Pittsburgh: Courtyard by Marriott Pittsburgh Downtown (October 2011)

My spouse and I have stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott Pittsburgh Downtown several times over the past few years, but I’ve never written a review about the hotel. The hotel is well located if you are attending an event at the convention center, the Consol Center (such as a Penguins hockey game), PNC Park (a Pirates game), Heinz Field (a Steelers or University of Pittsburgh Panthers football game), or an event at the Benedum Center or O’Reilly Theater. There are several restaurants just outside the doors of the hotel, in addition to their own Sonoma restaurant which is open for lunch and dinner (it’s a fairly sound choice and has both indoor and outdoor seating). Nearby restaurants (within the same block or so, although all on the opposite side of the street) include Seviche, Sharper Edge Bistro, Nine on Nine, and August Henry’s Saloon. The hotel has a separate “bistro” breakfast area (not included in the room rate), and it an attractive outdoor courtyard area featuring various types of seating as well as a propane grill. Internet (both wired and wireless) is free, and the hotel provides some computers in the lobby for use by the guests, as well as two printers dedicated to printing boarding passes. As typical with most “value” Marriott properties, this hotel features a pantry area where you can buy drinks and snacks, although there are many convenience stores and drugstores within a few blocks of the hotel. The hotel has a small fitness center, as well as a few meeting/event rooms. Valet parking is pricey, but there is a garage just a block away (at the corner of Ninth Street and Penn Avenue) that charges just $5 for 24 hours on weekends (too inexpensive, in my opinion, especially on weekends when there are many events - it’s no wonder the city is in financial difficulty!). Most king-bedded rooms at this hotel are spacious with high ceilings (there are a few rooms in a sort of annexed area that you reach by going down a few steps from the main part of each floor, and those rooms are not as large and can appear cramped). Despite a very busy weekend for sporting events in Pittsburgh, we were allowed to check in early on our most recent visit, which has never happened before - what a pleasant surprise! We were assigned an accessible room because it was the only room available when we checked in. Normally, we would refuse such a room, feeling that it should be reserved for someone who really needs it, but we were encouraged to take it by the front desk clerk who explained that it really wasn’t much different than a regular room and that they didn’t anticipate needing it for that purpose that evening. She was correct in that the room wasn’t much different than other rooms we’ve had at this hotel - the bathroom was larger, the toilet featured a grab bar next to it, and the room had a doorbell (which could be turned off via a light switch), but other than those things, it looked just like a standard room. The room had a built-in refrigerator beneath the bar area, which we didn’t recall from previous visits, where we had to request that a small fridge be delivered to our room. The bathroom wasn’t truly accessible, though, in our opinion, and when we mentioned it to the (same) front desk clerk at check-out time, she said that some accessible rooms were more accessible than others. Our main concern was that the combination bathtub/shower unit was not suitable for someone in a wheelchair because it didn’t offer roll-in/zero-clearance access, nor did it have a two-part shower head with an attachment that one could remove and use if seated. The clerk confirmed that the rooms on only certain floors featured such showers. Our only other general comment on the room (which we didn’t make to the clerk) was that there wasn’t enough counter space in the enormous bathroom. For the two of us, we needed more space, and found that the rolling/nesting part of the writing desk was easy enough to move into the bathroom to provide an additional storage area. This hotel remains a good option in Pittsburgh - although there are more luxurious properties, they usually come with a higher cost that doesn’t equal value to us for our typical less-than-24-hour stay in the ‘burgh.