Children’s Day, went out for a trip~~~ Of course, the main purpose was actually to get an SPG Gold Card…
Just picked a random SPG property to stay for a night. I felt the Four Points in Daning had poor facilities and reviews,
so I settled on this Sheraton that hardly anyone visits, is close to the metro station, and isn’t too expensive….

It really isn’t far from the metro station, but the metro station itself is really far away….
Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone North Station; coming from Century Avenue still requires taking Line 6 for over half an hour…
The hotel is the tallest building in the area, so it’s actually quite easy to find…

When checking in at the lobby, the front desk attitude was rather mediocre.
I’ve heard that service at Sheratons is hit-or-miss, with more misses than hits..
Also, the weekend occupancy rate here is incredibly low—they couldn’t even open the buffet…
Personally, I estimate fewer than 10 rooms were occupied…..
Of course, there is one upside: you basically get the gym and other facilities entirely to yourself…

The hotel is relatively new, and the hardware/facilities are pretty good. The elevator buttons are touch-sensitive, and the curtains are motorized.
The room layout is a bit odd—long and narrow… The room isn’t huge, but it’s acceptable.
There’s not much of a view outside the window, just the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone and a few large chimneys emitting white smoke…
The bed is the standard Sheraton Sweet Sleeper Bed. Although not as comfortable as the one at InterContinental Chengdu, it’s still pretty good.

There are chubby birds displayed on the wall shelf… I really want to take one home…

The TV is 47 inches. Rumor has it they haven’t sorted out satellite TV yet, so there aren’t many international channels, but there are free movies to watch…
There are quite a few of them, all in HD, and you can order them directly on the TV.
However, due to compression issues, the picture quality is average, with some visual noise…

The bathroom is surprisingly spacious, feeling almost as big as the bedroom itself.. There’s a hidden TV in the mirror, so you can watch while showering…~

Spent the afternoon in the gym. Both the gym and swimming pool are on the 6th floor. The gym is very large, but because of some partnership,
all the equipment is Life Fitness, so the ellipticals are nowhere near as good as Precor ones.
Also, there are no dumbbells or barbells, and no yoga mats either—they just put a fake one there for show, sigh…
But there are cute exercise balls to play with, which is way better than the outdated gym at InterContinental Chengdu…
Surprisingly, there’s even a spinning studio. I guess the gym is open to the public, so they probably hold classes on weekdays.
Also, a big thanks to classmate ET for coming by to give me some pointers—I finally got to experience what it’s like having a coach, haha.

The swimming pool is nice, and there’s barely anyone around~~~~

Dinner was a set menu~~ Looking at the items, I thought I wouldn’t be full, but actually, I couldn’t even finish it…
The bread was terrible, and it was my first time seeing a Western restaurant without a butter knife…

The braised beef was actually quite tasty, though the meat was a bit tough, making the texture slightly off.

Fish and Chips—the fish fillet was delicious, but the fries were just so-so…

As for breakfast at this hotel, probably due to the low guest count, the selection was extremely limited.
It was even worse than breakfast at the Club Lounge of InterContinental Chengdu—and by a wide margin…
The taste was also mediocre…. Nothing particularly good…

So, to sum up: this hotel has excellent hardware but terrible software….
If you adjust your expectations accordingly, you can still stay here with peace of mind….
Of course… that assumes you’re working or on a business trip in that area…
Otherwise, there’s no need to travel all the way out to such a remote location~~~~

Photos in this post taken with SONY NEX-5R + 16-50 f3.5-5.6, post-processed in Lightroom.

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