CA Orange County Westin South Coast Plaza Costa Mesa

[blkjck1]

This hotel room was booked for the Sep 29 - Oct 2 weekend timeframe for bids of $55 for the first two nights, and $60 the last night. By far, this is the nicest Westin hotel I have ever stayed in.

We checked in a little later on Friday evening, around 11 pm after leaving our rental car with the valet parking service ($20 nightly for valet, $14 for self park. I suggest the valet parking as the parking garage is about a block away). The front desk clerk noted that it was a prepaid reservation, and then asked for our Starwood card. When we presented my fiancee's card, she noted it was a gold SPG card. I don't know if she upgraded us, but we were given a room on the 11th floor with a king bed, and was told it was a preferred room since it faced a park on the south side of the building. The room itself was very spacious, very clean, and very well decorated. Housekeeping was very fast to bring us bath robes and slippers when requested, and the valet parking service had our cars out in front of the hotel by the time we came off the elevators. We also appreciated the 1 pm checkout time. Most Westins we have stayed in have 11 am or 12 noon checkouts.

The location is very convenient to several amenities. There is a higher end shopping mall across the street called South Coast Plaza. The mall also has a power centre nearby called Metro Pointe with a Best Buy, Nordstrom Rack and Borders across the street. John Wayne Airport is less than 5 minutes away by car. The hotel itself is just off the 405 freeway that links you to Los Angeles, Long Beach, and San Diego. You can also connect onto the 55 and the 72 toll road to San Diego in less than 5 minutes as well. If you are driving from LAX, in good traffic, you can get there in less than 45 minutes, a blip in time by SoCal standards.

The only quibbles about the place: parking charges are too high there considering there is not too much competition for parking in the area. Also, we were a little frosted as a business couple when we were charged $9.95 for 24 hours of broadband access twice in the same day. The hotel doesn't charge on a per room basis, they charge for separate computers. You would expect them also to have installed a wireless network. We didn't argue the point, considering that after we added up the savings on just the room, we got savings of 55-75% of the rack room rates of $150-250.

While there is some value of staying for the same price near Disneyland for a 3*, if you want a better level of luxury or aren't visiting Disneyland, I would gamble on the 4* hotels in Costa Mesa/Irvine zone. The commute to Disneyland is 20 minutes, and get a rental car. No one really cabs it in SoCal.

[blkjck1]

After a three and half year time span, we stayed here for a second time. Much like the first stay, we had no issues with this particular Westin hotel.

This stay had us on a 3rd floor room. Usually I ask for a higher floor, but my wife handled the check-in process while I handled the baggage and our baby. We were actually pleased with the lower floor room, as they had us facing the pool and artificial waterfall. This time around, we did use the pool. The pool area is a very nice environment, and the water is maintained at about 85F. Requests for a crib, fresh towels, and other amenities were delivered very quickly. Valet parking is now $28 a day, with the self-park option $20. I would still go with the valet parking, as only once did they not have our car in the front of the hotel by the time we came down, but the valets were slammed at the time. We did see the valets sprinting to the garage to get cars, so I have no doubt we got our money's worth.