Crowne Plaza Ft. Myers Gulf Coast by IHG — Hotel in San Carlos Park

I'll give a quick BIO on us here first. My wife Carol and I are both 67 retired and mostly travel for leisure and exploring new areas and making new friends.

I believe this is our third visit here. The first two the Hotel was a Holiday Inn and now has converted to a Crowne Plaza! When we travel we look for full service hotels with a decent lounge and restaurant, nice pool and outside areas and not to noisy an area.

This hotel has all that and much more!

The Staff here is top notch! I have to mention the ones I got names from because they help make our stays here even better than expected. Adam - Front Desk, Donovan - Front Office Manager, Kevin - Food Service Manager, Stephanie - Marketing, Anne - Breakfast Server and two excellent Bartenders Noah and Marco. If you have a problem or a comment on how to improve their services they want to know it, so bring it to them. We also met one of the Owners and I apologize for not getting his name, but we were outside with a good size group of us enjoying some live entertainment! He's obviously doing a great job making this place a great place to stay.

Our king size bed was super comfy. The shower large with great water pressure and very nice shower head that was tethered if you like that setup up. Good coffee K-cups and Kuerig coffee maker. No problem finding enough outlets for my many techy toys. Nice TV with enough options to keep us smiling when we needed to relax and hang out in our room. The bar in the lounge was well stocked which pleased us. Often other hotels have not had some of our favorite spirits. Noah and Marco both prepared excellent drinks as did Kevin when we stopped there in the afternoon. Yes! you don't have to wait till 4 or 5 to grab an appetizer and drink like so many other hotels we've stayed at. I heard no complaints when hanging out there over the three nights and four days we were there.

This Crowne Plaza is located right off of I75 and there is a thousand places you can get to quickly. Miramar Outlets is one exit away if you like to shop. Another pleasant surprise was an Empire Bagel Shop in the plaza joining Chick Fil A and Arby's within easy walking distance.

I believe anyone would enjoy their stay here. With so many Hotels dropping services since Covid this Hotel has kept all their Amenities open clean and comfortable....

We stay each January for a week. I ended up in two different rooms. I'll start with the good. The noise level is very low, the A/C works very well and the rooms are bright and are well lite. The draperies do the job to block out the light. The first bed was unbelievably uncomfortable. The second was very comfortable. Both chairs were extremely hard and I couldn't sit in them for very long. The shower heads definitely need to be replaced and the shower doors are confusing to use, the towel racks are coming off and making it difficult to open and close the doors. I won't even describe what I found when I accidentally knocked my comb over the edge of the vanity. Someone needs to do some heavy duty cleaning under there....it wasn't pretty and the comb went into the trash. The carpeting needs to be cleaned. I don't often walk barefoot in hotel rooms but to make a trip from the bed to the shower and leave behind dirty footprints on the shower floor is disturbing. The staff is friendly and helpful, most of them. One certain individual in the late evening needs a few lessons in customer service. The bar area is open and inviting. The staff, while overworked while we are there is very accommodating. Having the bar close at 12am while the hotel is full is too early, there were several of us who were still left in the lounge and surprised that the bar closed on a Friday night. The breakfast buffet has improved greatly this year and the staff is wonderful in the mornings. Friendly and helpful. The housekeeping staff is great and if you ask for anything extra you can be sure it will be in your room (washcloths, hangers, showercaps, etc) Our keys mysteriously deactivated at least 4 times during our stay, not just one of us but several of us, we were with a large group. Overall we really don't spend much time in the room but we will return to the hotel and hope the issues will...

We called the hotel to inform them of our arrival at the airport and requested the shuttle. The driver arrived within 15 minutes, which was great!

Upon checking in, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that our room had been upgraded to a suite. However, Nick, the desk agent, noticed in our profile that we preferred not to be near the elevator. He spent some time searching for other upgraded rooms but ultimately offered to move us to a downgraded room. Since it was around 1 am and I was exhausted from traveling, I asked him to keep the suite, as I just wanted to go to bed. We finally received our keys and headed to the 2nd floor, only to find that the suite was not near the elevator at all. It turned out that all the time spent looking for an alternative room was unnecessary.

Around 2:30 am, a lizard crawled across the bed! This unexpected visitor gave me quite a scare, but it wasn't the hotel's fault, considering we were in Florida. The front desk staff were very understanding and immediately provided us with two breakfast coupons to compensate for the scare.

The room was clean and very inviting. Unfortunately, the bed was very hard - not my preference. However, none of the plugs on one side of the bed's headboard worked, so I had to charge my phone across the room—not a major issue. The bathroom offered refillable soaps, shampoo, lotion, conditioner, and body wash, but the soap had a very strong scent, like men's cologne. Additionally, the sink drain was extremely slow, making it difficult to run water while washing hands without it backing up.

Breakfast was nicely presented and freshly made, with attentive staff, though more gluten-free options would be appreciated.

The bar staff was also great. We only had bottled drinks, so I can't comment on the quality of the mixed drinks.

When visiting Fort Myers again, I will...