The Sea View Hotel - Galloway NJ

The Seaview Hotel is a glorious hotel sitting on the bay in Galloway NJ. According to their website, the hotel has been serving guests for over 100 years. These include Presidents, rock stars, and numerous other celebrities. Their hotel lobby proudly displays the names and pictures of these celebrities that have stayed there. It also hosts numerous golf events during the year, and the golf courses are absolutely beautiful.

Last weekend I needed a getaway! Normally we stay at the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City which is absolutely magnificent. This time we decided not to stay in the city, we needed a quiet getaway. I found this hotel in my Google searches and the pictures were beautiful. I did read some of the reviews and was very iffy on whether or not to stay here. Our total price for the room for ONE night was $307, should be good right?! Not.

Pulling onto the property it's absolutely gorgeous. Huge golf course, beautiful lawn (or so we thought) and golf carts galore. We shortly realized that we can park out front and check in, but then you have to drive down the street and hike back for five minutes with your luggage to get to the lobby. The doormen open the door for you (sometimes) which was nice, and you walk into a lobby that smells distinctly of fish! What?! Okay. We had some shenanigans earlier that day with check in because we booked through a third party. We checked in fairly quickly and were given our room keys.

When we hiked another five minutes (and got lost twice) going to our room, the door handle was abnormally low! We go in, hit the light switch AND nothing. The lights didn't come on! The light switch isn't hooked up to anything! You have to manually turn the lights on! So make sure you turn those lamps on before you go out for the night! There are beautiful windows in the main room which was small, to begin with, BUT it's an older hotel. The bathroom also had a nice picture window in it but you have to keep the blinds drawn. Why? Because you're 40 feet from the pool area on the first floor! You open those windows and people can see EVERYTHING you're doing. So if you want to open windows, ask for an outside facing room or the second floor. 

The bathroom was nice but there were only two lights and a separating wall so you're going to the bathroom pretty much in the dark most of the time since getting natural light isn't going to happen. The towel racks with your towels are IN the shower! I did take a shower that night and it was really awkward. Shaving was horrendous as I kept hitting my head on this stupid shower rack! They also have three pumps for shampoo, conditioner and body wash, that have NOTHING in them. No bottles, nothing. It looks like they stopped offering this but didn't ever take this container off the wall. 

You do get two complimentary bottles of water and you better save those babies! We drank ours and after a day on the boardwalk we hit up the vending machine down the hall. It does have a convenient debit card reader on it BUT the entire vending machine was EMPTY. No water, no iced tea, no ginergale, NOTHING. You can go up to the little gift shop up front but be prepared to pay. This room also doesn't come with a fridge for the $307 a night so enjoy your warm water. 

The ceiling is popcorn ceiling and ours had a weird hole in it. There's also no electrical outlets in the lamps as other hotels normally have. So be prepared to charge your electronics across the room. My iPhone and Apple Watch had to lay on the floor next to the TV. Speaking of TV, it has a really weird golden light that comes off of the back of it. I tried everything to turn it off to no avail, so you have this horrendous light shining the entire night. The doors are also fairly thin and the entire night we heard people screaming up and down the hallway. The bed itself is very nice and comfortable, we had a good nights sleep other than the noise. 

When we woke up the next day the lobby still smelled like fish with a little cinnamon this time. We skipped the buffet that was $15 a person since we had such a bad experience with the room we decided we didn't want to risk wasting money on the food. So we hiked back down to our car and drove down to "The Cracked Egg" literally a mile down the road and it was absolutely wonderful. We ended up doing some things around town and came back to the hotel to hike back up to our room for check-out. Check-out was easy and we hiked back down to our car. The hotel hosts tournaments and weddings so the parking lot gets rather full. For the price of the room, it just wasn't worth it. You're paying a good amount of money for this room that just isn't worth it. They need some severe overall updating. I did reach out to the hotel to do a review with them before I came out and didn't get an answer. As an experienced travel blogger, I would suggest you stay elsewhere if you're heading out to Atlantic City or the Galloway area. 


Update:
Stockton was said to have been trying to sell this property. According to Press of Atlantic City in April of 2018, the property has been sold but the buyer and price have not been disclosed. There is a 45-day review period before anything can be finalized. It's also not been released what's going to happen to the property or if they plan on closing for renovations or what not. Here's hoping they do some renovations and when they're done I'll be able to go back with a better experience!