Waldorf Towers Hotel — Hotel Review Rating: 2.5 Pearls

Oyster Review Summary

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Oyster Hotel Review

Reporter: Dipayan G.
Updated: August 31, 2009

 Service

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.

 Rooms

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.

 Location

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.

 Features

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.

 Bottom Line

Across from the beach, the Waldorf is next to some of the loudest, cheapest bars and restaurants in South Beach. It's a fine place to crash on a budget, but the fancy name is deceiving -- all the hotel offers is a room and a bed.