Hotwire Hotel: 3* Morgantown Radisson Waterfront

[mcgervey]

Total came to $69 for tonight. Checked on tomorrow night just to see, but already booked in Pittsburgh on priceline, but was curious. Looks like same room on hotwire is $69 tomorrow night, so about $81. Guess saturday the Radisson is booked more.

Nice hotel though, very modern, and around 2 years old or so now... I used to stay here when the first opened and had a state goverment rate for a while, (which was about the same, before taxes, as the $69 we paid tonight(it was $68 before)). But they killed the state government rate I was told some time ago. They do have a federal government rate, but it's higher than what the state used to be.

Unfortunately, we're her under not the best of circumstances, as my father passed away. So the only likely hotel amenity we'll be using is the rat pack bar, where I can get a nice drink to take the edge off, and Crisi can have a smoke (it's the smoking bar of the two on premises bars). A bud light for Crisi and two bloody mary's for me came in at about $12.50 plus tip.

The best deal here, if you're used to big city hotel parking prices, is the $6 valet parking. It seems a little odd for me paying $6 to park in Morgantown, but it's really a deal because they will get your car more than once (as opposed to bigger city hotels, many of which will not let you keep leaving and coming back), and it's darn cold out this time of year. You are FORCED to park in the parking garage anyway, since it's the ONLY parking closeby, and the price just to self park is $4, so you may as well go the extra $2. Morgantown is not a place to play around with questionable parking anyway, as you likely WILL get towed and incur some crazy $150 tow bill because you tried to save a few bucks on parking. College town, kinda goes with the territory. On our way back to the hotel tonight we saw EIGHT tow trucks running around town, at 1am!

Nice room, nice pillow top king bed, spacious, typical high quality Radisson Asira beauty and hair products, cordless phone, wired high speed internet, nice pool and hot tub, and decent 60 channel cable on a 27" tv. Hard to go wrong with the radisson. Room service is pricely, but you can walk into the wharf district for a nice mexiamerican restaurant, an italian restaurant, or Subway. Walk or bike a little farther on the rail trial (right out back of the hotel) and be in downtown and a lot of other shopping or dining choices. Either of the choices you can walk to easily are a little cheaper (the restaurants) to a lot cheaper (the subway) than the in-house restaurant, though it's not too pricey and the food is pretty good. It's been many months, but I remember the dinner menu to be in the $16 to $28 or so price range. I think the $16 was some chicken and/or pasta dish, and the $28 was likely a filet mignon or something. The food was good, as I remember it. The fare in the bar is limited, and was between $6 and $9 for somewhat unique appetizers and a sandwich or two on the menu. Room service for breakfast is ridiculous though. Like $10 for a glass of juice and/or 3 eggs, or juice and a bagel, or lets face it, they were all $10 for a glass of juice and one other item that would cost $1.50 to $2 at your Denny's or Eat and Park. But it does come to your room I guess, but for that it's an extra $1 and mandatory 19% gratuity. So your bagel and glass of juice really costs $13. No thank you. I'll wait til lunch and go to Maxwells or the Meditteranean Deli and eat awesome food for $13.

I digress. But I might come back here on sunday nite when the rate is likely to be back to $57, as it looks like I may need to stay up north through the funeral tuesday. I used to work at lakeview and while I don't hate it, I only get it when I win a $40 bid on priceline, and am not willing to pay more out there for the extra drive and the CHANCE that the heat in the pool MIGHT be working that day. I'ld rather pay the little extra for the Radisson to know I can have a heated pool and be right downtown, or I'll just pay the state rate of $42 at Friends Inn for a king sized bed and be done with it. Morgantown is NOT really a great town for hotel bargains. Maybe it's just that it seems silly for me to pay good money for hotels in basically my second home town, when I really can stay for free many places. But, alas, we get old and like hotels and our own space. I'll post again if I use priceline.com or hotwire.com for sunday.

Peace,

RJ

[thereuare]

Thank you for posting to the board.

We're sorry to hear of your father's passing and hope that happy memories are able to get you thru what is likely a difficult period.

[mcgervey]

Thank you so much for those kind words. They really do mean a lot at a time like this. You try to keep living life as you always do to move on, once the mourning period is over, if that ever really occurs, and savor all the memories.