NEW YORK — When I was young my parents had a knack for booking the worst hotels imaginable.
Perhaps they enjoyed seeing my disappointed little face when the door swung open into a room that smelled of mothball and mold potpourri. Maybe they liked that my hair reeked of composting pine needles from the off-brand hotel shampoo. I suspect the real reason we stayed in such places is because my father parts with money the way a parsimonious squirrel parts with his last few acorns in the dead of winter.
As an adult I’ve been able to mostly sidestep my family’s hotel room curse. There are enough websites with lodging reviews to ensure I don’t repeat those mistakes. No more Sandy Sheets Motor Lodge for me!
But this summer in New York, some of those memories came back to me, and not because my mom was posting Throwback Thursday photos on Facebook. I booked a room at Row NYC. It’s located in the old Milford Plaza Hotel and it’s an ambitious endeavour with a cool food market (it’s a fancy food court) just off the lobby, a modern bar, and a tech-forward self-check-in system.
The pictures online showed chic rooms with bold neon accent walls. If the rooms lived up to the lobby, the experience promised to be memorable. But when I arrived, the lobby was flooded with exhausted looking travelers and mountains of suitcases. The self check-in computers were empty. I waved my phone in front of the scanner with no luck, and then took my place in line.
A friendly gent with an iPad came over to assist me. He hit a few keys, and then disappeared. “I’ll be right back.’’ Twenty minutes later there was no sign of him, and I had since lost my place in line.
Technical glitches are understandable. My room at Row NYC was not. There was no neon accent wall. It was a dim little corner that had been patched up and filled with furniture intended for a much cooler space. The bathroom seemed to be an afterthought. Not to sound like a hotel snob (which I confess I am), but there was a shower curtain. Any renovated New York hotel room in New York — Row NYC was given a top-to-bottom renovation in 2014 — should not have a shower curtain hanging in it.
This was all baffling to me because online reviews for Row NYC are mostly positive. Perhaps I was put in a special room designated for cranky travel writers. Maybe this was one of the only rooms available when I booked. Perhaps those online reviewers were kind because of the Row’s exceptional location in Times Square.
It was a cramped and dark room, but not terrible. However, at $270 a night, I felt as if I had been fleeced. To be fair, it was the height of summer and rooms were not cheap across the city that week. But the sheer disappointment of opening the door and seeing no resemblance to the photo on the hotel website was a bit heartbreaking.
Kudos to the Row’s cool food market and lobby design. What isn’t cool is a hotel room in 2016 with a shower curtain.
ROW NYC 700 8th Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10036; 888-352-3650.
Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Chris_Muther
