For the price, this hotel delivers cheap quality. Overall, I was unsatisfied and would not recommend staying here unless you need to be right next to the Ueno subway station.
The only pros I can think of are that it's very close to the Ueno subway station and shopping/food area, and the superficial design of the hotel is slightly more modern than some other similarly-priced Tokyo hotels (the latter did not impact my stay in any way, especially since the restaurant was closed).
Here are the issues that I experienced. Some are important, and some are minor, but they all add up.
- Water temperature was the worst part of this stay. At its worst, the water temperature followed a "sine wave" pattern, which means constantly oscillating between two levels over time. I could not safely or comfortably stand under the shower stream because it was constantly moving between hot and cold - when it's cold, you feel very uncomfortable, and when it's hot, you risk burning. Is this phenomenon unique to this hotel? No. Do I expect to not have this problem for almost $200 per night for a tiny single room? Yes.
- There was a constant sewage stink in the bathroom. My guess is that the building was not constructed with proper plumbing design to keep odors from arising from the pipes. This made staying in the hotel very unpleasant. I had to keep the bathroom door closed so as not to let this stink come into the sleeping area. I figured out that keeping the rubber plugs in the bathtub and sink would reduce this smell; however, the cleaners would remove these stoppers when they did their daily rounds! So in order to reduce the sewage smell, I had to forego the daily cleaning service.
- Only one water spout fixture is shared between the sink and shower. This cost-cutting by the hotel makes it difficult to change the temperature and flow of the sink because you're using shower controls. Also, it suffered from the same oscillation between hot and cold as described above. Why not have a normal sink spout?
- The very-cramped bathroom doesn't have enough counter space to place your toiletries. Also, the bathtub ledges do not have much space for setting down soap bottles.
- The bathroom door is installed in the wrong direction left-to-right. It opens into the main room in a way that you need to step far to the side to get out of its way, which is especially difficult since it's also the only area where you can fit a suitcase.
- The choice of equipment is cheap - the washlet, hair dryer and shower hardware were lower-quality options than comparable hotels.
- No wash cloth is available
- The TV turns on automatically every time your keycard is inserted
- I had trouble using the elevator to get to my floor when I arrived because it turns out you need to hold down the button to my floor to reach it. The front desk did not inform me of this - I had to learn it from another guest!
- The restaurant is currently completely closed due to Covid measures, so there was no breakfast. I don't recall seeing anything about this when making the booking on a third-party site. Please update your listings on all travel websites to reflect this.
- Online listings mention blackout curtains, but they are not blackout curtains. They allow plenty of light to come in on the sides. So don't stay here if you are sensitive to light in the mornings.
- The rooftop view is really just an open window cut into one end of a wall, it's not a wide view of the city.
This review is in context of staying at a similar hotel in Tokyo on the same trip. For the sake of fairness, I won't name the other hotel, but it costed much less than Cocone Ueno and was a much better quality experience in all respects.
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