With Marriott having taken over Starwood, I’ve been trying to review as many Marriott-family properties as possible, to get a sense of what we should expect when the loyalty programs are fully integrated. At this point Marriott and Starwood have 30 brands, with Marriott’s highest end brand being Ritz-Carlton, and Starwood’s highest end brand being St. Regis.
While I’ve stayed at a ton of St. Regis properties, I haven’t stayed at that many Ritz-Carlton properties. A few weeks ago Ford and I spent a night at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, which I had heard a lot of positive things about. We had a free night certificate from the Ritz-Carlton credit card that was expiring soon, so this worked out conveniently. I should mention that this was coming out of Ford’s account, and he’s “only” a Ritz-Carlton Rewards Gold member, while I have Platinum status. So it’s not an apple-to-apples comparison in terms of elite recognition, since we were staying with his status.
For the night we stayed, a base room at the hotel would have cost $783++ ($905 including the resort fee and tax). Alternatively, we could have redeemed 60,000 Marriott Rewards points, which is the equivalent of 20,000 Starpoints. So using an expiring free night certificate was a great option.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post entitled “Why Do People Like Ritz-Carlton ‘Resort Factories?'” The post gets at my overall confusion with some Ritz-Carlton properties in the US, though in this post I want to provide a more thorough review of the hotel as such.
The Ritz-Carlton is located on Monarch Beach, just down the road from the former St. Regis Monarch Beach, which is now called the Monarch Beach Resort.
Our experience started with having to wait in a line at valet. It’s one thing to have to wait a few minutes, but the line for the valet was so long that you couldn’t even drive up to the hotel, but rather had to wait in a line a dozen cars deep just to be able to queue in the valet line. All for the privilege of paying $40 per night for valet parking. This wasn’t just a one-time issue, but was the case very time we were out front (and clearly it’s not unusual or else they wouldn’t have someone stationed up there to stop people).
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel valet line
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel valet line
We arrived at the hotel at around noon, and quickly found reception, which was located inside the lobby and to the right.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel lobby
At many St. Regis properties there’s sit-down check-in. At this hotel there was a line nearly a dozen people deep to check-in.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel lobby
On the plus side, I thought it was pretty cool that there was a live “beach cam” behind the front desk.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel beach view
Our room was ready even though we were early, and the lady checking us in was friendly. She presented us with a map of the resort, and explained some of the basic features.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel property map
Most of the below lobby pictures were taken late at night, which was the only time that the lobby wasn’t ridiculously overcrowded. The lobby itself is fairly nice, though to me the design seems totally out of place. I’d expect this decor at a stuffy conference hotel, and not at a coastal beach resort.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel lobby
There was a long hallway leading to most of the guest rooms, and the hotel’s bar was just at the end of that.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel lobby bar
There were several guest wings, and the elevator to our room was located down the hallway and to the left.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel lobby
The only lobby decor that made me feel like I was on the ocean were the decorative surfboards on the wall.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel lobby surfboards
The lobby was on the third floor while our room was on the fourth floor, so we took the elevator up a level. There was a nice hallway with lots of natural light that led us to the hallway with guest rooms.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel hallway
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel hallway
Our room, #4511, was located halfway down the hall and to the left.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel room exterior
The room was… fine. It featured an entryway with the bathroom to the right.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room entryway
That led into the rest of the room. On one side of the room was a comfortable king size bed, a nightstand, a desk, and a console with a safe and mini-fridge.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room desk
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room mini-fridge & safe
It’s interesting that the hotel has mini-fridges rather than minibars. I don’t mind that one bit given how much minibar drinks would cost, though this mini-fridge didn’t seem to work. It was turned on, but was room temperature inside.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room mini-fridge
On the opposite side of the room was a daybed, a wall-mounted TV, and a chair with a side table.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room seat
The room had a balcony with a table and two chairs. I couldn’t help but feel like the patio furniture felt a bit cheap for a hotel charging these kinds of rates.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room balcony
Our room had a view of the pool, which was nice enough.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room view
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room view
However, this had to be one of the loudest pools I’ve seen in a long time, to the point that I couldn’t concentrate while trying to work from the balcony.
Back towards the entrance of the room was the bathroom, which featured double sinks (which is a nice feature for a standard room), a shower/tub combo, and a partitioned off toilet.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room bathroom
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room bathroom
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room toilet
Toiletries were from Asprey, which is brand standard for Ritz-Carlton. They’re pleasant enough, though I don’t find them to be anything special.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room Asprey toiletries
Overall I thought the room was fine. It didn’t feel any more luxurious to me than any four star hotel, and I guess that gets at my overall issue with the hotel.
What did disappoint me, however, was the upkeep of the room. One of the lights above the bed was broken, the air vent in the bathroom was dirty, and the alarm clock went off at 6AM, even though we didn’t set it (fortunately we were up by then anyway). We also didn’t get turndown service, which I assume is supposed to be a standard amenity.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room broken light
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel king room dirt
The hotel’s best feature is that it’s on Monarch Beach. You still have to walk down a hill, though this is as close as hotels get to Monarch Beach. And it is a really pretty beach. More on that in a bit.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel view
After checking in we were hungry, so wanted to have lunch at the hotel’s only full service daytime restaurant, Raya. Unfortunately there was a wait of over an hour. I get that the hotel gets busy, but if you’re staying at a luxury, destination resort you should be able to eat without having to wait such a long time, in my opinion. Eventually we were seated.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel Raya Restaurant
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel Raya Restaurant
At first they just presented us with the $72 per person brunch menu.
We wanted to eat a bit healthier, so after asking we were also given the lunch menu, which had quite a limited selection. That menu read as follows:
We were offered some bread when we sat down, which was stale and tasteless.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel Raya Restaurant — bread
The two salads we ordered were very good, though.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel Raya Restaurant — ahi tuna tataki salad
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel Raya Restaurant — pulled jidori chicken salad
In the afternoon we wanted to check out the beach, which is after all one of the main draws of this resort. There’s a staircase from the resort leading down to a road that goes to the beach.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel walkway to beach
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel walkway to beach
Walking down there took a bit longer than we were expecting, since some staircases were closed due to weddings.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel public areas closed
While we were happy walking, I imagine others would appreciate the cart that goes down. However, due to yet another wedding it wasn’t operating all the way between the lobby and the beach, so you still had to walk most of the way. I noticed some mobility-challenged people who struggled with that.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel golf cart to beach
There’s a hotel hut near the beach where you can pick-up chairs, which are included with the $40 resort fee.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel beach stand
At just about every other luxury beach resort I’ve been to, they set up chairs on the beach for you, etc. Here we were informed that “[we] can wear the chairs like backpacks.” So we did that, and took them down to the beach.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel walking to beach
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel beach chairs
I couldn’t believe what bad conditions the chairs were in, let alone how cheap they were.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel rusty beach chairs
The beach was crowded, though that’s to be expected. I still love Monarch Beach, though find that the North part of the beach (where the Monarch Beach Resort is located) is much quieter.
Monarch Beach
So we set up our chairs and then took a walk to the far end of the beach.
Monarch Beach
The afternoon sun from the beach was stunning.
Monarch Beach sunset
While we were going out for dinner, we were hoping to have sunset cocktails at the hotel. The only outdoor ocean view venue where you can get drinks is the bar off the lobby. By the time we got there it was super crowded, and we couldn’t get seats.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel sunset view
The hotel also has a coffee shop, which doubles as a convenience store of sorts. They have some reasonably priced stuff, at least relatively speaking — for example, while many glasses of wine in the bars are $15+, you can buy a bottle of the same stuff for $30 here.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel coffeeshop
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel coffeeshop
Best, I could tell, the hotel had two pools. That included the main pool in the courtyard, as well as a smaller pool at the side of the resort.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel pool
The quieter pool was closed for a wedding reception in the afternoon.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel pool
The hotel also has a gym and a spa. The gym has great views of the ocean, so we used that the following morning.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel gym
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel gym
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel gym
I don’t think I can emphasize enough how insanely busy the hotel was. I felt like we were constantly dodging wedding parties, the crowds in the public spaces were insane, and the hotel staff couldn’t really clean fast enough to keep up with guests. This is what several tables in the lobby looked like in the evening.
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel mess
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel bottom line
There are certain hotels I fall in love with from the moment I arrive, and some where I just find myself shaking my head most of the time. This fits in the latter category, unfortunately. And that’s unfortunately largely my fault, I think.
Here’s the thing — Ritz-Carlton advertises themselves as a five-star hotel chain, so I think my mistake here is taking them up on their word. If this place were a Westin and charged $250 per night, I’d think it’s a pretty nice place. However, the thought of paying $900+ per night for a hotel with no personal service, where you have to wait for everything, where your room isn’t even maintained properly, etc., isn’t appealing to me.
I absolutely wouldn’t return to this hotel, and that’s fine. At the end of the day the hotel can get away with charging these rates because of its location — it’s a quick getaway for many people. On top of that, many people buy into the Ritz-Carlton marketing hype, and pay a premium for it. It seems this hotel is targeting weddings and conferences, rather than individuals looking for a relaxing getaway.
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