Millennium Biltmore Review: The Room You Need to Ask For

Quick verdict

• The Millennium Biltmore is now officially The Biltmore Los Angeles — renamed in 2024. Same building, same address, opposite Pershing Square.
• It opened on 1 October 1923 and is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
• The Academy Awards was founded here — in the Crystal Ballroom, at a luncheon in May 1927.
• Our first room was small and noisy because the windows did not seal. We asked. They moved us the next day to a much better one. Ask before you arrive.
• The indoor pool is modelled on a 1920s ocean liner deck and it is the best thing about this hotel with children.
• It is a 1923 landmark, not a modern hotel. Go for the building and you will love it.

After a week in Westminster, we moved up to downtown Los Angeles for the second half of the trip, and we booked the Millennium Biltmore — now officially The Biltmore Los Angeles since it was renamed in 2024.

I have worked in hotels for fourteen years. I still got given a bad room.

What happened next is the useful part of this review, and it is the thing no booking site will tell you.

 The room problem — and exactly what to ask for

We arrived before the standard 3pm check-in and the front desk let us in at 2pm, which was a good start and not something they had to do.

Then we got the room.

It was small, and the windows did not close properly. In downtown Los Angeles that is not a small thing — you notice it the moment the street wakes up. We did not realise how disruptive it would be until we had spent a night in it.

So we said something. The next morning we explained the problem at the desk, and they moved us that day to a larger room with properly sealed windows. Quieter, more floor space for the kids to actually play in, and a bigger closet, which matters more than it sounds when four people are living out of suitcases.

Both rooms had a good shower and bath and genuinely comfortable beds. The difference was entirely the windows and the size.

Why this happens, and what to do about it

This is where fourteen years in hotels is useful, so let me be blunt about the mechanics.

A 1923 building does not have uniform rooms. The Biltmore has 683 of them — it opened with around 1,500 — spread across more than eleven floors, and they have been reconfigured repeatedly over a century. Some have been refurbished recently, some have not. Some face a quiet light well, some face the street. The window seals are the giveaway, and they are not something you can see in a photograph or a listing.

So:

1. Ask at the time of booking, not on arrival. A note on the reservation — “travelling with two children, would appreciate a quieter room away from the street if one is available” — is read by the person assigning rooms. It costs nothing and it works far more often than people think.

2. If the room is wrong, say so on the first night, not the third. Politely, at the desk, in person, describing the problem rather than demanding an upgrade: “the windows don’t seem to seal and it was very noisy — is there anything else available?” Hotels have far more flexibility on night one than on night three.

3. Ask specifically about the windows. It is an unusual enough question that it flags you as someone who knows what they are asking about.

4. If they cannot move you that day, ask about tomorrow. Which is exactly what happened to us. Availability changes daily.

They fixed it, and they fixed it well. That is the actual test of a hotel — not whether something goes wrong, but what happens when you tell them.

 The room itself — what you actually get

From our second room:

• Good shower and bath
• Very comfortable beds
• A fridge, which was genuinely useful for leftovers
• A coffee machine, restocked daily
• Bottled water, replaced daily
• Housekeeping was excellent — the room was spotless every single day

That last one is worth saying plainly, because in a hundred-year-old building housekeeping is the thing that separates “characterful” from “tired”, and here it was consistently very good.

Expectation-setting, honestly: these are historic rooms. They are not the size of a new-build American hotel room and the layouts are irregular. If you want a spacious modern family room with two queens and a sofa bed, this is not that hotel. If you want to sleep inside a landmark, it very much is.

The pool — the reason this works with kids

You will read that the Biltmore has “a pool”. That undersells it considerably.

The indoor pool is modelled on the decks of 1920s luxury ocean liners, and it still has its original brass trim and Italian mosaic tiles. It is a high, tiled, echoing room that looks like the inside of a ship, and it is one of the most photographed hotel pools in Los Angeles.

It is not a resort pool. No slide, no swim-up anything, no inflatables. And children find it far more interesting than a normal hotel pool precisely because it is nothing like one.

There is also a well-equipped gym — modern machines and free weights, enough to keep a routine going — and a sauna, which after a day of walking downtown LA in August is not a luxury.

The Academy Awards was invented here

This is the fact that should be near the top of the page, and it is bigger than the one you have.

In May 1927, at a luncheon in this hotel’s Crystal Ballroom, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded. Not hosted. Founded. The organisation that gives out the Oscars began in a room you can walk into.

Eight Academy Awards ceremonies were later held in the hotel’s Biltmore Bowl — in 1931, from 1935 to 1939, and in 1941 and 1942.

The Crystal Ballroom itself has hand-painted frescoed ceilings by the Italian artist John B. Smeraldi — Greek and Roman gods, angels and cupids, painted in the early 1920s.

You can usually go and look, depending on whether it is booked for an event. Ask at reception. It costs nothing and it is the best ten minutes in the building.

The other rooms you can walk into for free

• The Rendezvous Court — the hotel’s original main lobby, Moorish Revival, heavy on gold. The most photographed space in the building.
• The Emerald Room — the original dining room.
• The Tiffany Room — explorer-themed.
• The Gold Room — which has hidden compartments dating from Prohibition. Tell a nine-year-old that and you will not get them out of the room.

Treat the hotel as the attraction. An hour walking the public rooms before you head out is more interesting to most children than another museum, and it is free because you are already staying there.

 Forty films — including Oppenheimer

More than forty films have been shot in this building. The ones worth naming:

• Oppenheimer (2023)
• Ghostbusters (1984)
• Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
• L.A. Confidential (1997)
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
• Gangster Squad (2013)

Plus a long list of television.

If your family watches films, spotting the spaces is a genuinely good game while you walk the public rooms.

What was on while we were there

During our stay the hotel was hosting the Miss USA Teen pageant, which was an unexpected bonus — a lot of very dressed-up people moving through a very grand lobby, and a reminder that this building is still a working event venue rather than a museum.

What is walkable from the door

The hotel is opposite Pershing Square, which puts you in the middle of downtown.

Angels Flight and Grand Central Market is like 10-15 minutes walk from the hotel, check this post: Angels Flight and Grand Central Market

the City Hall observation deck is about 20min walk, or you can take a bus easily too.

Crypto.com Arena and the basketball statues it was about 15min walk