Friends of Great Swamp

Pros: The hotel is in an excellent location in NYC, within walking distance of Times Square and Little Italy, with easy Uber pickup. It is Next door to an Irish pub, and that's great and easy. The room was clean, and the AC worked great. The lobby let us leave our bags until check-in time. People are nice and helpful. Nice appearance. Cons: The room itself is bare-bones. Clean and safe, but no clock, no TV, no frills. Tiny little closet, basic bathroom, no iron or anything like that. Bare bones. The biggest negative was that the fire alarm went off at 530 AM, and we did not hear it well in our room. There were no flashing lights, and some confusion about what that noise was. People ended up out on the street in PJs & some never heard the alarm!! We were told we could go back in - it was a false alarm. An hour later it happened again, so the sleep was not peaceful after a long night in NYC, AND I did not feel that, in the event of a real emergency, I would hear the alarm and be able to navigate with no visible fire extinguishers, no flashing lights, and narrow stairs. It could have been a really dangerous situation. Overall, I give it a 3 out of 5 B/c of the fire alarm situation. Price was $230.00 on a weeknight in August. Fair and expected for NYC and the location.

I loved how modern and clean the hotel was and our room was perfect for my son (9) and I! We had a queen bed with a nice view from the 9th floor. It did get loud in the middle of the night with street sounds from below but we used his white noise machine and that helped a lot. My only issue was that the blinds are very sheer and the light comes right in so our room never really got dark. I used a head band and wrapped it over my eyes at night and it worked perfectly. Our room got cleaned nicely every day of our three night stay. The breakfast was really nice with lots of options. There were big lines every morning but I was so impressed with how quickly the staff got people seated. I liked that there were plenty of elevators so the wait was never long to get on. The staff was very polite and so friendly. The location is perfect with it being near Times Square, Central Park and the water (if you want to walk down to catch a ferry...we did Circle Line to the Statue of Liberty and back). The price was not too bad, considering all that was included and the location. I would recommend this hotel...best one I've been to in NYC and I've visited a lot.