Romance In A Cave: Getting Away To The Comfort Inn, Maspeth

Comfort Inn And Suites Suites Airport - Masspeth, NY

Click to reserve a room directly through Choice Hotels!

The Good: Location, Room size, Breakfast, Amenities
The Bad: Location, Price, Room location
The Basics: Paying quite a bit for a hotel near New York City yields high quality once one is barricaded safely in one's room. Nice for a getaway.


As I've begun to write reviews of the many hotels I have stayed in over the last few years, it's probably germane to note that I've traveled for the last few years almost exclusively for business purposes. When I travel, I'm usually staying at the Choice Hotels because they are less expensive and offer a fairly consistent quality that is comfortable enough when I'm actually in my room. When I'm traveling for business, I'm looking for somewhere close to where my convention is, less expensive than the convention hotel, and a place that is generally clean and safe. In the last five years, I've only traveled to two places (one repetitively!) for non-business trips. Recently, I went on a romantic getaway to New York City and this led me to the Choice Hotels (I have so many points built up with them!) website to try to find something in New York City that was affordable and had a two-person Whirlpool. Yes, the whole purpose was to find someplace I could afford that had a hot tub in the room. I found what I was looking for with the Comfort Inn & Suites Airport in Maspeth, NY.

Comfort Inns are not known for being particularly outstanding; their reputation if more for affordability than quality. The Comfort Inn & Suites Airport is a weird combination of the best the chain might offer with the worst one might predict from any hotel chain.

Location

For those checking out the pros and cons, you might be weirded out to note that I've listed location on both fields and twice (albeit with different phrasing) in the "cons." The location is one of the most unsettling aspects of the Comfort Inn & Suites Airport.

The Comfort Inn & Suites Airport is located at 60 - 30 Maurice Avenue in Maspeth, NY. This is Choice Hotels #NY235 (that number can make things easy when making a reservation online or over the telephone). What is nice about the location is that Maspeth is only about four miles outside Manhattan. Yes, you hop one bridge and you're in the center of one of the most recognizable sets of buildings in the world. Maspeth is four miles away from the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, and Rockefeller Center. Moreover, being over that one bridge makes all of the difference. Room rates drop (literally) one hundred dollars a night for being in Maspeth as opposed to Manhattan.

So, why haven't you heard of this magical place called Maspeth before? Wow, is it a wasteland. This is a dead zone that is more reminiscent of what one thinks of as New Jersey than New York. Indeed, the Comfort Inn & Suites Airport overlooks . . . Mt. Zion Cemetery. There are abandoned buildings, warehouses, a sprawling Cemetery and the nearby highway. This is Maspeth. There are two local places to eat, plus a Dunkin' Donuts. Sure, you can see the Manhattan skyline, but you're looking at it over the headstones and the urban sprawl. It's not a picturesque place. Grass refuses to grow in this place. (Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but there is a LOT of concrete.)

There are no "grounds" for the Comfort Inn & Suites Airport to speak of, only a parking lot. This hotel does not foster even an illusion of safety. The parking lot is well-lit, but the fence around it is not terribly sturdy and covered in signs that mention how security is not responsible for loss or vandalism. The parking lot is not very big and it opens onto the main street, leaving the overall feeling of being very exposed when one gets out of one's car.

Now, as this was my big splurge vacation for the first time . . . well, ever as an adult, actually, the room I booked was a room with a king bed, nonsmoking, with the 2 Person Whirlpool-In Bath (strangely, the King suites did not have the Whirlpool) at a whopping price of $161.99 + taxes a night. While this was certainly more attractive than the $258.99 one would be charged for a hotel over in the City, my expectations for the hotel were high. I wanted my money's worth.

The first major disappointment was in seeing the room's location. Finding the Comfort Inn & Suites was a challenge as the MapQuest directions relied on poorly marked streets and invisible street numbers. Finding the hotel became a process of circling around (as I recall, the directions said to go one way when getting off the expressway and it turned out we needed to make a left as opposed to a right turn and the hotel was right there when we crossed the street) and I was more relieved than anything else when we found the hotel, so much so that I didn't even get too unsettled by the apparent lack of security of the parking lot.

So, then, we went to our $161.99 (plus tax) room. It was located in the basement in a short hallway that was accessed by simply walking down a half-flight of stairs from the main lobby. This subterranean room had the feeling of being a cave, even at night, as the lone window in the room was a thin band of glass above eye level. So, craning my head back, I could almost see up to the parking lot and the asphalt ground. Yes, this is an underground room with so little scenery that the occupant is encouraged to keep the shades drawn because if someone should fall down in the parking lot, they would be looking into the room.

Room Size

Well, honestly, the purpose of a nice, romantic getaway is not so much to enjoy the view outside the hotel as to enjoy the room and the company inside it. So, having spent five years on the road at any number of average hotels in the Choice Hotel chain, I was more impressed than my companion at the room's size. The room was over fifteen feet wide, extending back at least thirty feet from the doorway.

Like virtually all hotels these days, the door opens with a key card, with the door swinging inward. The door has both a chain and a deadbolt, making the occupant feel quite secure indeed. Entering the room is the worst aspect of it. The doorway area, especially after coming down the stairs seems claustrophobic. The doorway seems tight because immediately upon entering the room, there is a spacious bathroom to the right and the hot tub in the main room is right in the room as almost an extension of that wall. As a result, the room has a closed in feeling upon entering it.

But then you're it and when one takes three steps in and passes the wall that makes up the bathroom, the main room has a much greater sense of space. To the right is the whirlpool tub with a knee-level tile border around it, which initially creates the sense of a cavelike quality when entering the room. When one is in the room, however, the hot tub adds to the sense of being open. Yes, it's weird that way. This is a good sized room and certainly a comfortable one once one gets inside.

Indeed, I was tempted to not leave the room once I was in it.

Cleanliness

One of the superlative qualities of the Comfort Inn & Suites Airport has to be its cleanliness. The ideal hotel (to me) always lacks the sense that anyone else has ever occupied the rooms. The room I stayed in perfectly lived up to this expectation. Everything - EVERYTHING - was spotless. The hot tub was immaculately clean (and cleaned each day).

All of the linens were fresh, soft and wonderful. There were plenty of linens available in the room for multiple trips to the shower and hot tub without having to call the front desk. As well, the bedding was clean, fresh and even the extra blankets and pillows in the drawers had the sense of being newly cleaned. In short, it was all perfect in this regard.

Indeed, everything inside the hotel seemed designed to buck the exterior environment. The dining area was spotless (no doubt due to the matriarchal maid who hovered over it - in a uniform no less - throughout the entire breakfast period), all of the walls and rugs were clean. This was easily the most clean hotel I've ever stayed in. It was better than most of the hotels I've been at for conventions (i.e. the "upscale" hotels where the conventions actually were, as opposed to where I would stay for the less expensive option).

All of the mirrors in the room were spotless as well and as the room had additional lights over the hot tub, it was quite easy to see. Rooms don't get any cleaner than this, so it's easy to have the illusion that this hotel room is yours and was never anyone else's!

Amenities

As a vacation hotel, the amenities were critical to me and in this way, the Maspeth Comfort Inn & Suites Airport earned its keep.

First off, the big one; we shelled out the additional $18/night for that Whirlpool-In Bath and wow, was it worth it. Hot tubs are great. There's no other way to put it. And after a day of walking around New York City, a soak in a hot tub can be wonderful. This one lived up with the ability to control the jets and the water was actually hot even when we refilled it a second time (I was paying for the gift of gluttony! Give me a break!). So, the big selling point paid off.

In addition to the hot tub, the bathroom was spacious with a decent sized tub and shower. The sink area has a memorably nice paneled mirror and there was plenty of room for two people to move around one another in it (I swear, the bathroom was about the size of my first apartment!).

The main room had a king-sized bed, a vanity-type closet for hanging clothes in, a desk, the dresser, a refrigerator and the television. The television had less than fifty stations, but did have HBO. The desk and other furniture was near the foot of the bed, but the room still did not feel confined. There were nightstands on either side of the bed. There was no microwave in the room, but there was one in the lobby's dining room (where one would get breakfast). The refrigerator was convenient.

There were two local restaurants that offered take-out. One offered delivery, but the service was erratic (i.e. on the Friday night when we arrived hungry, the delivery that was advertised as going up until 11 P.M. was not available after 10:30) and the other didn't have the greatest food. There was no restaurant in the hotel.

But breakfast was decent. There were individual cereals, oatmeal choices, four types of juice, milk, coffee, and hot cocoa. As well, there were muffins, waffles, bagels, and pastries. For a free continental breakfast, there were plenty of choices. For those inclined to eat in the lobby, there was a sufficient number of tables and chairs to satisfy. For those who wanted to bring their companions breakfast in bed, there was only a scowl from the vulture-like help (I'm sure she's very friendly, but I swear you couldn't spill a drop without her being there to catch it before it hit the counter). Also, breakfast had fresh fruit and Nutrigrain bars offered, which made the choices somewhat more distinct than most hotels in the chain.

Interestingly, there was little on the walls (as far as art) and the hotel seemed to rely less on the conventions of generic hotel art than on letting people simply be in their rooms. There was an air conditioner, which we did not use (as it was March).

The bed was quite comfortable.

Overall

Despite my limited experience of traveling solely for personal enjoyment, the Comfort Inn & Suites Airport in Maspeth, New York lived up to my expectations. For the price and location, I felt I got my money's worth. Would I have not liked to be charged as much? Sure, but it's New York City and it pretty much comes with the territory. Would I have liked to not felt like I was staying in a subterranean bunker hiding out with the rebels? Honestly, the feeling dissipated when I closed the curtains and drew my first bath in the tub.

This hotel offers the price-conscious consumer a decent option right outside New York City that has a higher degree of quality than most hotels in the Comfort chain.

For other Choice Hotel reviews, please visit my reviews of:
Quality Inn North - Altamonte Springs, FL
Quality Inn Airport - Orlando, FL
Comfort Inn North Shore - Danvers, MA

7.5/10

For other travel reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

Comfort Inns And Suites Airport - Masspeth, NY

Click to reserve a room through Hotels.com!