Helms Bakery District Tours

This was definitely an interesting stay. The lobby was the size of a coat closet and had a little electronic kiosk where you check in with a virtual receptionist. You have to request room cleaning before 11am if you want housekeeping to stop by. Room was cute and cozy, but the floors weren't mopped so we kept getting our socks and feet really dirty with all the dust and dirt on the ground. Another super random complaint was that the tv remote didn't have a back button? It got annoying after a while. A p.s. to also log out of all of your accounts before you leave; so many people were still logged into netflix, hulu, etc.. Other than that, the parking was nice and there was lots of food nearby!

We booked a Casita room for a 3 day weekend for our last trip before we have our first baby. I didn’t put any notes or anything on what we were there for, but when we checked in we were informed we had been upgraded to an oceanfront suite. We were blown away by this room. It was massive and had multiple balconies to sit on and enjoy the views. We ended up spending most of our time in the room because it was just the best. We did go to the adult pool and another quiet pool that were both very nice. Megan at the vista pool was great! We had breakfast at the Catalina kitchen a few times which was great. The room service was great. I do wish I had done a little more research and made reservations for the other restaurants on site as they were booked. Overall it was an amazing place and we were so thankful they upgraded us, we didn’t want to leave!

Overall we had a very nice stay. It was centrally located between the places we needed to go and Uber was able to drop off and pick up easily. Online we understood a shuttle could take us within 3 miles, which was one reason we selected the hotel. But when we arrived, they explained it was an Uber service during limited hours to limited locations, so we couldn't benefit from it. Although we only used both amenities once, the pool hours are good (open until 10 pm) and they a have free glass of wine in the afternoon. The continental breakfast is the exact same daily, which is a good offering, but it would be nice to have some boiled eggs or some other light protein option as opposed to the large pay breakfasts. The rooms are a bit small and we would have preferred queen beds instead of doubles for a family of 3. But that's mainly due to the shape of the hotel, which limits the size of the spaces. We made it work. The only issue we ran into were some young women under the influence yelling in the halls at 4AM for 30 minutes who woke up everyone on ours and neighboring floors. The hotel said they would comp us something for the disturbance, but I don't know that we were or that the hotel was able to address the badly mannered guests in any way. Aside from a few challenges, we enjoyed our stay.