TownePlace Suites by Marriott Anchorage Midtown, Anchorage, AK

We did something a couple of weeks ago… We went on vacation. Last fall hubby and I were actually looking into a vacation for us to go on when we stumbled across a really good deal to go to California. Not just California, Anaheim… Disneyland to be exact. 

Ever since my little was born, my mom wanted to take her to Disney. I kept telling my mom we needed to hold off until she was at least 5 or 6-years-old. Well, this summer she turned 6.  (Which means last fall she was 5… we were at the 5-6 time frame.) We discussed our findings with my parents and my Mother-in-law to see if they’d be interested in going with us. We came up with a game plan, a date, and booked our trip for this summer. 

THEN…

Covid-19 hit. Well SH*T. What does that mean?

We waited all spring watching the news, debating, talking, stressing, etc. Disney (both World and Land) shut down. I have a friend who lives in California and has season passes to Disneyland. I picked her brain every few days about… is it going to reopen, will this happen, should I reschedule, etc. Finally, she heard rumor that they wouldn’t reopen until January 2021. Crud. 

After quick discussion, we decided to start looking into new trip destinations. We couldn’t get our money back (side note… our lives are more important than losing money from a trip, I’m not stupid), but we could reroute our trip… This was all about the time that the one beach opened in California and 40K people flooded to it and they shut beaches back down. We decided that everyone would want the beach so we started looking for other destinations. 

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, etc. That’s when I suggested Alaska. It’s a state we’ve been wanting to go to… why not. We looked into Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau. We eventually landed on Anchorage. 

TownePlace Suites by Marriott Anchorage Midtown

600 E 32nd Ave
Anchorage, AK 99503

Honestly, I’m a little torn on how I feel about this hotel. If we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, I know exactly how I feel. Since we are, I have to approach this a little differently.

First off, did I plan on staying in this room a lot? Nope. Just really for changing clothes and sleeping. Otherwise, I wanted to visit Alaska. I mean we made the trip there for a reason, obviously. 

BUT… We’ll get to that but in a minute…

So here’s the room. We had a Queen double. This room also had a kitchenette so you could cook. There was a stovetop, sink, dishwasher, and full refrigerator. It helps in saving a little money if you want to get food at the store (just around the corner) and cook versus eating out.

This was our view out the window. Gorgeous. I kept asking if people that were born/raised in Alaska ever took this view for granted and got tired of it.

This photo (below) was taken at 9:45 or 10 pm (Alaska time obviously). We were in the land of all-day sunlight summers. Now technically the sun “set” at around 11:30 pm and rose in the 3 am hour. So when I woke up in the middle of the night, it was darker in the room. We did have blackout curtains, but they didn’t completely cover the window so some light came in at the bottom and lit up the floor.

Now, the rest of the story

Now… let’s go back to this room. One big reason to stay in a hotel is to have someone come in and clean the room, make the bed, dump the trash, restock the toilet paper and towels, etc. Because we’re in the middle of a pandemic, that DID. NOT. HAPPEN. And while I get it, they didn’t tell us this at the time of check-in. We didn’t even find this out until the next night when we walked into our room at 9 pm and didn’t have any clean towels and the beds weren’t made. It was a little frustrating they didn’t tell us this.

Then, I guess they don’t have a full staff on right now, so when our toilet wouldn’t flush, we called to the front desk and were basically told, too bad. We asked for a plunger so we could fix it ourselves and they did bring us one up… but the fact that it is their hotel and we were told too bad about the toilet not flushing again rubbed me the wrong way.

So I have mixed emotions. I get they want to keep their staff out of hotel rooms for both the health of the staff as well as the patrons… but tell us that at the time of check-in, please. And you need to have at least one person on staff for maintenance… It just makes good sense.

Our other issue was they closed their pool down. Dang it. When you drag stuff for a pool in already little space, then find out you have to tell the little you promised she could swim that she couldn’t… ugh! But… life goes on and I got us home in the same 4 suitcases and 4 backpacks that I got us there. Hubby was afraid we’d have to go buy a cheap bag to get us home with… I proved him wrong :). Plus the oldest carried a few things home for my MIL too because she ran out of room.