Hotel Grand Mercure di Shanghai

The hotel is a mix of old and new. By this, I mean you can tell that some areas are worn from over the years and some parts of it you can tell they have made effort to try and restore. We stayed in this hotel a few days before heading to Disneyland and then back to the hotel for one final night stay. We asked if we could leave our luggage at their storage room and that was no problem at all. There is a mix of English speaking staff at the lobby, so be prepared to have Wechat translate to hand just in case. We were lucky with the staff we spoke to and language barrier wasn’t a problem. For our first stay, we stayed in a room at the 18th floor and it wasn’t fancy but just what we needed. Windows outside were dirty but it didn’t bother us, since it’s outside. We booked the 2 bed room suite. There was a living space for the adults to relax while the kids sleep in the bedroom at night. I liked that you could actually control the heating and it wasn’t too drying compared to previous and more fancy places we stayed in Shanghai. There’s a washing machine so you can wash clothes when packing light. It is only a washing machine and not a dryer. They provide washing powder (free) and a hanging clothes rail, you just need to call reception and ask. In the kitchen there is an induction hob but no pots or pans are provided. It didn’t bother us, since we had breakfast included with our stay. There was sufficient selection for breakfast. If you go a bit later, certain foods are not replenished. I think they were understaffed the first day of our stay, lots of tables were free but they had dirty dishes on all of them, so we had to ask someone to clean a table for us. The following days were fine. Fruits were left in our room after each clean. On our stay back, we stayed in a room on the 15th floor for one night. They should not let people stay in that room, especially with kids. Parts of the wall of the bathroom is very damp and the wall’s paint was crumbling. The plumbing was not great either, the drain in the main shower room came off and it was just bare concrete and a hole exposed. You could hear water flowing all through the night so we had to close the bathroom door so we could sleep. Since we mainly just slept that night and checked out early in the morning, we didn’t bother complaining and was in the rush to get to the airport so no pictures were taken.