Room Mate Waldorf Rating: 2.5 Pearls

South Beach, Miami, Florida

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Everyone is helpful and polite, but the Waldorf is not staffed for pampering. Still, there was someone at the front desk to check me in and out, a porter to take my bags, and a housekeeping crew to clean the rooms. But that's it.

The Deluxe Room

To get to my room, I swiped the key by a glass door in the middle of the lobby that leads to a short, damp corridor with rooms on either side. The room where I stayed is about 250 square-feet (an average size for South Beach) and, apart from the dampness, it is surprisingly bright and clean.

The bed is decent, despite its low-count sheets and slightly sagging mattress. The bathroom is very basic, but it has the essentials -- a sink, a tub with a shower, and a toilet.

There is no closet or anything else on which to hang clothes.

There's a mini-fridge stocked with airplane-size bottles of booze, plus there's a bag of Doritos. The booze can be essential -- with all the noise from Mango's next door, it might be the only way to get some sleep.

View on a Larger Map

The Waldorf is across the street from the beach, on Art Deco Row. This part of Ocean Drive is always busy. If it's not the crowd at Primetime downstairs, it's the mad rush at Mango's, the fun and utterly cheesy Latin-theme mega-bar next door with staged salsa dancing, waitresses wearing 6-inch platform cheetah-print heels, live music, disco-lights, and karaoke.

When the scene got too obnoxious, I just walked across the street to the beach where the ocean drowns everything else out.

The bar

Guests enter the hotel through Primetime, a restaurant that doesn't have anything to do with the hotel (even though it takes up half of the lobby). Perhaps because there are so many non-guests milling around, the Waldorf has several video cameras in the hallways.

The hotel provides valet parking, but this just means a porter parks cars in a lot down the street.

There's also free Wi-Fi at a fairly decent speed, but that's it.