Pittsburgh Marriott City Center, Pittsburgh

We're used to staying at Hiltons - chose this one for location and availability and were EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED. The hotel itself is average, and I guess they can get away with the extremely high rates due to the location, but it definitely was not worth it! The rooms are mediocre, and the staff is apathetic. After booking, our plans changed from "just the two of us" to include our two teenaged children as well. I called the hotel on the day of arrival to see if we could get a room with double beds or add another room, and the friendly reservations agent said it was no problem to reserve a room with two double beds. When we arrived and went to our room, there was a King bed only. Returning to the lobby, the desk agent said that there hadn't been any double rooms available for weeks. They brought two VERY inferior cots with absolutely awful pillows to our room. They didn't even help to move the furniture out of the way to set up the two cots, just left them standing in the middle of the room. Also, when you reserve a room for four people, you shouldn't have to call housekeeping to get enough towels. The pool is difficult to find - when they tell you it is "adjacent" to the health center, they mean you have to go into the health center to find it tucked away in the corner. There is no signage for the pool on the 11th floor. When we couldn't find the pool, we used the house phone to call, and were laughed at by the Marriott employee who answered the phone. In spite of having a lifeguard on duty, there were used towels all around the pool, and all of the VERY few chairs around the pool either had unused or used towels on them. The lifeguard on duty was rude; we had brought some food into the pool area, and rather than asking nicely to take it out, he said, "You have to get out of here with that food." Rude, rude, rude. The breakfast buffet is fresh and delicious, and our service was good there. It is pricey Parking is not affilitated with the hotel and is expensive, too. Clearance is very low - beware larger vehicles!

Staff are friendly, helpful, and efficient. They go out of their way to make sure you are comfortable. I found that in all staff, from the maids, maintenance men,bellhops, valets, customer service, wait staff.....never encountered any staff who wasn't great. The bed was wonderfully comfortable and the room was clean and pleasant. The restaurant is clean and attractive, but I did not like the food. It was too processed, too many artifical flavorings, even the chili tasted like bouquet flavoring, not cumin. The elevators were SLOW but I guess that's unavoidable when there are lots of people. But whatever you do, don't take the stairs, the stair doors lock behind you. I tried to walk a few flights to get to the gym without waiting for the elevators and I had to walk all the way down to the 2nd floor and take the elevator back up to the 11th floor. Scary.

The hotel service was excellent, we really enjoyed the Steelhead restaruant. The mattress and linens were phenomenal. Really looking forward to going back to Pittsburgh.