Hotel Hilton di Buena Park

BEWARE! What a pretty nightmare this hotel stay was. When I booked a much needed vacation I happened to use card with a low limit instead of my main card. Most hotels don’t have an issue switching cards without fuss. Not here!!! This one took a LOT of working to do so, then charged over $1400 on my card, had to go back down and get at least one taken off then their system went right ahead put it right back on my card. Hours and hours of phone calls and front desk visits per day, all for what should have amounted to a $600 stay (including taxes and $25 per night valet). The staff there were all warm, welcoming, and did their best to make everyone’s stay smooth and easy. So I don’t believe this was their fault in the least, but rather a techno issue or something else. They really worked hard to try settle this but the accounting system continued to ruin our time. The food was meh. An effort is being made at providing something unique, with many of the dishes, but they were lacking flavor, proper temperature and seasoning. We got the onion tart (which was not a tart but more of a croissant/roll and it was stone cold in the middle) and the “gnocchi” as starters. The purple dumplings more resembled Spätzle than gnocchi and were barely there, swimming in a pool of a relatively flavorless broth and a bunch of tiny tomatoes and peas with shavings of Parmesan. I remarked that it was something I might come up with if there was nothing else in the fridge and I was desperate (but I’d still have seasoned it better). The salad wasn’t much better. Again, warm-ish and we were sitting right next to the kitchen, with only one another table being served. Everything needed more seasoning and the chicken on my salad as so dry and overcooked I couldn’t finish it. But the service was wonderful. The pool is lovely but no hot tub means swimming with (likely) urinating children is your only option. Plenty of seating and towels, and a lot of security to get into the pool was over the top considering you have to have a room key just to get to the floor it’s on. No room service. Weird. Bar was good! Valet was excellent, and actually having help with our numerous bags was a welcome change. So I’m rooting for the staff, but Hilton, you need to get it together because YOUR BS ruined my whole vacation then made me too broke to do anything about it. NEVER. AGAIN.