Review Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf: Very Fancy, Not The Best Value
This Hyatt is not well marked so if you don’t look at pictures of the front beforehand you may have some difficulty finding it but once you do you’re in for a treat. The staff is extraordinarily pleasant. We ended up upgrading our room to an Oversize King option so I can’t speak for the regular rooms. The location is fantastic; you’re within easy walking distance to Fisherman’s Wharf if you go down the hill and Ghirardelli Square if you go along the street. There are other sights you could try walking to but I wouldn’t recommend it and the #47 bus goes right by the front and that will take you to most of the more distant places you’d want to check out.
Parking is insanely expensive but San Francisco is a unique case when it comes to parking, you can park for about $32 per day if you’re willing to walk 2 blocks from a nearby parking garage at the Walgreen’s which is actually a significant savings over what the Hyatt wants to charge.
They do love to charge you for everything. Internet either on TV or WiFi (but not both!) is an extra $10 per day. The TV Internet is dodgy, the wireless keyboard needs a perfect line of sight to work and even then you better hunt and peck because anything faster won’t work. Frankly I’d rather have something wired to the desk that works than a fancy wireless keyboard I could try to use in bed that doesn’t. And the controls are far from intuitive, read the menus carefully before proceeding. It’s a little outrageous when you think any Motel 6 charges $3 for WiFi per day and at a Travelodge it’s usually free but with the money you’re paying to stay at a Hyatt it’s more expensive than most other places. I suppose their regular guests can afford it and the business people can write it off anyways. They have the $5 bottles of water but that’s fine with the vending machines and Walgreen’s nearby and pretty standard. They do provide free whitening toothpaste though which I thought was a nice touch, and plenty of towels and pillows all around.
The TV was nice and well placed. The room came with a coffee maker but the coffee it produced wasn’t worth the time, two sips and the rest you want to send down the drain. The desk/TV stand was very handy and had electrical outlets coming out its ears in very convenient locations which we appreciated. The phone by the bed however had so much static on the line it was incredibly hard to hear who you were calling. The décor was fantastic.
The bathroom was very modern and stylish which was nice but the door wasn’t really a door so much as a sliding wood panel as if you were stepping into a closet and it was a heavy wood with no proper handle so you really had to thrown your back into moving that thing and it didn’t have a lock which wasn’t a concern for us but may be for others. The bathroom was large; there was no bath in our room but rather a very modern-looking shower where water essentially cascades out of the ceiling. It sounds great but the pressure isn’t the greatest and since you can’t really adjust the head coverage is splotchy.
Overall we were really impressed however the room did lack one thing – there was actually very little information about the hotel itself. It mentioned some services and numbers you could call which was grand but it didn’t have, for example, the hours of the pool. Nor did it state if local calls were free, which they almost always are but after the price of their internet access I began to wonder. It had a room service menu and some limited information about their restaurant but after 11pm it all pretty much shuts down. What good is room service that stops before midnight? Usually room service is a godsend when you get back late at 3am or something and want a good meal.
On the whole this is an excellent location if you can afford it but don’t expect the greatest value and while they do the grand flourishes and stylistic touches fantastically they seem to sometimes lose sight of the practical.
