Highlights

• Hotel -> fantastic service, room, views, lounge
• Location could not be beat for convenience, activities, restaurants, and shopping
• Fireworks and first night activies were close and fun
• Gym time!

LowLights

• Santa Monica side trip was a dud

Takeaways

We had relatively low expectations from this part of the stay. We originally planned to use the hotel as a base for exploring more of the LA area, but we barely left the hotel during our 5 night stay. The one time we did leave and go to Santa Monica was a relative disappointment.

The restaurants and shopping options within walking distance of the hotel kept us occupied and satisfied. They gave us little reason to go elsewhere and we were fine with that. There was more to do than we had time and not a day goes by since our return that I don’t hear about missing some aspect of Long Beach.

It doesn’t hurt that we had such a a fantastic experience at the hotel. Coming off our disappointment with the JW Marriott Desert Springs, the experience at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach could not have been more different. From the moment we arrived we were greeted and treated as valued guests. The staff went above and beyond to make sure we were happy, and we didn’t even have high level status.

The room’s view was amazing, especially on New Year’s Eve with the fireworks directly out our window. The room was well designed and large enough to keep the kids from fighting. The only “complaint” I had was that the bathroom was a little dark with dark gray/brown tile on the floors and walls. The breakfast in the lounge was unexpectedly diverse and of excellent quality. Tomatico approved!

A few years ago when we stayed in LA we had a much different opinion of the area. We stayed closer to the airport and had to drive through lots of traffic to see many of the places we visited. In Long Beach we never felt the need to go exploring outside the city and that made for a much more pleasant experience. We didn’t see many of the touristy attractions this trip, but we had already seen them the previous trip. We’ll definitely be putting Long Beach on our list of places to return!