The Shinning
Please, for the love of God do not stay here. Anybody who gave this hotel a review from Average to Great is a tourist who has never stayed in another hotel in their life or family and friends of the owner that owe them money and wrote the review to pay off a debt. There are no good things to say about this hotel except for the fact that the building has not been condemned yet.
 I live in NYC and had to stay here because of the recent storm Sandy making it impossible to for me to leave my job. My employer booked this hotel for me based on the pictures on the website and the great reviews posted on this webpage. After coming to visit me at the hotel he apologized to me profusely and promised to pay me double time for having to stay in this dump. 
Where to begin, to check in you have to wait on a long line because in their infinite wisdom hotel Pennsylvania decide to make all services available at the same counter. So whether you wanted to book a room, change currency, dispute a bill or complain to management there is only one line to do it on. Also at any point in time while waiting on a line longer then any line at the dmv or amuse park ride, people who have issues can skip to the front of the line and start talking to the hotel agents, making your wait even longer. It also seems that even though the hotel is in one of the biggest and most well known cities in the world the staff has no on site to speak any language other then english. So tourists who speak even universal languages like french, spanish or italian can't be understood by anyone on the staff. So these tourists are forced to pantomime their request to frustrated and over worked hotel agents causing the wait time to get longer and longer. Once you get to the desk and check in the agent hands you a key card in an envelope (only one and heaven help you if you leave it in your room or lose it or need to get an extra one) and dismiss you, not telling you what floor you are on or where the elevators are or if even someone will help you with your bags. You get to the elevator banks and pass a guy sitting on a stool, he may be security or he may just be a guy to tired to wait on the hotel line and push the button for the elevator to take you to your floor. Usually 2 elevators are out of order so this wait may take a while affording you the time to get a drink from the store in the lobby (2 dollars and change for a 20 ounce coke are you kidding me, even in NYC that is too much). Once the elevator comes and you get in your trip into horror begins and you realize that all the scary horror movies you have ever scene must have been based on this hotel.
 I can only speak for the seventh floor because that's the floor I was put on in the time I have spent here. The elevator door's open and a scene straight out Jack Nicholson's The Shinning greets you. In fact if you have booked a room in this hotel (you unfortunate person you) and you have gotten this far this is your turn to run screaming back into the elevator. The floor is poorly lit, not just by the elevator bank but the entire floor allowing any axe murderer to attack you at any time. And there is only one sign posted in front of you telling that rooms715 to 745 are on this floor but not telling you in which direction to go to and where are the rest of the rooms. My room number was in the 760's and it forced me to walk up and down the hallways looking for my room door. There are more signs on the floor but again you have to walk to them to find out if they actually contain your room number or just pointing you to needles things like where the elevator is or where the vending machines are (I already know where the elevator is I just got off the death trap and vending machines means plural and there is only 1 coke machine, that surprisingly was out of any coke products except water and an ice machine). After walking through three dimly lit hallways on three dirty carpets (there is no real way to describe the carpets except to say these carpets may have been on this floor unclean since Roosevelt was a governor) and finally arriving at my old green and brown door (and yes that is the color pattern on a door in a dimly lit hallway). At this point you start believing the next thing you will see is a river of blood coming down the hallways or maybe it has already passed and that is why the floors are so dingy. 
I put my keycard in a door that clearly was not designed for a key card and opened the door to find what can only be described as a very large closet. Now, I don’t know who took the pictures for the room on the website but 2 things 1) if you need to hire a photographer hire this person because they can make you look or whatever you want pictures of look great no matter what the person or thing really looks like and 2) clearly they didn't take pictures in this hotel. On the website the room looks big and airy and well lit and inviting. In real life I have seen prison cells with better and brighter color. Everything in my room was a dirty wood colored brown, the floors’ carpets were brown and dingy like the rugs in the hallway. The end tables were brown and unvarnished and one lamp in my room was colored brown and when turned on put out a dull yellow light that makes the room brown. I also noticed I get one desk (again ancient and brown), 1 tv stand (brown yet again) and a small closet with brown hangers a luggage rack, a small ironing board and one of the oldest irons I have ever seen. Now 2 things you should know 1) If you are staying longer then 4 days and have more then 4 items in clothes bring your own hangers cause you only get 4 and since the room has no dresser you will need to keep your clothes in your suitcase. And 2) this is the year 2012 when people have iphones, and android tablet devices and laptops and gadgets that stream movies into large screens that you can carry with you for relatively cheap so then why on god's green earth do I have in my room a 13 inch television. Are they serious my laptop had a bigger screen and better colors and richer sound then the crap that was coming out a 13 inch tv. In the year 2000 that tv was out of date. Are you trying to tell me a hotel that is in this great city of New York cant go to a store and purchase any tv's larger then 13 measly inches. Imagine now the iphone has a 4 inch screen, most tablets come in screen sizes from 7 to 10 inches and laptops start their screen size at 13.3 inches which again would be bigger then my 13 inch tv. The bathroom is the first door you pass when entering the room and is all white and a standard bathroom except for 2 issues. One I only had a shower stall and no tub and two the floor to my shower stall and the floor to the bathroom are the same floors with only a small porcelain wall to stop the water from pooling on the floor. Then there is the rust colored slightly clogged drain that sits in the very middle of the shower that looks as if it was painted over years ago and has never been cleaned.
 But the worst thing during my stay at this hotel was at 4am when I was asleep and someone came in my room. It seems that somebody was given this room as well as I was even though when I asked for an extra keycard I was told there was none. This businessman had had managed to get the door unlocked and the only thing keeping him out was the security bar. When I opened the door and informed him I got this room from the front desk about 4 hours ago he smiled, said figures and left. This place is so un adept nobody even knows if the rooms are filled upstairs. In the end the only people who should get a room here are people looking to film a horror movie and even they may say the place is too frightening to be filmed here. You wouldn’t be shocked to see this place on Ghost Hunters or American Horror Story. The owners should either tear the building down and start again or completely gut the place and make the whole thing over. Until they do I wouldn’t recommend this place to serial killers or death row inmates.