Magic Palace Hotel  

The Magic Palace (mp) is a former Motel turned into a Motel (100% transformation, absolutley no "by the hours" rental anymore). As a reminescence to the Motel days, rooms arte spacious, have a sitting area and a double door to the hallway, blocking all and every noise coming from there. Location in general is quiet as well, Just 5 Minutes cab ride from Lapas nightlife and a mere 100 meters from Gloria subway station (7 Minutes to Cobacabana and 12 minutes to Ipanema beach) the location can be considerd perfect for visitors interessted in sightseeing and authentic nightlife (samba and co.). Staff is friendly and helpfull and rooms anre in very good condition, offering top end 3 star comfort (compared to some 4 star places in Copa you may rather call it 4 star plus). Breakfast is very good for this price range. Very few places in Rio offer a better price/quality ratio, in fact, beeing a 27 times repeat visitor in Rio I didn´t know one.

For the ultimate beach bum or people who need the "tourist nightlife" of Copacabana the location might be second choice. Matresses are a bit hard, although they seem to be new.

The food in the dinning room was good but the serving sizes weren't for individuals but multiple people. Communication with the staff in English wasn't really good.

We stayed at this hotel after coming off of a cruise and was fortunately available for one day during carnival. The neighborhood wasn't all that good but certainly good for what we needed at the time. It took 20 minutes to check out of the hotel. We were given a fixed rate taxi to the airport instead of a taxi with a meter, this was an over charge I'm sure from a metered trip. I found this to be true in Rio. After waiting 20 minutes to check out we just wanted to get to the airport instead of going on the street to get a metered cab. I think more protection for hotel guests regarding taxis should be given.

The staff were very helpful and pleasant. The location was excellent

Rio de Janeiro is very expensive. We came off a cruise and wanted to spend a couple of days in Rio. The cruise could have booked us in a mediocre hotel for $500 a night--even the Sheraton is only so-so. This is in a poorer but safe neighborhood. Some of the staff speak English, some speak Spanish, and the rest only Portuguese. They went out of their way to communicate with us in either English or Spanish. The breakfast was typical of smaller South American and European hotels. Filling but don't expect a totally American one and it will be just fine. One of us ate dinner there and it was just fine. There are not many choices in that neighborhood. The room was clean and spacious, the shower worked, but the beds were hard like in Mexico. You will be happy there as long as you realize this is tipical. The subway (metro) is very close and can take you anywhere you want especially if you want to eat some really great Brazilian food.

Only drawback is the beds were hard. It is no big deal if you want to save $300 on hotel costs!

Good facilities

Few english spoken by the staff

I didn't like it, the staff is very bad humored and the bed is bad too.

Good breakfast

No safe in the room

The helpfulness of the staff, inclusion of free internet (very fast), included car parking, and the close proximity to Gloria Metro station, make this hotel a good choice for me.

The hotel has an absolutely insane policy regarding visitors to rooms. I had a nice room booked as a double room with a separate foyer with four-chair glass table and a bar. I had intended to use this room, separate from the bedroom, for taking Portuguese lessons. On two different occasions, tutors arrived for a Portuguese session (I had two different tutors, one male, one female), but the hotel insisted that they could only stay in the room beyond 30 minutes if I paid an extra charge of BRL54. I believe this policy is related to the common habit of hotels in Brazil making an extra charge for gentlemen to bring a girl into the room (for, possibly, amorous pursuits?). If so, it is a policy that has gone berserk when it is applied to normal business activity. The inflexibility of the hotel caused me considerable inconvenience and loss of valuable time. The hotel's policy per above is not listed on the Magic Palace Hotel entry on Booking.com, and is thus misleading. For this trip, I wouldn't have booked to stay at the Magic Palace Hotel had I known. My recommendation of the hotel is limited to anybody who has no need for anybody else to be in the room for more than 30 minutes.

The people were friendly, but couldnt speak very well in english, i liked the breakfast.

de Radio and TV was pretty shit

The staff were nice and helpfull and it was the best of 5 hotels we stayed in.Erica and sandra were very helpfull.

Movies were not working

It was very well located in case you want to visit old town and city center. Actually it has the metro at 400 m and you can get everywhere from there. Service are very gentle.

Despite the location, all the other things where horrible. Room was extremely old and dirty nothing to do with pics on web site. Breakfast very poor. Hairdryer is very weak and just works for around 2 min. They don't give shampoo or gel, and the street is very very noisy.

Location is good, not so expensive, i think these two are the main advantage.

The hotel is noisy, not so clean, all facility old, no safety box, English service mostly is not available.