Grand Caribbean – Saitama – Luxury can be drafty!

Located in Saitama near the baseball stadium, one can find the Grand Caribbean. The hotel chain that owns this brand has many hotels across Kanto, but this one stood out. It was a little out of the way, but perfect if you want to catch a game or explore the nearby lake. It’s a great location. The hotel’s vibe is resort, and it features large rooms, and even its smaller rooms come with dart boards within the rooms. Now follows of the blog may recall my troubles to find a working darts board in a Love hotel. Usually, the Lotus group will push their dart boards, but fail to mention they do not work. But my friends, we finally have a hotel with darts that work, the search is over! For location, I will award a 6, whilst it is off the beaten track, it is only ten minutes from the baseball stadium and station, which will take you back to the bigger cities. For those wanting to escape the cities and spend some time together away from the bustling world, this is perfect.

The next category is ease of access, so how easy it is to book the hotel and how user-friendly their booking system is. This hotel is available on couples. JP, and the website has my favourite feature, the live tracker, meaning you can view roughly if the hotel has space. I say roughly as the track basically said the hotel had more than two rooms available the whole time. This is a feature I wish all hotels had as especially with Love hotels they tend to be in rural and very remote locations meaning a trip out by foot or taxi may result in wasted yen and backtracking a very long way. The hotel has electronic boards which display informative images of the room such as bath and amenities. So, for this category I am happily awarding a 9 taking the score to 15.

The next category is comfort and cleanliness this hotel is very new, so it goes without saying everything was very clean. The room I opted for was a very good size all the tea making facilities in the room had plastic over them showing they were new and had been cleaned. The bathroom was very nice and there was no sign of the usual mould that sometimes goes unnoticed in Love hotel bathrooms. The bathroom is often the easiest way to tell if your hotel room is new, clean or suffering from the high rate of room turnover and little time for deep cleaning situation which befalls many of these hotels. For this category I award another 9 taking the score to 24.

For amenities the hotel receives a 7 taking the total to 31. There was the usual selection of beauty products on a small scale but sadly the free drinks machine was out of order. There wasn’t much more floating around in the lobby that was free. In the room the usual selection of freebies could be found a new game I have started to play is how many blades. Essentially, I look at how many blades the free razor has and conclude if the hotel is offering cheaper goods especially with a hotel like this one the hotel feels very grand. Their focus is resort vibes and relaxing, but the razor provided had a solitary blade. I won’t be putting much weight on my new game, but it is a fun little game I now search for.

The next category is food and as usual I will award a 5 for a score of 36 as I was unable to try the food in the hotel due to arriving late. The hotel menu looked diverse, but nothing really stood out to me as different.

The next category is overall enjoyment. The rooms dart board worked and it provided some fun, there was a Jenga tower in the room. The bath was a great size, and I had fun relaxing in a clean space. The room itself had a big tv and the vibe certainly reminded me of the few times I had stayed in Europe at small resorts. However, this hotel had something I was unprepared for and as much as I was over the moon for a working darts board little did, I know what the night would hold. The first hint was when one of the inner doors in the room slammed on its own. There are two doors in this room in the entrance. The first is the front door where you first enter a little space to take of shoes and you will also find the payment machine here. There is also a small hatch where any food ordered can be left as these hotels generally operate on the no contact idea.

The second door leads into your room this is the door that slammed even though it was already closed. For some people they would be screaming ghost! Its haunted however the nights events proved otherwise. It was time to sleep and the noises started. First a loud crack and then every so often the door would slam, occasionally a small tapping sound on metal. After getting irritated and checking the doors I concluded there was indeed a draft. Somewhere in the building perhaps or even in the room. There were blocked windows, but they seemed fully shut. But with the frequency and the select amount of sounds it was evident the draft was causing the door to slam. I am a very light sleeper and ended up getting barely any sleep, so my enjoyment of this room is a 7 taking the total to 43.

The final category is likely to rebook. There are other hotels within this chain that I feel I would gravitate towards. They all bare similar traits and share the resort vibe so sadly with how far out this hotel is and the sleepless night I endured I believe, I would opt for a different hotel. If you are only using the room for a few hours or to enjoy the food or perhaps you are a heavy sleeper in which I am very envious. For this I award a 6 taking the final score to 49/70.