This Fairfield Inn was pretty bad. It's not what I expected for the price. If it were nicer I wouldn't have minded the price. The location, building and room were not up to par. I would not stay here again.

My husband and I are residents of Albuquerque and reserved four rooms at the Fairfield Inn in the university area of Albuquerque for last Friday to accommodate us, our two grown sons, and their families for a special overnight family anniversary celebration. Reserving our rooms was simple and flawless, and the desk staff greeted me with smiles, patience, and courtesy each time I stopped by the Inn to confirm the reservations. We chose the Fairfield Inn because we like the small, more intimate size of the hotel and our family LOVES the very large pool in a glass building in the courtyard of the hotel. The pool water is the warmest of any pool in Albuquerque and has a large shallow end for young swimmers.

The lobby is warm and welcoming with leather couches and chairs and a fire in the kiva fireplace. The hotel offers a continental breakfast that is quite adequate.

We were delighted to find that all rooms at the hotel have been recently (as of June of this year) renovated. Our second floor rooms were spacious with large glass windows facing the interior courtyard of the hotel. The decor and new furnishings were lovely. The entire building felt “new.”

My husband and I enjoyed a room with two double beds. The rest of our family had rooms with a king bed and a fold-out couch. Refrigerators are available in the rooms upon request. If one uses the fold-out couch, one needs to call housekeeping or the desk to obtain bedding.

Everywhere our group went in the hotel we were greeted with friendly smiles from desk staff, custodians, and room attendants.

It takes a little effort to find the Fairfield Inn as it is tucked behind the much larger Crown Plaza Hotel on University Blvd. Also, it may not seem particularly attractive from the outside as it is located at the intersection of I-40 and I-25 and is surrounded by a large paved parking lot (though the building itself looks just fine). However, the interior is peaceful and restful and one forgets the world outside, especially if one requests a room facing the inner courtyard.

The positive side of being near the Big I is that guests have easy access to Old Town, museums, the zoo, sports facilities, shopping, restaurants, and the University of New Mexico.

Our family feels that this smaller hotel is one of Albuquerque’s better kept secrets.

We were quite frustrated by the time we checked in, as we missed the exit, and it took us almost 45 minutes to find it.....and that was after calling the hotel to ask for the specific exit to get off. We were told exit 159D, which is correct; however, if you are not from the area and expect to find 150D, after 159A, B and C, you won't find it. The exit you need is University Blvd, 159D, quite a distance from A, B and C.

The Google map shows access to the hotel from Menaul Blvd., which is off University Blvd. In the maze of freeways, you can see the tall Marriott sign, but just can't get to it. When you're on Menaul Blvd. and looking for the tall sign, it's somehow not visible and not right by the street; it's in the back and the Mariott sign by the street is only two stories high. Whatever you do, take University Blvd. exit and you should have no problem. Though the hotel is by the busy freeways, it was surprisingly quiet. We got a great night's sleep.

Once inside, there were two staff at check-in. The one who told us 159D, was not aware that exits A, B and C didn't precede D on the freeway signs. Both staff were very polite and felt bad for our frustrations. Quick and simple check-in, modern decor, and clean lobby and room. What was disappointing was the wi-fi connection. My husband called for service, but it just wouldn't stay connected. It could have been our laptop, but we hadn't had any issues prior.

If you're looking for shopping and/or restaurants, you don't have to venture any further than Menaul Blvd. Because of our chaotic arrival, we didn't want to get caught up in this again, so we just stayed on the hotel's Blvd. to find something. The three-story Coronado Mall is here. An easy way to get in the mall and to park is at Sears; and there is also a mall entrance right nearby. If you want KMart, take a right on Menaul Blvd. (coming from the hotel back to town) either the 1st or 2nd street from the hotel.

Breakfast included the pancake machine, in addition to the rest. The microwave is old and took me some time to figure out. Another guest told me they did the same thing the previous morning; we noticed most folks afterward have a hard time with it also. We had no check-out, as we request the hotel bill to be slipped under the hotel room door.

Would we stay at this Fairfield Inn again? Now that we know the exit name and can program the microwave, yes we would!

We were fortunate enough to have a friend offer to pay for our stay at this hotel with their rewards points so that we could split up our drive as we moved from Phoenix, Arizona to Northern Colorado. We have stayed in Albuquerque before and new it would be a good middle ground for our drive. When we needed to search for hotel's in the 10,000 point for a nights stay range, based on Marriot's point system, we had only 4 hotels in this area to choose from. Since this was the only one right off of the highway I looked into it and after reading reviews decided to stay here. We traveled with our two young boys (3 and 1 year old).

Like others have mentioned, getting to this hotel can be tricky and you definitely need to get correct directions, because we even ended up getting confused by Google's directions and found it by going a different route. The hotel is right off of the I-25 and I-40 interstates, but know that you will need to exit the highway a decent ways ahead of when you would expect to in order to get to this hotel. Once we found it, and checked in, then found our room, we were pleased with the room. We requested a King size bed, and were expecting to request a roll-out bed along with a crib for our two boys, but when I requested the roll-out the front desk staff let me know we would have a pull-out couch in our room. That was a pleasant surprise, because we didn't expect the room to be big enough for a couch. When we got into our room, we immediately noted the extra floor space which was appreciated when traveling with little ones.

The bed was comfortable for us, even the pull-out bed seemed comfortable for our oldest son. The Pack-n-play came with one of the full-cover washable covers which we appreciate. The room in general was just fine for our needs. We didn't have a fridge in our room when we arrived, but noticed the place where a fridge would normally go under the TV. We call the front desk and requested a fridge, which they brought right away at no charge.

One downside for me about the room was the TV. It was a flat panel "HDTV", but the signal they had feeding the TV was by no means HD. This in combination with the cheep brand of TV used meant that every channel was stretched on the edges of the TV in order for the image to fit the widescreen. This made for very poor quality image and almost made having the flat panel HDTV worthless in my opinion. Good thing we weren't staying in the room just to watch TV!

We didn't use the pool or exercise area, but looked like they had one, although I didn't go look at it. We did take part in the free continental breakfast, which had about what we have experienced at most hotels recently, the normal muffins and toaster items, cereal, some cold items such as yogurt, various drink options including juice and coffee, and a waffle maker. I prefer to do waffles when at these kinds of hotels, but this waffle maker made the waffles a bit on the rare side so that they are still quite gooey tasting. But, it worked out just fine for us - although I have definitely had better "free breakfasts" at hotels we have stayed at.

The staff at the hotel were always quite nice to us and accommodating the few times we needed something. Overall, it was a nice stay and worked just fine for the rest we needed on our drive. If we had the option, I would put this hotel on the list of ones to try again.