2nd visit - very disappointing
My wife and I visit New York every December, last year we booked the Sanctuary for the first time and raved about it, we immediately booked up for this year and told friends that if they were heading to NY look no further than this hotel.
I got slightly worried when friends took our advice in the Summer and I received a text from them saying 'you are easily pleased !!!'.
On explanation our friends detailed they found the hotel OK but nothing to write home about so we were a little more apprehensive than we wanted to be.
We stayed 5 nights last week, our check in was as good as I expected when at 2.45pm a very helpful receptionist explained that she wanted to give us the best room available so needed 10 mins to prepare one, so we disappeared for a coffee and came back.
She made us feel very welcome and went to great lengths to explain she wanted our room to be perfect so needed a little time to ensure she could achieve this, when we returned we were given room 209.
During our coffee my wife and I were a little excited about the room we would be given given that our last room was excellent.
New York hotel rooms are generally small but this one was nowhere near the standard we had last year - it turns out that we were upgraded last year without being told (reception later confirmed this)which explained why we were so impressed on our previous visit, this time we had a standard room and whilst I know hotels in December aren't cheap if I'm paying almost $2000 for a 5 night stay I expect better than what we got.
At a guess I would say the room measures 150 square feet, and that includes bathroom area - this room also has no window, actually there is a small frosted window that you can't shift and it lets in virtually no natural light. 
The room is also next door to a housekeeping cupboard and whilst we heard the housekeeping team I have to say we were never disturbed during sleeping hours. 
The air conditioning system doesn't work - set the temperature at 70 degrees and within 5 minutes you'll be nicely roasting at 78, set it for 66 degrees and you might reduce it to 75 degrees if you're lucky, turn the damn thing off and you'll be semi-comfortable.
I tried reproting this (by phone) but the front desk was permanently engaged - later in our stay we started receiving some late calls with no-one at the other end so I figured there was a problem with the phone system - the day we left the concierge, bellboy and front desk were all engaged at 5.30am so clearly a problem somewhere.. 
The bed was too soft (suits some people obviously but both my wife and myself have back issues), no cupboards for hanging clothes just a small alcove big anough for half a dozen items, also, the elevator was broken for a couple of days so guests shared the goods elevator with deliveries/housekeeping etc.
Not a major issue for us as we were on lev 2 but it did prevent us from going to the Haven bar at roof level which I was told is excellent.
The only upside was the shower which is excellent - and the shower room was strangely spacious.
My problem was more with the expectation, having visited New York many times it's now an annual vacation for us and one that we look forward to very much, having experienced such a great stay in 2011 virtually everything about this visit was a disappointment.
We though we had found 'our' hotel but it's back to the drawing board....