Introduction
Let’s pick up where we left off: Second Round of the Red House Script: Hotel del Coronado The View Experience.
On the drive back from San Diego, I decided to stop for a night, so I booked one night at Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach in Butterfly Beach.
As for the price—the standard room was the now-familiar 95,000 points per night. Of course, if you have a free night certificate, you can redeem it directly for a standard room, for an effective value of about $700.
Check-In
Before getting to Butterfly Beach, I made one more stop in Encinitas and grabbed a coffee at Lofty.
I’ve loved watching trains since I was little... and now I can sip coffee while watching trains. What a nice feeling.
Back on the road, I passed what was once humanity’s fountain of energy—the site of a nuclear power plant.
Almost at the destination, I spotted this on the road... Has FedEx already started using EVs?
Finally arrived. First stop: the front desk to check in.
The front desk first helped set up the digital key in the Hilton app.
But as everyone knows, in some ways I’m a pretty old-school, traditional person(to the point of wishing every internal-combustion vehicle still had hand-crank starters, and every EV drew power from overhead lines like a trolleybus), so you already know what comes next—after picking up a physical key card as usual, here’s the obligatory key card photo.
The front desk was surprisingly on the fifth floor, while my room was on the first floor, so I had to walk down the hallway first and find the elevator to go down.
I took the elevator down to level 1. My room was in the south wing on the first floor.
Room Overview
Here’s what the room looked like.
The welcome screen displayed above the TV.
Coffee machine.
As for these two bottles of water next to it... they seem to have the same “international face,” just with different labels on top.
Here’s an overview of the bathroom.
Open the door and the toilet is inside.
The balcony and the fireplace outside—at night, you can light a fire here.
Dinner
Time to go catch the sunset!
For dinner, I went to Monarch Bay Beach Club. This restaurant is kind of an “enclave” of this Waldorf Astoria, and you need to catch a Mazda cart at the main entrance to get there.
An electric vehicle—a fancier version of the “dog-riding-rabbit.”
Menu.
Chicken leg and bread—pretty tasty!
Then I added a seafood dish.
After dinner, I walked around a bit and took a photo of the restaurant at night.
The ocean at night.
Honestly, the ocean looks completely different by day and by night!
A shot of Chestnut on the cliff in the distance.
It feels like Chestnut already claimed the best spot, so the Waldorf Astoria restaurant here had no choice but to operate in this “enclave” mode.
I took the car back and had a look at the pool at night.
The heated pool was steaming, almost like a fairyland on earth!
After walking around outside for a while, we headed back to the room along this gorgeous hallway.
Back in the room, we lit the fire pit on the balcony.
To be honest, aside from setting the mood, this fire pit did not seem to have much practical use...
The Next Day
The sun was out!
This leather “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the door looked pretty nice.
We stepped out to look at the courtyard and pool, and having breakfast upstairs was quite relaxing as well:
On the way to check out, we came across this steakhouse... but it seemed very hard to get a reservation.
Because it sits right at a bend in the hallway, and because the glass was cleaned so thoroughly, Chestnut almost walked straight into it a few times.
At 11:11 am, it was time to check out and continue the trip.
Summary
Since we only stayed for one night, there was no way to do a deeper evaluation of the property, so this is really just a simple trip report for everyone to enjoy.
Overall, the location is pretty good, right by the ocean at Butterfly Beach. Unfortunately, since Rosewood already took the best spot, this property could not be built right along the shoreline. As a result, its restaurant ended up becoming a bit of an “enclave,” connected by shuttle.
By Chestnut's valuation, 95,000 points can get you more than 700 USD in value, which is a pretty decent redemption rate. Of course, if 95,000 points sounds too expensive, you could also pair it with the recent welcome-offer promotions on the AMEX Hilton card lineup that include FN, making this a good place to use an FN.