As part of our quest to achieve Explorist status for 2018 and to achieve a “Brand Explorer” award, KimPro and I made reservations for three separate hotel stays. The first was at the Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf, you can find our review of that HERE.
Our second stay was at the Hyatt House in Emeryville, CA.
We’ve had some ok stays at Hyatt House, but never found any to be exceptional. We made the decision to stay in Emeryville since it was the closest one to home, and we could continue on through the bay and south to Santa Cruz the following morning.
Emeryville is in the San Francisco bay area, just on the other side of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, and just north of Oakland.
Just a minute before we arrived we noticed a Hyatt Place property ironically situated just a block away from the Hyatt House. We pulled into the hotel around 8:15 in the evening and found a spot to park out front. We unloaded our things and walked to the main entrance. There was a covered parking zone if guests desired to check-in and then park.
I entered the hotel surprised by the scope in size of the entry. The other Hyatt House properties I visited featured single-story lobbies that were clean but unimpressive. With but some additional decoration and maybe an adjustment to some of their furniture, this hotel could’ve passed as a higher-tier Hyatt property.
Our check-in went smoothly, we were told we had been upgraded to a bay-view King Suite, but our original reservation was to a King Suite, so the difference was solely the view. We were given two vouchers for free cocktails for being a Globalist member, and offered two free waters. The agent gave us our parking permit to stick in the dash. I hadn’t previously checked the parking rate, but later discovered that it was a reasonable yet annoying $15.
While Kim made her way to the room, I went back to the car to put the permit inside.
On my return, I took the elevator up to the 8th floor to find our room 808. As I walked down the hallway the sound of loud music and loud voices increased until I passed the source: room 810, our next door neighbors.
I knew such a thing would not make sleeping easy, and that we’d likely have to move rooms. That is until I opened the door and stepped inside. The sound insulation made the noise barely noticeable. KimPro came to the same conclusion.
Our one bedroom King Suite was clean and plenty spacious. Immediately to the left of the door was the kitchen area with stove, fridge, dishwasher, sink and microwave.
Past the kitchen was the living room, which held a couch, coffee table and a television that was on the small side.
But the real highlight of the area was the balcony beyond, which offered views of the Bay Bridge and the City of San Francisco beyond. It was short of spectacular, but still a nice bonus.
In the bedroom a King bed took up a good portion of the space, with a dresser across from it, and a nightstand gracing each side. A smaller television than the one in the living room sat atop the dresser.
Adjacent to the bathroom entrance was a mirrored sliding-door closet.
The bathroom was mostly typical. The sink was straight ahead from the entrance while a large shower sat on the right. The toilet actually backed up to the bedroom wall, which was somewhat obscure, but caused no problems. We would later notice though that the toilet-paper holder wasn’t installed properly, with the wall plates not being spaced correctly for the toilet-paper roller.
After examining the room, we went back down to the first floor to explore. Just outside the elevators we found some elegant décor:
Downstairs the lobby was still decorated for Christmas (it was only a week later when we visited)
A seating area off to the side looked inviting.
We found the hotel pool and Jacuzzi, a fitness center, and the dining area with bar.
We figured we might as well use our beverage vouchers so we took a seat at the bar and ordered a Old Fashioned Bourbon and a Lemon Drop.
We took a look at the food menu, but weren’t particularly hungry, so we passed on ordering anything else.
We did enjoy the quiet atmosphere of the extensive cafeteria, and found it’d be very well suited for a relaxing dinner.
It was only 9:15 when we finished and went back to the room, but we were exhausted from a long day of work before. We were passed out by 9:30.
A couple times in the evening we were woken by the beats of our neighbor’s loud music, which had increased as the hours passed. We were able to get back to sleep fairly easily, but even after using the bathroom at 2:00 A.M, I could hear the thumps of bass coming from next door— through the living room wall, and through the bedroom wall. Had the sound insulation been just a tad thinner, we would’ve had no choice but to move rooms or complain.
We got up around 9:30 to take advantage of free breakfast, which ran from 7-10 on the weekends. We arrived in the cafeteria to find an extensive crowd, though the space was more than extensive enough to accommodate. The Hyatt House buffet we found was standard for the property type.
Bulk-condensed scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, pancakes and more lined the walls. There were two omelet stations where you could have made-to-order omelets, a respite from the rest of the fare. I ended up having some breakfast potatoes, pancakes, eggs, and sausage. The potatoes were good, and the sausage was manageable, but the eggs and pancakes were bland.
After breakfast we packed up so we could get moving to Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. On checkout we were offered additional water bottles, which we accepted. We ran over the bill and found no discrepancies, making it out for a total of $176.17
Ultimately:
Despite rowdy neighbors and a typically mediocre breakfast, this was a very pleasant stay. We found it to be much more upscale in appearance than other Hyatt House Properties. This hotel fit in perfect for our mini-road trip, factoring the goal of achieving the “brand explorer” award. Though we thought the service was great and the employees perfectly friendly, for the purposes of general travel, I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend this property.