Extremely disappointing!!
Well, my husband and 2 kids stayed at the Omni - Downtown Austin for the night of July 4th. We thought it would be fun to stay downtown to be close to the fireworks and not mess with the heavy traffic afterwards. Boy were we disappointed!! First of all, what they don't tell you is that you have to PAY to park there, which is a hefty $18. Then, they withdraw $50 from your credit card/bank account, which was also unexpected. We don't have a lot of money in the first place, which is why we used priceline.com to name our price for the big discount. We ended up paying a few dollars short of $100 for the night, which is a lot for us. We brought our own food, thank goodness, since the restaurant was way over priced, and then the $68 in unexpected charges. We got into the room, and at first glance it was really nice. We were settling in when all of the sudden, a maid comes waltzing in our room without any notice at all! She came right it, proceeded to walk across the room to put something away, and left. No apology, nothing! What if one of us was undressing?? After we were there for 10 minutes or so, I decided to check to make sure that everything was in the minibar so we wouldn't get charged for missing items. Indeed it was not fully stocked, and when we called guest services to let them know, they said that we need to make sure our kids didn't get into the stuff. Ok, yea, my 3 year old got into the locked minibar, opened up a bottle of crown, proceeded to drink it and hide the empty bottle...all without me noticing...they seriously think that would happen??? Come on, people. Absurd. Anyway, I went to the end table to set my purse down and there were glass rings and crumbs on top of it. Also, the head board had hand prints and a mysterious crust off to one section. I can only imagine....gross. Also, the comforter had some sort of a large reddish/brownish spot on it that looked like blood to me. We told the management about it, and all they would do is pay our $18 parking! Oh, and they wouldn't give us another room since they were supposedly fully booked that night. On the reservation, it clearly states that we have 4 people...2 adults and 2 children. I guess they thought it was okay for our kids to sleep on the floor since we got a room with one bed in it. They don't supply cots, either. We thought we'd get our mind off the disappointment by going up to the pool and spending the day there. Well, it was even more disappointing because not only was it incredibly small...like maybe 5 feet wide and 15-20 feet long...and it was packed over capacity. There was no way we could even get in there, much less let the kids play. All the people were 20-25 year olds drinking, smoking, and using profanity like our kids were invisible. We ended up going back to the room and watching TV, which the remote didn't work, so I called to get a replacement, and they asked me if the TV was plugged in! WTF? Of course it was! I was able to turn it on manually, geez! These people think we were idiots, and treated us like crap. I will NEVER stay at an Omni again! We were better off just staying home. What a waste of money. I do NOT recommend this place to anyone!