Hyatt Place Ontario/Rancho Cucamonga

Just recently spent a brief weekend for fun in Los Angeles and decided to try out the new Hyatt Place. This was the Hyatt Place Ontario/Rancho Cucamonga located near Ontario Airport next to the rather large Ontario Mills mall. As a Hyatt Gold Passport member, you can redeem one free night here for 8k points as a Category 2 hotel. The only knock against this hotel might be its location as it is rather far from most of the attractions in the greater Los Angeles area although its pricing definitely offsets that.

As you enter, you are greeted by a warm comfortable-looking lounge in the lobby which is incidentally also one of the seating areas for breakfast. Below is another one of their seating areas in a small booth next to a small television which you can watch while eating breakfast.

The gigantic sofa (trust me, it is way bigger than in the picture) was a very welcome addition to the room and it was definitely worth lazing around even for a little while to watch something on the large 42 inch television. The room designers had clearly given some thought to the layout as the television (which I had initially thought was a tad awkwardly placed), had some room for rotation allowing for viewing from either the sofa or your bed (although this one would be comparatively less comfortable).

The Hyatt Plug Panel you see on the bottom right was one of the more inspired designs I've seen in hotels for hooking up your laptop to project whatever you might want to watch on the screen. Its placement was well thought out, being next to the office table where you can easily attach any cables to the panel. The only thing I wondered was whether the hotel would provide you the cables if necessary.

One thing I really liked about this hotel was the shower head. Unless most hotels where the shower head shoots water at you at high velocity, this one gives off a comfortable, dribbling feeling. I'm not entirely sure if this is related to a lack of water pressure or not but it certainly didn't feel that way to me. The drawback of course is that there might not be strong enough pressure to rinse off all the soap suds although I didn't really find that this was a problem. I might also mention that the toilet could've done with a bit more pressure when flushing.

Hotels generally have pretty decent toiletries for usage but I think this was the first one in recent memory that also provided a tube of toothpaste (Aquafresh Extreme Clean) without having to ask for some. I gotta say that toothpaste definitely left a very clean feeling in my mouth.

The one thing that I must point out however, is that if you want a good night's rest, be sure NOT to sleep next to or near the ice-making machine. Our first night there was just across from one of those abominations and given the rather thin walls they seem to have here, all I could hear that first night was the clunking noises of ice cubes falling onto a tray. Fortunately, I got moved to another room the next night so I could actually get some rest. So when you check in, be sure to ask about the location of the ice-making machine!

Breakfast was a little bit of a disappointment considering how heavily Hyatt has been advertising their a.m. Kitchen Skillet breakfast lately. To be fair, it wasn't too bad - the french toast was actually quite decent although the eggs were a bit rubbery and there was somewhat less selection than expected.

The fruit selection was fortunately fresher than the fruits offered at the Residence Inn San Diego Sorrento Mesa.

Here's my overhyped breakfast - bon appetit!

All in all, considering the pretty reasonable pricing of the hotel, I'd say the Hyatt Place Ontario/Rancho Cucamonga was a pretty good steal. Just make sure you don't get a room next to the ice-maker!