Last month I had the chance to stay with my family at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress for one night during one of our regular visits to the Orlando attraction parks. I had read and heard rave reviews about the property, and Joe and his family had stayed previously and really liked it (see earlier review here).

We were originally staying at a nearby Hyatt Place, but due to inclement Weather I anticipated not spending too much time at the parks, so I switched to this Hotel in hopes of a better room upgrade through my Diamond status, and to have more amenities to enjoy in the event we got stuck at the hotel due to weather. The room rate was pretty cheap at $144 considering the hotel quality and location, so I decided to just pay for the room instead of using points, although it’s worth noting the hotel has a $25 resort fee AND a $17 self-parking fee in addition to the rate. Ouch! Valet parking is $25 per day.

I reached out to the property in advance and asked whether it would be possible to receive a complimentary suite upgrade. I figured being only one night at the hotel would make it easier for the hotel to upgrade me to a better room and to our delight they obliged and we were upgraded in advance to a junior suite.

Arrival:

We arrived at around 5:00 p.m. (it was just too cold and windy at the parks to walk around with a 1 year-old) and I pulled up to the valet station to drop off my family and the luggage. I wanted to self-park to save a few bucks and for convenience. The self-parking lot is on the side of the hotel and it requires driving around the property, which is quite large, so it took a bit for me to join my family in the lobby.

Lobby:

The lobby was beautiful, having a lot of vegetation in the main atrium and large glass walls and roof that let in a lot of light.

Check-in:

At check in we were greeted by the Front Desk Associates, who were very friendly and courteous, welcomed me as a Diamond member and walked us through the hotel amenities. We got to talk for quite a bit since both of them had lived in Texas like I did and we had visited a lot of the same restaurants and attractions, so it was fun to reminisce about the couple of years I spent living in Texas.

The hotel offers a welcome champagne glass at check-in, which I gladly accepted and enjoyed quite a bit.

Junior suite:

I have to say I always cringe when I hear the term “junior suite”. In my experience lots of hotel junior suites are pretty much a glorified large room with a couch. Not this time. The room was impressive. This was by far one of the best “junior” suites I have ever seen. Not only did it have separate bedroom and common areas, but it had an outdoor private terrace that was probably twice the size of the indoor living space.

The main living space was large, including sitting furniture, a kitchenette, workspace and a pullout double sofa bed, although I did find the working space to be located in an odd place, right on the kitchenette.

The bedroom consisted of a large king size bed and included the bathroom entrance. Both the bedroom and family room had small balconies as well.

We had requested a crib in advance, which was set up for us before our arrival. I love how Hyatt hotels not only deliver a nice looking crib with a nicer mattress rather than a pack-and-play, but they also pack up some essentials for you such as baby toiletries and wipes.

While I had chosen the 1,000 points as a welcome amenity on arrival, the hotel’s Gold Passport’s VIP manager was nice enough to send us a welcome amenity of chocolate strawberries and a bottle of champagne.

The presentation was excellent and it came with a personalized welcome note from her. It was a great personal touch. The staff also dropped off later on that evening a welcome note from the hotel’s GM, and even later in the evening one of the front desk associates who I chatted with dropped off a personalized welcome note thanking us for staying and wishing us a great stay. The level of personal attention was great.

I had a couple of room issues that are worth noting. The night of our stay was very windy, and we heard a pretty loud mechanical noise most of the night. I mean “loud”, as in I had to get up at 1:30 a.m. and go down to the front desk to work it out “loud”. I even played them a sound clip of the noise. Our room had a connecting door to the next room, and thinking it was maybe our AC unit, I wanted to see if that room was empty (it wasn’t) so we could maybe transfer over and sleep there without having to switch rooms. The next morning I figured out that the wind was so strong that the balcony railing was vibrating all night, to the point we had to run our AC fan nonstop all night to be able to draw out the noise. After we got home I mentioned it to my dad, who worked hotel maintenance for many years and mentioned that they had a similar problem at his hotel. Orlando isn’t necessarily a very windy city, and my guess is that this isn’t a recurring issue which is why the hotel probably hasn’t dealt with it, but we just happened to draw the short end of the weather stick that weekend.

The other problem with the room was all the interior foggy glass doors. The bedroom had one Sliding Glass Door on each side. The bathroom had a sliding glass door. That means when someone wakes up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, the light from the bathroom floods right into the bedroom and wakes the other person up. If someone is in the family room with the lights on, it’s also impossible to keep the bedroom dark. These type of doors are just impractical for a good night’s sleep.

Regency Club:

The Regency Club is on the 16^th floor (same as our room), so we headed over in the evening as they serve appetizers and drinks from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. The spread didn’t have as much variety and the food quality wasn’t as impressive as other Regency Clubs I’ve visited. In all fairness, no Regency Club usually serves a “full meal”, but I’ve been spoiled by the offerings at clubs such as the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay and the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point. A big win for this particular lounge, however, was the complimentary beer and wine during the evening. The red wine was of pretty decent quality, and free is always great!

The dessert offerings after 8:00 p.m. were pretty sad looking.

Since the dessert options were very limited, I asked one of the attendants whether it would be possible for her to get me an orange from their stock for dessert. She went into the kitchen and came back and said to my surprise that they didn’t have any, but then I noticed they had plenty the following morning at breakfast, so I just chalked it out to a miscommunication of some sort. While I thought the overall appetizers were just ok and the dessert was lackluster, since we only spent one night at the resort we had too small of a sample size to know whether they food is better on other days or whether the hotel’s low occupancy was a factor.

The breakfast spread, on the contrary, was very good, with lots of variety and much better food quality than the night before, so overall it was a pretty decent club and the lounge access saved us a lot of money.

The lounge is also open during the day for water, soft drinks and other snacks.

There is also an outdoor seating area which makes for a nice breakfast view during spring and summer, but during our visit the weather wasn’t conducive to sitting outside. Don’t let the nice picture fool you. It was cold and windy.

Amenities:

Unfortunately due to the poor weather we couldn’t spend any time outside enjoying the pool or walking outdoors for that matter. The pools looked impressive from our high floor, and while two of them were heated, they are relatively far away from the lobby, so I couldn’t imagine stepping out of a heated pool and walking back to the lobby for 3-4 minutes in 40-degree weather.

The next morning we spent a bit of time at the outdoor terrace catching some sun, as the temperature was a bit more tolerable outside. I did not have enough time to visit the fitness center. There are a few nice outdoor sitting areas, but again the weather wasn’t the best to be outside.

Overall impression:

I really liked this property, the quality of accommodations and the friendly service. We are already booked for two more stays this spring, and are looking forward to going back and enjoying the amenities and the nicer weather.

The is a post from FreeTravelGuys.