IHG Crowne Plaza New York JFK Airport

After a pleasant day flying BLI-SEA-JFK in Alaska First Class, we deplaned after 10:30 PM and headed for the JFK AirTrain and the Federal Circle stop where the hotel shuttles pick up passengers.

https://www.jfkairport.com/to-from-airport/air-train

We called the hotel and a van arrived within 10 minutes. In a small coincidence, a young traveler from Iceland who had just arrived approached us to ask how to get to the hotels; her phone wasn’t working. She was also staying at the Crowne Plaza, making it easy to help her to her destination.

Checking in was smooth and before long we were in our room. It’s fairly large but dated, although the bathroom has been renovated in recent years. We slept well.

This morning the in-room Keurig coffee pods produced an undrinkable brown dishwater, so Brian picked up some free lobby coffee that was decent, if not spectacular.

We took a short walk around the neighborhood. Other than a large Radisson hotel next door, it’s a residential area of no great interest, surrounded by busy roads and highways.The temperature was in the mid-30s and it was breezy so we soon retreated to our room.

We checked out restaurants in both TripAdvisor and Yelp, but found nothing of interest within walking distance, and nothing tempting within a short Uber ride. We therefore ate lunch in the hotel’s main floor bar area (their basement restaurant was closed). To our relief, our club sandwich and hamburger were both well prepared, albeit costing $19 each at New York prices.

We napped for a couple of hours this afternoon, trying to ready our bodies for the upcoming 24 hours or so. Our 12 1/2-hour AA flight to Doha Qatar is due to depart at 1:20 AM, EST, and 1:20 PM in Bangkok. Following a 5-hour layover in a DOH lounge, we have a 6-hour 20-minute flight on a Qatar Airways A380 (upper deck), landing at Bangkok Tuesday at a reasonable 1:00 PM local time, 1:00 AM EST in New York.

Would we stay at this Crowne Plaza again? Yes, it’s adequate and the employees are friendly. We’ve yet to find an outstanding JFK hotel.

Are we looking forward to the upcoming marathon? Traveling fools that we are, yes! The hotel-to-airport shuttles drop passengers off at the desired terminal - for us it’s Terminal 8. We’ll soon take a shuttle back to JFK where our adventure continues.