My husband and I are going to be spending one night in Manhattan next month (first timers). Right now I have a reservation for both The Roosevelt Hotel and The Broadway Plaza Hotel. They are the same price. My reservation at The Roosevelt includes wifi; the Broadway does not.

We'll be arriving at Penn Station mid morning, and I want to be able to go right to the hotel, drop our bag off and GO!

Which reservation would you recommend keeping? Still deciding on what we will be doing the 1 1/2 days we have in town. Definitely the 9/11 Museum/Memorial and Ellis Island. Dinner reservations has been made for Peter Lugers in Brooklyn. It's an early reservation though- 5:45 pm, so I'd like to spend a bit of time after dinner out and about- maybe Times Square?

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

Much of Ellis Island is closed - due to damage form Sandy. And the only access is via the Statue of Liberty ferry - for which tickets are sold far in advance. Not sure if this is worthwhile under current conditions - but if you really want to do this go to the National Park Service web site NOW to try to get tickets for the ferry - or you face a wait of an hour or more to get on one. Be aware that there is a ticket buyers line and then a separate line to get on the ferry (with airline type security) so for the whole process including the ferries you have to allow at least 5 hours (you go to Liberty Island want it or not - since that's how the ferry goes).

As for Peter Luger - before 6 in the afternoon is very early for dinner - so you would get back to the City early enough to do lot of different things - perhaps Top of the Rock as well as spend a few minutes in Times Square (there's really not much to do there). It would still be early for the evening so you might want to consider going someplace for a drink or you'll be back at your hotel very early in the evening (usual dinner hour in NYC is 8 pm or so).

Can't help with hotel - know nothing about Broadway Plaza. The Roosevelt is an older traditional hotel that is well located but somewhat worn.

It's a shorter walk from TS back to your hotel with The Roosevelt.
The Broadway Plaza is near Eataly, if that appeals to you.

Neither is a great hotel. The Roosevelt is much nicer but it's old and some rooms are quite small. The Broadway Plaza is a basic budget hotel. Given what you want to do, you would be better staying further downtown, maybe in the finanial district. Sometimes you can get much better value for money there. I would look on Hotwire and see if there are any hotels in the financial district with a high thumbs up rating that fit your budget.

Agree you should book reservations to go to the statue/Ellis Island on statuecruises.com. But I'll also warn, people say the 9/11 Museum (not the memorial) takes 3-4 hrs. to absorb. I think that eneds booking too. I'm not sure you have the time to do both in one day and make such an early dinner reservation unless you start early.

Thank you for the replies. We'll have most of a second day too before we take the Amtrak back to Philadelphia.

For now I think I'll stick with The Roosevelt.

I stayed at the Roosevelt about 5 years ago. It was fine. I thought the location handy for walking to Rockefeller Center, Times Square or the theaters. It was only a block to Grand Central Station to catch the subway to where ever we wanted to go. It is one of Don Draper's hang outs

You can go to a comedy club! But don't go to the ones in Times Square for $5--not as good as Stand Up NY, or Gotham, or Comedy Cellar, or Rodney Dangerfield's.