adding insult to injury, they also suggested that pursuing the matter further may lead to legal consequences against us. This is not the standard we expect from the Hilton brand. We left feeling embarrassed, unwell, and deeply disappointed. Not just by the physical conditions of the room, but by how insensitive, unconcerned, dismissive and ultimately threatening this situation was handled.

Avoid this property until meaningful changes are made to cleanliness, guest support, and how customer complaints are investigated and resolved. Hilton Honors status clearly offers no protection here to it's...