First off, this is not a 4 star hotel. The hotel lobby LOOKS like it would be 4 star, but I’d say this is 3 or possibly 3.5 at most.
The good:
It is situated directly across the USJ entrance. Short walk to and from the park, and if you have a park view room you have a great look at the park and all the people lining up at 6 am to get into the park. You also get discounts at the Wolfgang Puck downstairs in the building.
The bad:
1. Luggage forwarding is from 9 am to 1 pm. We had to check out the next day at 630 am, and had gone to the park the day before where we purchased tons of merch for the kids and friends back home, but were stuck not being able to use the hotels service for luggage transfer. For comparison, the Keihan hotel next door had luggage service available in the evening, but only offered it to their own guests. The Hotel Kintetsu nearby also offered evening luggage transfer. All the Lawson convenience stores nearby also had the service available (which is what we used). But the so called premier USJ hotel near the park entrance? You get the ridiculous 4 hour window from 9 am to 1 pm. Do better Park Front.
2) The best room looked like a cheap Vegas room. There was a sofa much too small for the size of the room, a small table, and a whole lot of empty space for… not sure, actually. No iron in the room. The mini fridge worked great, so there’s that I guess. Also, no drawers or dressers, which would have been great filler for all that empty space above.
3) Laundry service was suboptimal and somewhat embarrassing. They provided a small laundry bag in the room, and when I called to request the service was first told to use the coin laundry on the floor. As I had a busy day ahead and didn’t want to waste time with that (also there is ONE machine that washes and dries on each floor), they instructed me to bring my laundry down to the lobby (!!!). At the lobby, they then asked me to take out each item so they can see it and itemize them. This is after I filled out the form indicating what I was including in the bag. But I guess it would be better for me to take out each item in front of guests checking in and walking through the lobby so they can confirm? Maybe the other hotels I stayed at in Tokyo and Kyoto did it incorrectly when they had someone came to my room, picked up my laundry and form, and then dropped it off in my room when done. Also, they ended up not wanting to wash some of my wife’s undergarments because they were afraid they would damage it since had lace (assumption on my end, not sure why else, really).
4) Leaving the hotel the first day, the front desk assisted in getting a taxi, and directed me to the 2nd floor where a car drove up to get us (this was good). On the day of checkout we called an Uber Taxi and waited in the exact same spot, only for someone to tell us we were not at the taxi pickup spot, and had to go out to the side in front of… Hotel Keihan to get the cab. Silly us for thinking we would get a ride a) in front of our hotel signage and b) in the same location we got a cab a couple days prior (albeit with the hotel’s assistance).
5) Check in experience: when we got in, there were staff members running around with luggage. Thinking they would help us with ours (spoilers: they didn’t), we were instead told to bring our own bags upstairs to the 3rd floor. After checking in, we were told to bring our own baggage to the room. Even the Disney resort took care of that for us. In retrospect this was a harbinger of what was to come.
Maybe we expected too much, as prior to this stay we were at the Bellustar in Tokyo, Garrya Niko Castle in Kyoto, and Disney’s Hotel Miracasta. The stay could have been so much better if we didn’t feel that, for a supposed 4 star premier hotel, we expected the same level of service and amenities.
