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The Sun is always shining at Mohegan Sun -
The Hotel
by Carolyn Donovan, March 2006

 

Your room is ready, madam

The hotel normally runs at 90% occupancy (and on the night that the blizzard was in full swing they were at 98% occupancy), but if there were that many people in the resort, I didn’t notice. The public spaces are almost huge, but in a proportional way. It all works.

Going up!

You get your room keycard at check-in, and show it to the security person to gain access to the elevator banks, and once in the elevators, you insert it into the slot in the elevator before pressing your floor number. You cannot select any other floor number, only the one that your room is on. (Keeps the rabble out, I suspect.)

Our room was on the 20th floor, and looked out over Trading Cove, part of the Thames River. The room was handsome and quite large; the images on the Mohegan Sun website does not do them justice. The mini-bar is weight-based; “it” knows how much everything in it weighs, so when you take something, the weight changes and you get billed. I don’t know how “it” knows the difference between the two ounces of cashews and the two ounces of Oreos, but perhaps it is based on the location of the items as well. This is only speculation; I was afraid to open the mini-bar in case all reason abandoned me and I actually ate something…

The room

The bed needed four pillows to reach across. We both got very good nights’ sleep in it. Quality sheets, handsome bedcover, nice for lolling around and watching the tv (that HBO, I see why people get it on cable at home…).

Are we expecting company, or do I get two pillows to myself?

The room has a table that’s big enough to actually do work on, but really, you’re at a resort, put the laptop away and go have some fun. There was also a nice contemporary easy chair and ottoman. The whole room was well proportioned, and we enjoyed our two nights there. There was a healthy live plant, a hosta, in the room.

The room, before I unpacked

One thing: don’t even bother with the “Get the Internet on the Television!” wireless keyboard thing. It’s free, as long as you want the front page of MSNBC, and even then, it seems like it’s a PDF of the pages, not the actual pages. If you want to check your email with it (but you don’t, you are at a resort and should be relaxing), it’ll cost you, but it’s unwieldy to use and s…l…o…w.

Mohegan Sun does offer a high-speed Internet connection (and keeps the cable you need to connect your laptop in the drawer of the table), so if you really really really are that much of a Type A personality, I would go that route (I believe there’s a charge involved).

There were two cool technologies in use in the room. The first is the thermostat; it is electronic, with a big LED screen so you can see how high or how low you are setting the temperature (and the temp responds very quickly). The other is the “Do not disturb” door hanger; it is now a button on the wall next to the door; you press either “Do not disturb” or “Make up this room” and a corresponding light on the outside of the door lights up. Is that cool or what?

The bathroom

The bathroom more spacious than I expected. Its double sliding door opens to a tile/mosaic/black granite sink area with the shower on one side and the toilet (with its own sliding door) on the other. The tiles were decorated with iridescent glass squares in blues and purples, both on the floor and on the back splash. The mirror was the length of the vanity, easily five feet. The vanity was pure black granite, very cool. The shower curtain was an iridescent periwinkle, and easily slid open and closed on a metal rod. The showerhead was high enough up that I believe even basketball players could get themselves under it, and had good pressure and very hot water.

Whal, that's a real nice place you got there...

I liked that the toilet had it’s own room, so to speak, but every time I flushed I got a little afraid, it was very quick and, what’s the word, powerful.

The bathroom came stocked with Mohegan Sun personal care products: shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, body lotion. Everything was lovely, but the body lotion had a fragrance that was so overpowering and, um, manly (ish) that I only used it once. They even had mouthwash!

The only things that seemed amiss in the bathroom were:

  1. There was no fan, so the steam just stayed and stayed and stayed until you hair dryer-ed it away;
  2. There was only one hook, right next to the shower, but if you hang up your towel there, where will you hang up everything else?

 

 

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Photography by Wan Chi Lau and Carolyn Donovan