Pier House Resort and Spa in Key West Florida

I recently went to Key West, Florida for vacation and stayed at the Pier House Resort and Spa. While planning this trip, I spend days trying to find a hotel that was at the perfect location and had the perfect room that would work for my family and I. I had high expectations of the Pier House due to the fact that it is a 5 star hotel and I was paying right at 300 dollars a night. I choose the pier house because it is right at the end of Duval st., right on the water, more than enough privacy and it's right next to Mallory square, along with all the central hubub that I wanted to be part of.

I was sorely disappointed withing the first 10 minutes of arriving. I check in and go up to the room and it is not what I had made the reservation for. It was a normal room and not an accessible room, the security guard was kind enough to go back to the front desk and sort everything out for us. Unfortunately, the accessible room did not even meet the ADA requirements to the fullest extent. My father, who is wheelchair bound, could just barely make it around the bed and turn around and there was a 2 inch ledge into the "roll in" shower which was hardly big enough for even me, let alone someone in a chair. I had also requested a Shower Chair when I made my reservations but of course I did not receive it and ended up having to call housekeeping to bring us one. I have to mention that a majority of the staff does not speak English to well. When one of the bellboy first came to the door, he had a small basket full of shower gel. The second time he came back, he had shower caps, then a luggage stand and again a luggage stand. Until finally I pulled him into the bathroom and explained to this kid what a shower chair was and he says "ohhhh! ok!" and leaves. 20 minutes later he comes back with another luggage stand and proceeds to explain to my mother how she can sit on it in the shower. Of course I call management and file a complaint and couldn't help but laugh by the end of it, although in reality, this was very disappointing to me that it took nearly an hour to get something that should have already been in the room. This hotel is not disability friendly in the slightest, the also refused to cooperate after our conversion van was damaged due to the tight parking quarters on THEIR PROPERTY. Do not stay here if you have a physical mobility. You can do better at the days in on the other side of town.

There is also no valet available, but after what happened with our van, I wouldn't trust valet to park it. Plus the security guard had to bring up our bags for us because there was nobody else there to do so. I also was not pleased with the "private beach" (aka topless beach) being right underneath our room and seeing everything that god gave a couple people first thing in the morning. I am all fine if someone wants to go to a nude beach but it could have been a little better placed that it was.

The bars/ restaurant had very, very slow service and the prices were very high for mediocre food that made my mom sick. A majority of the bartenders that I ordered drinks from didn't know the recipe's for any of the drinks I wanted and had to pull them all up on my ipod touch and then proceeded to overcharge me. For a traditional sidecar, I can get it in Sarasota for an average of 6 dollars and the pier house charged me nearly 17 for the same exact thing.

The kicker is when I called housekeeping to tell them that we wanted our room cleaned while we were gone, and we were gone a good 5 hours before we got back, and nothing had changed, the sheets weren't changed, the bed wasn't made, no new towels, nothing. They apparently never showed up and it was the only time we wanted our room cleaned. When we did get new towels, the women refused to take the dirty towels and to leave them in the room, even though it was taking up room and we had JUST enough room for the 3 of us, let alone a growing stack of towels from the beach.

Both my parents say that I am being overly nit-picky about the entire thing but I have a right to be considering I paid for the hotel with a total bill of 1500 dollars. I expected to be treated like royalty and as if everything I said was the bible when I'm paying that kind of money but I was treated the polar opposite. The view was beautiful (minus the nude beach), the location was perfect but other than that, I was not a happy camper because I've stayed at hostels with considerably better service.