Marriott Vacation Club, San Diego — Hotel in San Diego

Marriott Vacation Club in downtown San Diego||- - - - - - - -||February, 2025 Visit|||My wonderful wife and I just enjoyed a trip to Pam Desert and San Diego, with a visit to La Jolla.||We stayed at the Marriott Vacation Club San Diego (Pulse) for two nights, in order to be close for the inaugural Major League Soccer game for the new San Diego FC team, hosting or St. Louis CITY SC team… the game was good (tie / draw, 0-0… STL became only the 11th team in 30 years to start with 3 shutouts!).||The Marriott was good, and is in a good location. |||- - - |The Location|- - - ||The Marriott Vacation Club San Diego (Pulse) is located in the north-east side of downtown San Diego, a couple blocks from multiple trolly stops, a short walk from the water and the tall ships and more, and what looks to be a short walk to Balboa Park - well located!|||Directions:|Highway 163 gets you 10th Street, and I-5, south of the airport, will connect you to this HW 163-to-10th Street exit||Valet is available on A Street.||Self Parking is available in the garage, for a fee; the entrance is on Seventh Street, just immediately before you would turn back onto A Street.||As of March, 2025, the parking garage has two electric chargers for each of the four floors, 8 total chargers.||The entrance to the garage is tight and curvy and awesome… enjoy the unique entrance!|||- - - |The Room|- - - ||Some Vacation Club properties offer different amenities; this location has a small size, and is more like a Residence Inn - bed room, room with sofa, table/chairs, and TV, and a kitchen with dorm-room refrigerator and a microwave, and a reduced-size dishwasher, and a bathroom; note: no stove, no in-room laundry; there is guest laundry on another floor.||The room is well decorated, and comfortable.|||- - - |Food at The Shack|- - - ||The one morning we initially planned to walk and find food; we didn’t get that far as The Shack, in the lobby, offered a great way to start the day.||We enjoyed:|- breakfast bowl - bacon, eggs, hash browns|- breakfast sandwich - back and eggs on brioche bun|||- - - |The Concierge|- - - ||We were in San Diego, in part, to see the St. Louis CITY v San Diego FC soccer game, at Snapdragon Stadium. ||Ruben was a HUGE HELP, on the phone with us before we arrived in San Diego, helping us determine a few days ahead of schedule haw to get there… the MTS Trolley is the way to go... details, below. Ruben extended a great in-person welcome when we arrived, too! and provided us the discount card, for local places, too|||- - - |Getting to Snapdragon stadium, for San Diego Wave and/or SDFC soccer|- - - ||… multiple stations downtown can get you to the stadium… you need to get the green line to Snapdragon; several blue line stations also serve the green line… at any cross from one train to the other (to and from)||Walk to 5th Avenue Station|Between 5 & 6, and B & Broadway|two blocks south and two blocks west from the Marriott Vacation Club / Pulse||Blue Line / Blue Trolley… north toward UTC |At Old Town Trolly Station, take the Green Trolley / Green Line toward El Cajon, exiting at the Snapdragon exit|||- - - ||Thank you, Marriott Vacation Club, San...

The pulse is a revamped hotel, made into a sort of resort. It is a cross between a hotel and a vacation club. The rooms are a good size and have a small kitchen, with a sink, dishwasher, microwave, fridge and small freezer and hot water machine. In the kitchen they provide, teabags, coffee and milks.||The bathroom is huge, and also houses the bedroom wardrobe for clothes which also has a safe. No bath,but the shower is a good size, my only gripe is the floor of the shower is very slippery, I don’t have any mobility issues,but I often felt I might slip. There seems to be no texture to the surface. I guess you could ask reception if they had shower mats as there isn’t any in the room, but it is an issue that should be addressed.||We had a room on the 26th floor which is one from the top and the amount of road noise is still high. Not so much noise of traffic, but sirens and construction. I don’t think being in any different floor would make much difference to be honest. We are used to living in a rural area, so perhaps not used to city noise, but bring earplugs, you will need them. The emergency vehicles use sirens all day and night regardless, so expect to hear them at 4am. We were woken every night at least once by some noise, but I guess a drawback of a city centre hotel.||The lounge has a sofa and tv and is comfortable for two, plenty of storage and charging ports etc. Good air conditioning and on the days we had it, housekeeping service did the necessary, although they do come quite early and it is a one chance offer.||The lifts from ground floor go to 12th and all the floors in the middle have parking. One the 12th is reception, pool and gym. The Shake bar and restaurant was quite good and food was better than some hotel food I have had. It does all close at 10 pm and food finishes at 9pm, again a bit early. Rooms start from floor 13 up to 27. ||It is easy to walk to most local attractions or venues, such as little Italy, Gaslamp, Seaport. Each take about 20 mins or a 5 minute uber ride. Uber works well and most local places cost about $8. As with every city there are homeless and those people you would rather avoid on street corners. They certainly have their fair share in San Diego as some locations were thick with them. We were only approached once, but I can understand solo travellers, especially lone females being worried. It feels more of an issue later in the evening and made us choose to catch an Uber rather than walk after an evening out.||A tip, you can enter and leave the hotel from B street rather than A but it isn’t marked at all. You can go in via the Symphony Hall entrance, it saves a walk up hill from B...

Room was nice, great view. Everyone who works there was great. There are two glaring issues, one is easily avoidable, the other not so much. Because of this I can't give it full stars. But the service was great so I'm comfortable rating it a 4/5. The issues, first the avoidable one:

1. the restaurant/bar/lounge was just below what I'd consider a bad Olive Garden. First time around food took nearly an hour to arrive, once it got there my salmon was small to the point that it made the plate look comically huge by comparison. Probably around 4oz if not just below, not really seasoned, and the beurre blanc was flavorless to boot, watery and just a waste of time and resources. The veggies were good though. The mushroom risotto was actually really good, the shining piece of the entire meal. My wife's burger was about what I'd expect from a sit down place in a mall in some small town in the midwest where that mall is about to close permanently.

We figured we'd give lunch a shot since we had to hit the zoo pretty soon and it was supposed to be quick. We'll it was quick but chicken in my wife's sandwich was raw in the middle. Yeah man, raw chicken. They comped and apologized but come on, my 11 year old niece wouldn't make that mistake. The "sous vide" drinks would be good at around $10, and great at anything below that, they are absolutely not worth it at the full $14 price. Overly sweet old fashioned with bitters lost in the mix and a weird pseudo orange flavor. The margarita is not worth talking about, again; $10 or below, sure, otherwise skip.

Basically, skip the Shake lounge unless absolutely unavoidable, and even then maybe reconsider, you've been warned.

2. The parking structure we designed with crayon by a 4 year old with the goal of fitting as many cars as possible. This 4 year old has a father who's an architect and helped him with the structural integrity while keeping the initial design. As such we've got support beams in the cars path that necessitate snaking through levels to reach the next. Before you even get to that monstrosity you've got the entrance which is best described as when you've had wired earbuds in your pocket all day and need to untangle them. I can't imagine how you'd get emergency vehicles in there, say your car broke down in there and you needed a tow, or an ambulance had to get to you, or even if you just had a large truck or SUV. The walls are white with lots and lots of marks on them from all the cars that have kissed or rubbed into them, these walls look like they're painted often. Also, $40 a night....